A Customer Empathy Map is an incredible tool that helps organizations to learn to get into the hearts and minds of their customers. You dramatically increase your emotional intelligence about customers when you use an empathy map. Using it can go beyond gaining more perspective about your customers, to actually becoming smarter about your customers.
The collaborative energy created by using a tool such as this can assist in developing a more agile organization that can more rapidly respond to the changes in customers and competition.
An empathy map can be used to represent types of customers, gender segments, age groups, end-users, partners, lost customers, and non-customers.
Some common uses for an empathy map include:
- Creating detailed customer personas
- Greater understanding of the key differences in customer segments
- Gaining deeper understanding into customer journey maps
- Developing vibrant user stories
- Enhanced insight development when combined with voice of the customer data
- Uncovering ways to improve your product or service
- Developing new products and services
- Spawning greater innovation
Why does an empathy map look like this?
We have learned that 90% of the customer experience is based in emotions. Therefore, an empathy map targets the emotional sensors of customers so you are able to increase your emotional intelligence. You learn more about their emotions and more self-aware as an organization. This empathy map contains a problem statement, actions to take, action owners and six sections:
- Think & Feel
- See
- Say & Do
- Hear
- Pain
- Gain
I need a Customer Empathy Map?
Unless you are a gifted mind-reader, you do. Too many stakeholders create perceptions about customers, that are then used to develop actions, based on their own opinions. This is tantamount to mind-reading. It’s foolish behavior, but we all innocently fall victim to it. An Empathy Map helps to prevent us from being our own worst enemy when we attempt to gain better understanding of our-self and customers.
The Empathy Map can be used in any business or organization, as it provides greater connection into a key component of your company’s success. You will be able to better improve the customer experience by increasing your emotional intelligence through using this tool. By encouraging collaboration and letting people experiment with their visual creativity in this activity, employees will be come more engaged with customers and excited about their new found understanding and appreciation.