Customer Journey Mapping Workshop: the results!

A Customer Journey Mapping workshop was held Stoke-on-Trent City Council on Wednesday 4 November 2009. 12 candidates from various organisations attended the workshop, with delegates from Newcastle Borough Council, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Derby City Council and Staffordshire Connects among the attendees.

The workshop, delivered by members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Best Practice and Service Review Team, began with a welcome followed by an introduction into Customer Journey Mapping. This included an overview of what it is, how it can help bring ‘customers experiences to life’, what benefits can be realised by using Customer Journey Mapping, and Stoke’s own journey.

Following the introduction, delegates were introduced to Stoke’s Customer Journey Mapping toolkit and taken through a number of scenarios in groups to demonstrate use of the toolkit for data capture. During these exercises, discussion and interaction between delegates for different organisations was encouraged, reinforcing the learning and generating a sharing of ideas and views.

Once the data capture was completed, the group moved on to discuss how this data can be used to identify and deliver service improvements. A brief overview was provided, followed by breakout groups where delegates were encouraged to identify possible improvement initiatives using the data generated within the first part of the workshop.

Discussions continued over a networking lunch and the group left with the understanding of how this approach, as part of a business improvement toolkit, can help provide an important insight of how an organisation deals with its customers, as well as how this can help shape both policy and service delivery.

Comments received from delegates included, “It is a fresh look at Customer Journey Mapping from an authority perspective”, “The course did ‘exactly what it said on the tin’”, “I enjoyed the workshop with all delegates contributing”, “Straight and to the point” and “Practical and based on real scenarios”.

In all, the workshop was a great success, with delegates happy that personal expectations had been met and leaving with the confidence and understanding to implement and use the model. Since the workshop, there has been continued communication between delegates, sharing successes, discussing approaches and signposting colleagues to the toolkit. 

(Thanks to Will Haywood for this information.)

UPDATE 1: It is my understanding that this team has now been disbanded