Blog
Ideas, news & analysis
To Facilitate Your Best, Prepare For The Worst
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
You Must Invest In Customer Experience
Back in May 2014, I wrote a post titled The Connection Between Customer Satisfaction & Stock Price. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) had recently made headlines, along with a 13-year financial analysis of the publicly traded companies in the index. Here’s the gist of my post: The ACSI had
Why Do You Need Journey Maps?
Journey maps have become one of the most popular tools for understanding and improving customer experiences. (Case in point: more than 1,000 people have downloaded our free journey mapping template since the beginning of this year.) But why are journey maps so popular? And why should you invest in developing
How “T-Rex Arms” Help Uncover Rich Customer Insights
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
Feeling Overwhelmed By Journey Mapping? You’re Not Alone
Whenever we conduct one of our open enrollment journey mapping workshops, we start by asking attendees to list three words that describe their current feelings toward journey mapping. As you can see above, the top two responses are curious and excited. But overwhelmed is a close third. Take a look
What Does It Take To Be A Good Workshop Facilitator?
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
Join Our Upcoming Workshops in San Francisco!
We’ve got a great lineup of workshops in San Francisco this coming August. And you’ve got a great reason to register this week: early bird pricing! Save $100 on our two-day workshop and $50 on our one-day workshops when you register by this Friday, June 30. Customer Journey Mapping — August
In Between Design Thinking And Design Doing
A few years ago, one of my best friends bought me a poster. It arrived in a large envelope, folded up into quarters. As I pulled it out, I could see that one side was blank white and, as my fingertips soon discovered, the other side was covered in a thick carbon
Asking Customers For Their Ideas? Share What You’ll Do Next
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:
Hypothesis Journey Maps: Necessary AND Dangerous
I recently received this question from a reader in the UK: Which is more effective, creating journey maps based on actual customer stories or creating journey maps based on stories created (imagined) by employees? That’s a great question. But it’s actually not a matter of which one is more effective.
