Reflection – Mind Mapping

1. Challenge

While working recently at a student association, I gained exposure to large scale sales  processes for a wide range of different stakeholders. We were in contact with customer  groups with various needs and thus required carefully targeted messaging in order to convert  leads into long-term buyers. Due to the nature of tenures within student associations, with  significant turnover every year, it was difficult to build and sustain deep customer knowledge  and insights.

2. Selection

I believe that mind mapping as presented in week 3 of this course could constitute an efficient  way to generate customer insights and to observe changing trends with each new student  cohort. The goal here would be to gather existing customer data, market intelligence and  learning of previous year by the management team and introduce the results in a visual  format to new team members as well as representatives of each customer group.

3. Application

The first step would consist of data collection. This would include a combination of data from  our proprietary data sources as well as new data collection initiatives. Regarding the former,  insights could be derived from CRM data, previous customer surveys and prior focus groups  with relevant stakeholders. Regarding the latter, new initiatives should be centred around  identifying and substantiating blind spots in the existing research. It could also be an  opportunity to generate new data points through more creative research methods such as  dedicated workshops or events.    Secondly, this data needs to be condensed and synthesized into digestible and visually  appealing presentations. It is important to combine different media in order to allow for a  wide range of complexity in the representations presented. Ideally, the resulting  visualizations would then be displayed at the University in the context of a dedicated event  where new hires as well as members of the core customer groups would be invited to discover  the results of this “What is?” stage. The presented data would be broadly organized around  core themes but without too much structure and the attendees would go through the process  individually alongside a senior team member acting as a guide. In light of the current  pandemic, a virtual version of this process could also be conceived.    Random teams would then be formed around given themes and the clustering process would  begin. Attendees would organize their thoughts on post it notes and collaborate to articulate  the most important customer needs. The diversity of perspectives will allow original ideas to  surface and the senior team members will carefully gather these findings for the next stages  of the design thinking process.

4. Insight

I believe that having different attendees, which includes both new entrants with a fresh mind  about the field and experts with a wealth of experience would allow for particularly insightful  findings. The goal would be to draw a flexible and adaptable profile for each of the customer  groups from the teams in this experiment. Such finding would ideally combine new ideas with  deep sector knowledge.

5. Approach

It is essential to build a diverse set of attendees. Too much homogeneity will hinder the  reflection process. It is also essential to align the objective of participants and organizers in  order to have a fully engaged team and an ultimately successful process. Lastly, it is important  to replicate this setting on a regular basis in order to swiftly adapt to changing customer  needs.

