A finished MKT-650 Topic 7 service blueprint example, mapping an airport car rental across customer actions, frontstage and backstage work and support systems, with fail points and waits marked. Searches like "mkt 650 topic 7 assignment example", "mkt650 topic 7 sample" and "mkt-650 topic 7 example" land here.
What a finished MKT-650 Topic 7 service blueprint looks like
The finished blueprint is a single wide diagram in five horizontal bands: physical evidence, customer actions, frontstage employee actions, backstage actions and support processes. Three lines divide them, the line of interaction, the line of visibility and the line of internal interaction, following the form G. Lynn Shostack introduced and later researchers refined. The customer's path runs left to right from booking online through the shuttle, the counter, the lot, the trip and the return. Beneath the counter, the diagram shows that agents cannot see which cars have been cleaned, because the lot crew updates a separate system every two hours. That handoff is marked as a fail point. So is the return, where damage inspection happens out of the customer's sight. Waits carry illustrative times, and the longest, about twenty-five minutes at the counter on Friday evenings, is circled.
How an MKT-650 Topic 7 example is structured
One diagram and the commentary needed to read it make up the blueprint document. An opening section defines the rental's boundaries, from reservation to final receipt, and names the customer segment mapped, business travelers arriving on evening flights. A legend explains the five bands and three dividing lines. The full diagram then occupies one page. A walk-through then narrates the customer's path step by step, pausing at each point where an action crosses the line of visibility. The fail-point section lists every step where the process can break, its cause below the line and what the customer sees above it. Wait points are listed separately with their times. A section on physical evidence notes what the customer holds or sees at each stage, from the shuttle sign to the fuel receipt. Two redesigned steps, drawn as a revised strip of the diagram, bring the document to a close.
Five bands and three lines
Evidence, customer actions, frontstage and backstage work and support systems are divided by lines of interaction, visibility and internal interaction, in the standard blueprint form.
One segment, one path
Business travelers landing on evening flights are mapped alone, since leisure families collecting car seats would follow a different sequence with different fail points.
A counter that cannot see the lot
Agents assign cars from a system the lot crew updates only every two hours, so a car shown as ready may still be dirty when the customer reaches it.
Inspection hidden at the return
Damage is assessed after the customer has left for the terminal, a fail point because any later charge arrives without evidence the customer ever saw.
Waits timed and circled
Illustrative times sit beside each queue, and the Friday evening counter wait stands out as the longest single step in the whole rental.
Two steps redrawn
A shared cleaning status between lot and counter and a photo inspection at return are shown as a revised strip beneath the original diagram.
Where marks go in MKT-650 Topic 7
A flowchart of customer steps with nothing drawn below the line of visibility is the version that loses most, because the blueprint's value lies in showing the work customers never see and how it produces what they do. Blueprints mapping every customer segment at once blur into a diagram nobody can use, and graduate markers expect the segment named. Many drafts omit support processes, although the two-hour system update causes the counter's worst failures. Fail points marked with no cause beneath them repeat complaints rather than explaining them. Physical evidence is frequently left off entirely, and it is what the customer uses to judge each step. A document that ends with the diagram and proposes no redesign has described the service without improving it, which many rubrics for this topic treat as incomplete.
Get an MKT-650 Topic 7 example written to your instructions
Send the MKT-650 Topic 7 instructions and the rubric provided in your classroom, with the service or case your section assigned. We write a custom example to those criteria, with one segment mapped across all five bands, the three lines drawn, fail points traced to causes below the line, waits timed and steps redesigned, in 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free.
MKT-650 Topic 7 questions, answered
What is a service blueprint?
A diagram of a service process that shows, in parallel bands, what the customer does, what frontstage employees do in view of the customer, what backstage employees do out of view, and the support systems behind them, with physical evidence along the top. G. Lynn Shostack proposed the method as a way to design services deliberately. The example uses the standard bands and lines for one airport rental.
What is the line of visibility?
The line on a blueprint separating actions the customer can see from those performed out of sight. Everything above it shapes the customer's direct experience; everything below it shapes that experience indirectly. Many service failures originate below the line and surface above it, as the rental counter's dirty-car problem does. Drawing the line explicitly lets a designer trace a visible complaint back to its hidden cause.
How does a blueprint differ from a customer experience map?
An experience map usually follows the customer's steps, thoughts and feelings without showing the organization's internal work. A blueprint includes that internal work, the backstage actions and support processes, and connects it to each customer step. The two are complementary, and many design teams draw both. The example draws a blueprint because the rental's problems begin in systems and handoffs that customers never see.