Key takeaways on designing an Employee Journey Mapping (with Qualtrics)
Between job applications and re-connecting with friends, I participated in Qualtrics Masters Employee Journey Mapping here in Stockholm.
The session had one main goal:
When you don’t think about what your employees are going through, how can customer-centricity be more than a buzzword?
Below you can find some core findings I have during the workshop:
To start, why do business map journeys matter?
- To understand the customer experience from their perspectives
- To evolve focus from touchpoints to journeys
- To build customer empathy
- To create or re-design interactions.
TLDR: to find opportunities & try out improvements that will increase value to its customers/users.
Someone said in the room it’s all about tying the employee journey to a business goal — Identifying which experiences matter the most in balancing customer satisfaction with profitability. Aha!
To Scope Employee Journey Mapping — the basics
Before we get our hands dirty, it is essential to define the Scope:
- Define & communicate objectives
- Identify the persona(s) and define team roles and responsibilities.
- Align on Key Components — Qualtrics recommend:
- Stages Define the various stages of the customer journey. What are they? When do they occur? Try and keep the high-level stages under 10. If you need more, you can break down your stages into sub-journeys or minor interactions.
- Needs and Interactions — What interactions do customers have with your company or partners representing your company? What do customers need out of each interaction? What actions will the customer take to satisfy their needs?
- Key Expectations — What does the customer expect to accomplish at each stage? What is their current perception of how their expectations are being met? Moments of Truth What are the make-or-break moments your customers have throughout their journey?
- Listening posts Indicate where you are capturing customer feedback today along the journey and ensure they are aligned to the moments of truth and pain points.
- Customer Quotes What is your customer saying that represents their thoughts, feelings, and emotions at each stage along the journey? Sentiment Your map should include the emotional state of customers at each step of the journey.
- Sentiment helps explore polarizing topics and serves as a quick beacon for moments of truth. Effort Identify points of friction, confusion, and difficulty along the journey that can impede customer value and lead to channel switching
How to gather & analyze feedback
Examples of Feedback:
- Employee interviews, workshops, surveys,
- Social media comments (engagement data)
- Website analytics (usage data)
- Online/mobile app feedback
Analyze customer feedback to understand customer needs, wants, and emotions. A crucial part of your journey map will be identifying customer sentiment at each stage. You can uncover these emotions through sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis of customer feedback provides a wealth of valuable business information. It isn’t enough to know what customers are talking about — you must understand how they feel.
One of the facilitators in the room said
Employee Journey Mapping is all about processes, needs & perceptions.
Before we continue I have to define a couple of things:
- Touchpoint: single interaction between employee & organization
- Persona: detailed profile of employee
- Journey: the goal an employee wants to accomplish
- Journey Map: a visual representation
How to design your map
- The employee persona (who are they?)
- The goal of the journey (for example, the employee is new at the company)
- The stages of the journey
- The needs and interactions within each step + The employee’s expectations
- Moments of truth
- Employee’s quotes
- The sentiment at each stage
- The effort at each stage
- The contact duration at each stage
Another facilitator reminded us of two things:
Attitude drives behaviors, which influence experience, and deliver results.
To prioritize, you have to use and ask yourself what the moments that matter for that employee. Try to do it by finding the needs:
While discussing the moment of truth and the sentiment of each stage, we must remember the NEEDS — functional needs (which tasks do I have to do?) and emotional needs (what motivated me while doing the tasks?)
