Most powerful Empathy Tool Ever
I think that I am not exaggerating if I say that I have facilitated the development of more than 500 Customer Journeys in the last 10 years. With customers, for entrepreneurs, with students, with corporate employees... And the result and feedback is always fantastic.
But I am still surprised by the large amount of people that ignores the power of Customer Journeys. Let`s democratize it! .
Many people mentioned in my sessions that they have done Customer Journey mapping before, but not the same way... I strongly believe that the "recipe" that I will share here, has some very"special-but-not-secret" ingredients.
On the other hand my students know that I am terrible at providing them with slides and materials...So I will start fixing this by sharing the method with a detailed step-by-step approach. I hope this is useful at least for one person. That will pay off the effort.
Select your type of journey. Micro or Macro
Take a conscious decision on the type of Journey that you are going to map. Do you need to work on Micro or Macro Customer journey? Let me clarify with an example.
Let´s say that you are going to work on a challenge that says "How might Students receive impactful and actionable education in our University, so they can impact their environment?" (writing a perfect question is definitely a topic for another post).
There are two options here to work on the Customer Journey:
- If we decide to Focus our research and process on the way we teach students, then we are limiting and putting focus on what we think is going to create the biggest impact. I would call this a Micro Customer Journey. From the complete Customer ("the student") experience, we focus on one process: teaching in class, where we think, or we have researched and have evidence that we might have bigger chances of making impactful improvements.
- If we decide to be expansive, we can think of the Customer Journey since the student's Onboarding process, or even University evaluation process. And we can expand until he leaves university and even further, when he is an active Alumni. I would call this a Macro Customer Journey. From the complete Customer experience, we open up for opportunities on every step.
Depending on every project, you need to select one or the other.
- Micro CJ will provide you with more focus, but you might leave high improvement potential areas / moments unexplored.
- Macro CJ will give you greater perspective but can lead to too wide, not detailed perspectives, and can be frustrating many times.
The role of the facilitator is key to help the team understand the right focus. For early research stages, I would always recommend Macro CJ. For focused project with a clear and laser objective, the Micro CJ is a better fit. But there are many other factors to make this selection: research maturity, team expertise, customers involvement, time allocated...
This chart might help you in case you are lost: If your Insights are very clear and well defined, and you "know" where you are going, go for Micro CJ. If you have not done deep reseach or you still have too many or unclear insights to take direction, go for a Macro CJ.
In any case, it is important that you take this as a Conscious decision before starting the exercise with your customer. Do not leave the decision to improvisation, because it can be chaotic and frustating if the team members are not aligned before the start of the exercise.