Emotion-Mapping Your Customer Experience Touchpoints

As you’re designing your organization’s customer experience, your task is to forge an emotional connection with your customers. All customers move through a predictable series of stages in their interactions with your company.

1. They become aware of your organization through its media, marketing, and branding.

2. They find out more about you through your offline and online reputation.

3. They consider using your products or services.

4. They purchase, use, and — depending on their level of satisfaction — continue to do business with your or seek a different provider.

   

   Credit: Illustration courtesy of Roy Barnes.

When you perform emotion-mapping, you gauge the customers’ feelings at each stage of this process as they pass through each touchpoint.

If the emotion map you create reflects your intentions with regard to customer experience, great! Mission accomplished. If, however, you had no idea of the emotional path your customers were on until you saw this map, you’ll want to use it to redesign your customer experience so it aligns more fully with your customer experience intent statement.