Front stage
Customer
Line of interaction Yes
Customer service desk
cc cc mt
No
Line of visibility
No
Back stage
Technical team
Yes
Yes fp
No
Line of internal interaction
Purchasing/ Parts department
The illustration is the Service blue print of ETX Phone Repair shop located in Mount Pleasant. The main objective of drawing the blue print is to analyze the customer interaction at the shop, eliminate or minimize the failure points and improve the customer experience.
The process begins when a customer experiences a problem with their phone. The customer walks into ETX Phone repair shop and is welcome at the Customer Service Front Desk. The customer explains the problem to the Customer Service attendant who notes down the issues and customer hands over the faulty mobile phone for examination by the attendant. The Front office attendant then passes the faulty phone and notes taken to the technician who establishes the problem and is able to do cost estimation. After cost estimation, the technician prepares an invoice. The invoice will assist the customer to decide whether they are willing to pay for the repairs and if they do not agree, the process ends.
If the customer agrees to the repair charges and repairs are immediate, the customer is advised on the duration it takes and chooses to wait within the shop or wait for a call from the customer service representative when the phone is ready for collection. If the repairs are not immediate, mainly due to unavailability of the spare parts, the customer is offered a temporary solution such as another phone to use as the parts are sourced. A temporary solution is the “moment of truth” which is likely to leave a good impression to the customer that their concerns are taken care of.
When the repairs are completed, the technical team informs the customer service attendant who then calls the customer to collect the phone. Highly competent technician must do repair work as this is the failure point. If anything goes wrong during the repairs, it will seriously affect the customer perception of the service and might ruin the business reputation. There will be no repeat business from the same customer, the customer may have to be reimbursed by the repair shop, and the customer may spread negative feedback. Has the company made use of competent technicians, there would have been no damage of the phone speakers when the screen was replaced as per the student service diary.
When the customer arrives to collect the phone, the customer must inspect the phone and test if the problem has been resolved. If the customer is satisfied, the process ends. If the problem is still not resolved, or a new issue after repairs has been identified, the phone is returned for repairs and the due process follows.
A customer who leaves with the phone without inspecting and later realizes that the problem was not resolved or a new problem emerged during repairs will be disappointed and this will negatively affect the affect the service impression. For example, the service encounter diary by the student, the customer left the repair shop without testing if the problem had been resolved and only realized another problem had come up at home. Creating the customer verification step in the blueprint will address the issue.
The service blue print diagram illustrates the process steps in three levels. The customer does the first level process i.e. experiencing a phone problem and the decision to visit repair shop independently. The second level is onstage and all the processes are perceived by the customer and are engaged in the process. The third level is the backstage processes where the processes are internal to the organization and are not seen or perceived by the customer.
