As the workshop came to a close, Jack reflected on all they had learned that day. The whole day had been spent on their customers – who they were and what their aspirations and challenges were. They spent the last hour working on gaps and workarounds, those pain points that indicated where they could help their customers the most. Jack was intrigued with this methodology, the idea of being open to customer insights that would pave the path to new business ideas. As the marketing director, he used a touchpoint approach to creating an experience for his customers. But he realized he viewed his customer’s journey from the perspective of their business, thinking about how they interacted with the customer instead of vice versa. He did not know what the journey looked like from his customer’s perspective. He was missing big pieces of their experience – those touchpoints where they didn’t interact with their solution.
Mapping the Journey from the Customer’s Shoes
“Well, what did you think?” Kim asked as they walked out of the room together. She was in charge of innovation at their business and had a vested interest in applying this design approach to their organization. She needed to show their return on investment, proof that they had opened the door to new directions for their business.
“It’s pretty exciting,” replied Jack. “My eyes are opened to how much we really don’t know about our customers. I always thought we were a customer focused business, but while we may talk about the customer, we aren’t really centering our efforts on meeting their needs.” He had been thinking about how to capture what they already knew about their customer along with all they would be learning in their interviews and observation. “What do you think about using journey mapping to help us see things from our customer’s perspective?”
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Just this week Jack had read an article about a team using journey mapping to create a better experience for travelers through Heathrow airport. “The operations team working on the innovation project will want to make this into a process map. But I love how this article emphasizes that it’s about mapping the customer’s emotion, not the process,” said Jack.
Kim nodded. “This is why we have a cross functional team. Our journey maps will capture the highs and lows of the customer as they go through each step to complete their task,” she said. “Those lows – the pain points – are the place where we can innovate and create the most value.” Journey mapping was a skill that their team would need to learn. While the operations team was experienced in mapping steps in the process, they would need help identifying the customer’s emotional journey. “Is there anyone on the marketing team that we can ask to participate in the customer interviews and help to build the journey maps?” she asked.
Journeys Unlock Innovation … If You Do Them Right
That was the rub. Interviewing customers and mapping their journeys took dedicated, focused time. Typically, their innovation teams were made up of a few people who had gotten management approval to spend 20% of their time on the project. Kim could see that they were going to need to shift their view on how innovation gets done if they were going to really make an impact. Jack’s marketing team was pretty lean, and had some looming deliverables. He didn’t see how they were going to be able to release anyone to focus on this.
“Let’s go find Celia and see if we can work up a plan. If I can’t find someone on my team, perhaps we should engage some outside help,” said Jack. They had some funding that was tagged for innovation; it was usually used to develop prototypes. Perhaps it would be better spent on understanding their customers to ensure they prototyped the right thing.