Challenge

I’ve worked for one of the customers who wants to improve customer and workforce experience for  specific type of insurance. They wanted to optimize the whole journey. Experts we worked with had a  huge experience and they knew the processes very well, however, it looked like they were biased and  needed external facilitator to help them to improve processes.

Selection

To work with our customer, we decided to use mind mapping tool. Mind mapping tool is a tool which  allows to uncover patterns / insights in gathered data and assist with transition from “what is” to “what  if” through establishing criteria for generated ideas.

Application

We used areas of journey and asked experts to provide their input what was good and what did require  improvements for each area (without any judgement) – just primary discussion and information gathering.  Problem was to not switch to the design mode at this stage – we just wanted to collect information.

After it, we mapped different items into clusters. And when we shaped clusters, we started to think how  they are connected, and which criteria should be used when we start idea generation process.

Insight

After we built mind map, we were able to define “root causes”, which cause a lot of challenges with the  current approach/processes, and it allowed us to shape the “border” / criteria for generated ideas – what  should be avoided or what should be in the solution to continue cover business requirements AND  ensuring more smooth experience for the team and clients.

Approach

Need to manage the audience to not switch to the design mode (and also not allowing yourself to start  design). Sometimes it happened in our case.

Sometimes it was not enough to be just a facilitator for the audience (I suppose it works for internal teams  but when you are external consultant, customer expects some additional insight from you). You should  be aware about industry, processes and show example providing relevant idea/insight for them.

