Amelia Sizemore, Author at Bodine & Co.

To Unlock Customer Insights, Speak No Evil

June 14, 2018 by Amelia Sizemore

Imagine you’re in the midst of a journey mapping workshop and your customers are bombarding you—in a good way—with insights about their needs and expectations. Somewhere along the way, a participant recounts a particularly bad experience, and you feel compelled to explain the behind-the-scenes factors that derailed her experience. “Well, that’s because of a regulation (Read More...)

Jobs-To-Be-Done: A Lens To Keep Journeys Customer-Focused

June 7, 2018 by Amelia Sizemore

We’re often asked how the framework of customer jobs-to-be-done fits with the methodology of customer journey mapping. Here’s my perspective on how jobs theory can complement your mapping efforts. The term “jobs-to-be-done” first surfaced in 2003, coined by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Solution, but its philosophy shares underpinnings with older models like goal-directed and (Read More...)

To Avoid Workshop Rabbit Holes: Acknowledge, Capture, Pivot

Apr. 24, 2018 by Amelia Sizemore

Last week I outlined some tactics to prevent customers from derailing a workshop with out-of-scope ideas and feedback. But what if your workshop includes a tricky customer who continues to push the conversation in an unproductive direction? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. To ensure you’re recruiting customers who will be (Read More...)

How To Keep Your Customer Workshops On Track

Apr. 18, 2018 by Amelia Sizemore

A face-to-face workshop with your employees and your customers can be an organization-changing experience. But getting in a room with customers isn’t all roses. Leaders who are new to the customer workshop approach are usually apprehensive about three things: “No one will want to come!” This is by far the most common—but unfounded—fear. Customer recruiting (Read More...)

To Facilitate Your Best, Prepare For The Worst

Sep. 5, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

I have abysmal travel luck. I routinely end up on a flight that’s delayed because of a malfunctioning toilet or that has to make an emergency landing because of an overheating engine. I’m a magnet for flat tires, stranded ferry boats, minor medical emergencies, and tragic travel miscommunications. I might be an omen of travel (Read More...)

How “T-Rex Arms” Help Uncover Rich Customer Insights

July 11, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

Half an hour after the first round of introductions and ice breakers, our customer journey mapping workshop was in full swing. The five customers in my group were in the midst of a warm-up activity we often use to precede journey mapping proper—brainstorming and prioritizing the ways in which they interact with an organization, in (Read More...)

What Does It Take To Be A Good Workshop Facilitator?

June 30, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

If you want to truly understand your customers’ needs, expectations, and ideas for improving their experiences, you’ll need to actually talk to them. A great tool for uncovering rich customer insights is a workshop where you can bring real customers into the room and watch them open up about their current journey or their ideal (Read More...)

Asking Customers For Their Ideas? Share What You’ll Do Next

June 20, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

Clients who want to bring customers into a co-creation workshop frequently ask us about the logistics—like the right incentives to get people to participate and which customers should (and shouldn’t) be invited. But often our clients are most worried about over promising the actions they’ll take after customers go home: How do we solicit feedback (Read More...)

The Way To Customers’ Hearts (And Insights) Is Through Their Stomachs

June 15, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

Workshopping is hungry work. Our workshop participants are often on their feet, illustrating the details of a recent experience or prototyping an ideal customer journey. While a platter of cookies might suffice for a sedate focus group, it just won’t cut the mustard for a full-day workshop. Food and beverage details might feel deep in (Read More...)

Journey Mapping Q&A: Customer Recruiting

June 6, 2017 by Amelia Sizemore

We learn something new every time we facilitate a workshop with customers. Often our new learning is about the challenges of customer recruiting—and ways to overcome them. For example, to ensure that customers at a recent workshop showed up on time, we told participants that everybody who arrived 15 minutes early would have their name (Read More...)