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Ideas, news & analysis
The Way To Customers’ Hearts (And Insights) Is Through Their Stomachs
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
How To Choose A Persona For Your Journey Map
In a recent post, I tackled the common question of which journey(s) an organization should map. But equally important is the question of which persona should be associated with that map. Before I go any further, let me make this point clear: EVERY JOURNEY MAP NEEDS AN ASSOCIATED PERSONA. Why
Customer Experience & Service Design: Let’s Be BFFs
For the better part of a decade, I’ve had courtside seats to the evolution of two interrelated disciplines: customer experience and service design. From my vantage point as a both a designer and industry analyst, I’ve seen the potential for these fields to complement, learn, and benefit from each other.
Big Promises, Small Promises: Can Your Organization Keep Both?
JetBlue built its brand on being a different kind of airline. At a time when other US-based airlines were cutting leg room, eliminating meals, and charging for bags, JetBlue gave flyers room to stretch, provided free yummy snacks, and resisted financial pressure to nickel and dime its customers with fees.
Call for Entries! Service Design Award 2017
For the past two years, I’ve participated as a member of the jury for the Service Design Award, presented by the Service Design Network. In this role, I’ve gotten to review inspiring design work from around the globe. This year, I’m honored to serve as the head of the jury.
Journey Mapping Q&A: Customer Recruiting
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
How To Map Long, Amorphous Journeys
In my last post, I mentioned that some of my early journey mapping clients were investment firms that wanted to map journeys like “saving for retirement” or “building financial wealth.” These journeys were of obvious importance to my clients: By understanding customers’ mindsets and needs along the way, they could
Which Customer Journeys Should You Map?
Where should you start your journey mapping efforts? If you don’t know the answer, you’re not alone. Many aspiring journey mappers feel overwhelmed because they believe that they need to map every single interaction that their customers could possibly have with their organization—a daunting task, indeed! I can’t say you
New Customer Experience Workshops Announced!
I’m excited to announce two additions to our 2017 workshop lineup! NEW! Brand Experience Please contact us to schedule your private workshop. We’ve taken the best of our Designing Brand Experiences consulting offering and compressed it into a one-day workshop. In this interactive workshop, we’ll help you examine your organization’s
Want To Sell Service Design? Get A Trojan Horse
I’ve been a fan of service design since my introduction to it in grad school —and an active champion of the discipline since my initial involvement with the Service Design Network back in 2010. In fact, I’ve spent a significant amount effort over the past five years helping companies understand
