Team Building Activities Explained Simply

Customer Journey Mapping helps you create a single version of the truth of exactly what your customers experience when they interact with your organization.

Periodically it’s important to take a step back to REALLY see things from your customer’s perspective.

What happens to them? Who talks to them and when?

How is information about them shared in your organization and with external partners? How are issues escalated? Who closes the feedback loops and how?

All important questions to answer when analyzing what could be improved or streamlined.

Customer Journey Mapping is an effective change management activity that helps you and your group reach a shared understanding on the key events, touch points, and activities that your customers receive.

Once you have your map you can quickly and easily identify what’s working well (good practice) and not so well (areas for improvement).

It identifies issues, solves problems, is a great team builder and, as long as you complete the process, you get an excellent action plan out at the end.

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Objectives

To create a visual representation or map of how a customer interacts with your service or company.
The aim is to identify good practices as well as issues and problems.

When Would You Use It?

If you’re getting feedback from customers that your internal processes aren’t meeting their needs then Customer Journey Mapping will help you with the analysis.
If you’d like to create a shared understanding within your team / group as to how your customer journey plays out.
The map focuses on understanding the ‘as is’ situation; thinking about how things could be different will come later.

Are There Any Rules?

Allocate one swim lane per individual, department or company.
Always keep the Customer as the central swim lane as a metaphorical reminder they are in the center.

Resources Required

At least 60 mins depending on the complexity of the journey you are analyzing.
Up to 15 willing participants.
Very large piece of plain paper stuck on the wall.
Lots of space of your participants to move around (HINT: get rid of tables and chairs).
Lots of different colored Post-Its and pens
Tack to stick things on the wall.
Flip-chart and paper.

Process

1
The Facilitator sticks a large piece of paper on the wall and draws the Customer swim lane horizontally down the center.
2
The Participants brainstorm the typical Events that happen to a Customer and add those to the Customer swim lane in chronological order. One Event per Post-It (see example).
3
The Participants brainstorms and agrees the key stakeholders / departments / people / external partners that might be involved the handling of this Customer. TIP: Ensure there are participants who represent these stakeholders in the room (as far as possible).
4
The Facilitator adds these stakeholders as their own swim lanes above and below the Customer.
5
The Facilitator splits the Participants into smaller groups and allocates each group to their own key stakeholder / swim lane.
6
The groups spend 10 mins mapping the activities of each swim lane around each of the ‘Events’ Post-Its in the Customer swim lane.
7
Following the mapping exercise (in swim lanes for different stakeholders), work as a whole group to understand the total picture:

For each swim lane, one person from each group takes no more than 2 minutes to walk everyone through the processes that have been mapped out.
Does everyone agree that is the current situation

8
Analyze the Customer Journey Map as a whole and add:

Green flags – describing where the process is effective.
Red flags – describing where the process is broken.
Quotes – first hand observations from your team.

9
The Facilitator summarizes the findings of the group under the headings “What’s working well?” and “What’s not working so well?”
10
The Facilitator leads a Plenary Discussion using the questions on the next slide as inspiration.

Blank Template

You can download this blank template at the bottom of the page

Finished Template

You can download this blank template at the bottom of the page

Plenary Discussion Questions

What is this picture telling us about the different Stakeholders and the way they are working?
What is this picture telling us about the Customer and what they are experiencing?
Where can the Customer fall through the net and why? Are there any overlaps and/or gaps in customer service?
Are there any key activities that seem to make a difference?
What could be done better?
How is information shared and by who to who? Are there any gaps in information sharing?
How are referrals/hand-offs managed? Is there any follow up to a referral? When? How?

Secret Sauce

Ensure there are participants who represent all the key stakeholders in the room (as far as possible).
Follow the session with a break so the group can reflect and then with an Action Planning session to ensure the participants go away with clear list of actions.
Use different coloured Post-Its to represent different types of activities (e.g. assessments, referrals, solution providers, handoffs etc.)
This process can also be used to test the quality of the proposed / new design.

Free Download Files

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About the Author

Nick Martin helps leaders & consultants improve team results with resources, advice & coaching through WorkshopBank.com

Brig R Subramaniam, VSM (Retd) says:

Hi Nick,
Been conducting team building and motivational workshops for a while now. Just discovered your resource (strange, but true!). Great stuff. Thank you.

Suby

Nick Martin says:

at

Hi Suby … it’s great to have you with us … welcome 🙂

Barbara says:

Hi Nick,

I just recently used this tool for a strategy Workshop.
It was fun for all participants, well perceived and led us perfectly to the next steps for a valuable result. Thanks for sharing this!

Kind regards
Barbara

Nick Martin says:

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Very glad you had success with it Barbara. Great work!

Russell Graham says:

Nick

Thanks for sharing.

Under “resources” you indicate 60 minutes. To be honest, mapping out even a fairly simple customer journey with all it’s touchpoints, and considering what is working well and what is not working, takes much longer – especially if the stakeholders are new to the concept.

The other feedback I would offer is that to optimise the customer journey mapping process you really need customers engaged. Even having internal stakeholders represent the feedback they have received from external customers is a compromise as this feedback is usually filtered (consciously or not),and it is also vitally important that we include the context of the customer journey e.g.: what is the customer’s objective, what did they do before starting the journey and what will they do afterwards. The importance of the customer’s emotions are also being increasingly recognised in customer journey mapping.

Regards

Russell

Beenou says:

Hi Nick

Thank you lots for this interesting tool! I’m new to this and will have to run through myself with a team to grasp the methodology, before using it in my sessions.

With regards
Beenou

Brett says:

This looks very useful for our quarterly sales team meetings. Thanks for sharing

Pär Mickos says:

Hi Nick, great to view your thoughts on this important topic. I will use your template soon on a tru case we have to get my own experiences. At a first glance it looked most useful. Thanks for sharing.
Kind regards, Pär

Jimbo says:

Looks a good activity that will tease out the issues n a fairly non-threatening way

Geetha Ramachandran says:

Hi Nick,
What if the departments / individuals interact with ‘each other’ for any customer event.. Have you seen a need to show cross-swimlane interaction?
Regards
Geetha

Nick Martin says:

at

Yes absolutely Geetha. This will show up in your map as you discuss each customer event and you should represent cross-swimlane interaction with multiple post-its and arrows joining the event together.

- Geetha Ramachandran says:
  
  at
  
  Thanks for sharing Nick.

Customer Journey Mapping