Service Blueprinting
Project Case Study :: Research
Case Study Overview
Three years ago, the Gallup Education Practice restructured to what you see today. Before, it was chaotic with mixed messaging of offerings and sometimes even deviated from the overall Gallup mission. It wasn’t very profitable either…
In this new era, we needed a new plan – a new blueprint. So I helped solidify this new era for the practice with the help of key partners and stakeholders.
This case study focuses on the Service Blueprinting of what we do today, which when fully implemented, has made the practice profitable.
Goals
- Reduce the business models and offerings to the essentials that align with the Gallup mission and are profitable.
- Provide visuals of what we want to be working toward.
- Document the journey of turning a customer into a client.
- Optimize the customer-to-client journey.
Timeline
- Practice Internal study / 1 week
- Practice + Service Blueprints / 3 week
- Staged Implementation / 2 years
Terms to Remember
Customers vs Clients
- Customers are self-help users that purchase the product through our e-commerce store. They generally have no direct communication or business agreements with Gallup OR had one in the past but have chosen to downgrade.
- Clients were customers that have gone through the marketing funnel that now have a relationship with the Practice and have client contracts with Gallup. They started on the Basic platform and wanted more features and services from the Premium platform.
Basic vs Premium
- Basic refers to the self-help platform that institutions are first exposed to the product through our e-commerce store. This applies to customer users primarily.
- Premium refers to the custom centralized platform that institutions purchase through a contract. This applies only to client users.
This graph represents where clients and customers fall between our measurements of product usage. The black square (upper-right) represents where our best clients (and sometimes consumers) fall under.
Practice Blueprint :: A New Era
Reducing the Education Practice to these essential products and services allowed the internal processes to function more effectively and provide clarity to our users.
Premium Platform :: Optimizing the Money-Maker
The Premium Platform is for the top-tiered users of our biggest product, the CliftonStrength product. We list it under two funnels of solutions for the Practice. It’s pitched primarily as a Student product, but can easily be repurposed as a Workplace product with or without Practice guidance.
One of our biggest goals was to optimize the journey for a Customer of the CliftonStrengths product to how they can become a Client with the Premium Platform. Optimizing the journey improves internal processes, identifies problem areas across the journey, and draws inspiration for specific marketing campaigns and sales pitches.
This Journey Blueprint has evolved over time and displayed in its current state. The new goal is to reduce the transition timeframe to 3-4 instead of 4-5 years.
Results & Outcomes
With these overall improvements, the Practice is on track to our most profitable year for 2021 and despite our losses in 2020, the business is well funded with this new vision of the Practice.
Internal Win
Overall this particular case study made an immensely positive change within the company. Less deviation, less uncertainty, and less back and forth for our internal processes and partners.
Customer and Clients Wins
Our users have a clearer understanding of what Gallup does for the Education space. They know what we do, how we do it, and now that we have more bandwidth, are able to show measurable results for our client’s efforts.