STUDENT: Silvia Cervantes

TOOL SELECTED: MIND-MAPPING

Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

The tool I used was mind-mapping to address the following challenge:-

Complaints are being received by the Ms. Thomas - a new manager of a branch of a mid-sized credit  union in the local market, who recently received a low score on the branch’s customer satisfaction  survey.

Having come from a progressive financial services conglomerate, Ms. Thomas has used the mind- mapping Design Thinking tool in the past and is confident that the mind-mapping tool would be  successful in bringing about formidable and innovative solutions for her new employer.

Ms. Thomas was aware of some complaints which were received in numerous forms:-

•  Emails containing angry tones, with customers threatening to leave the credit union giving little to  no details

•  handwritten notes on forms from walk-in customers,

•  reports from staff-members who would report experiencing explosive reactions from customers at  the front desk from e-mails

Ms. Thomas required a mind-map to help outline the myriad of information through interactivity and  contributions by various stakeholders and organize the information so it’s understood by executive  sponsors.

Selection: In your own words, briefly describe the tool you selected (e.g., what it is and why  you selected it for your challenge -- including any appropriate video lecture references).

“Mind mapping is looking for patterns and insights in a large quantity of data you collected during  your exploration of what is the current reality.  The goal is to establish criteria for the what-if idea  generation phase. Which comes next. This phase is pivotal in the design thinking process.   Mind mapping provides a segway from what is to what if.” – Week 3: Video -Mind Mapping Tool  Mind maps uses a diagram to visually organize ideas and concepts and is used to help structure  information to gain a better understanding.  When faced with customers and very irate ones at that, it is tempting to yield quickly to a solution to  dissipate the current situation. However, given Ms. Thomas’ experience she knows that ‘knee-herk’  solutions are not the answer. Ms. Thomas desired to capture as much ideas as possible using a ‘blank  canvas’ approach in an environment like a ‘drop in gallery’. The mind-mapping tool help make  information stand-out via visual cues provided and where persons look for patterns and insights that  would promote rapid understanding that would later provide key design criteria into how to solve the  current challenge.

Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge (e.g., what you did  and how the tool was applied effectively or ineffectively).

Ms. Thomas assigned a specific wall space outside her office to display information presented as post- it-notes. The information on the post-it notes were taken from the various channels that customers used  to provide feedback – via company’s customer service mailbox, feedback forms, reports from customer  service staff, customer satisfaction surveys and back-end customer service support staff. Ms. Thomas  designated 6 of her employees as Workstream Leaders who would ‘own’ one of the customer feedback  channels and update new insights. This approach built energy, interest and commitment with  employees walking by and seeing this visual display, which evoked curiosity and healthy discussions  and displayed varied perspectives (sometimes multiples perspectives on the same piece of information  displayed). The Workstream Leaders also facilitated ad hoc decisions generating more ideas, including  ethnographic interview results. This process of gathering ideas was within a 2-day timespan.

On the 3rd day of using the mind-mapping tool, thankfully there were several post-it-notes with rich  information from contributors. What happened next was sorting through each of the post-it-notes and  patterns in information started emerge and post-it-notes were re-arranged in ‘like’ clusters in sectioned- off areas in the wall space.

Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your  challenge (e.g., how an insight affected your thinking about the challenge and about  design thinking more broadly).

Even though the information looked familiar, it was an insightful reminder that people process  information in different ways and thus the visual display facilitated discussion on common experiences  yet with different perspectives. The mind-mapping tool gave way to a creative environment and inspired  deeper commitments from employees to follow through on action-items that were discussed because  they were invested in resolving the challenge.

For instance, in this particular challenge, these were some of the creative ideas that arose that  we clustered into like groups. See sample below

Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time -- applying the same tool you  selected or a different one -- and the reason(s) why.

It all starts with the basics. While mind-mapping design thinking tool allows people to gain an overview  by way of viewing and contributing many sources of information to generate ideas, employees should  have been educated on what was being done and why they were doing it this way.

It was observed that employees are already inundated with large files and thick reports in carrying-out  their daily duties. Ms. Thomas decided on the mind-mapping tool was a creative way to stimulate their  brains, passion creativity rather than looking at yet another long-winded report about the current  challenge.

Improvement was also noted in application of the mind-mapping tool, in that in some cases there  were too many words. Some contributions to the mind-map could have included photos, pictures or  images which can/will give powerful insights. This slightly diminished the true essence of the mind- mapping design tool of a ‘visual overview’.

FACILITATE CSR TRAINING

1.  Ensure customer service policies and standards  were agreed on and implemented

2.  Conduct gap analyses with the maturity level of  the customer service culture within the credit  union

3.  Develop and role-out customer service training

4.  Implement customer service change  management culture

5.  Embed customer service standards as priority  practices when engaging with customers

EVALUATION OF CUSTOMER SURVEYS

1.  Improve mediums by which feedback is  collected

2.  Standardize feedback mechanisms as to dig  deeper into what the customer experienced

3.  Establish committee to review customer  feedback

4.  Develop and roll-out improvement plans

Map feedback into the CSR  Training plans for continuous  development

