As Jack rode his bike home from work that evening, he reflected on the meeting he attended at the end of the day with Kim and Celia. They had gathered to talk about using journey mapping in their innovation project. He had agreed to find a resource to help lead customer interviews and gather the team’s insights, either someone from his team or an expert.
While Jack’s marketing team often mapped customer touchpoints, he wanted them to dig deeper to really develop empathy for their customers. He wanted to move away from the marketing group “owning” the customer. He thought the only way for their business to innovate new customer value was if everyone in the organization felt ownership for understanding the customer.
Journey mapping would allow them to understand the steps their customers took to complete their tasks but Jack wanted the team to uncover why customers did things that way. The innovation project was their first step in a broader digital transformation for their business. To ensure that new digital services contributed to their branded customer experience, he would need to pay attention to the things that customers liked about their current service and ensure the digital service delivered the same delight.
Like what you’re reading? Click here to subscribe to our weekly blog, sent directly to your inbox.
Jack felt that bringing in someone who had expertise in building empathy through journey mapping might be the way to go. He had read articles about doing this effectively but thought it would be difficult for anyone on his team to execute such a deeply customer-focused methodology. This was especially true since they would be involving team members from operations and development with even less customer experience. However he knew they could learn how to do it, and a human-centered design coach would help them get up to speed quickly, avoiding pitfalls.
Jack walked into his house and typed a quick email to Celia and Kim. “We need to understand what our customers say and do at each step in their journey. And we need to explore how our customers think and feel about those steps,” he wrote. “A human-centered design consultant will give us a jump start, and will coach every member of the team to become a design thinker.”
He was excited to explore where they could add value by turning their customer’s biggest pain points into new digital services. But he wondered – could their team pull it off?