My mother was big on teaching empathy as a way to nurture compassion for and a deeper understanding of other individuals. As a marketing strategist, I’ve realized how great of a lesson learning to empathize has been. Being able to imagine yourself in someone else’s place, whether that someone is your classmate, a stranger or a customer, is an invaluable life skill and is unbelievably relevant in today’s business environment.

This is why one of my favorite, “go-to” strategic tools for marketing is called an Empathy Map, and I always consider it “square one” — that place from which to begin any project that will affect a customer directly. Empathy makes the world go around smoothly; without it, we have misunderstanding and disruption. Empathy in marketing can make the business world go around more smoothly, too. The Empathy Map tool leads teams through a process that helps them develop empathy for the customer, which leads those teams to craft products, services and experiences that they—as the customer—would want.

How to Create an Empathy Map
The goal of the empathy map is to gain a deeper understanding of customers, and their wants, needs, and expectations with regard to their interaction with your business and brand. Creating an empathy map can be simple and completed in less than thirty minutes, which makes it a doable exercise to conduct during a staff meeting. And, it’s a must before launching or redesigning any customer-facing aspect of your business.

Across the top of the template, write out the topic you want to address in the exercise. Have everyone participating imagining him- or herself as your customer with the intent of populating the diagram with real sensory experiences from the customer’s point of view. You can start populating the diagram from any section, and the order in which you fill it in doesn’t matter. In fact, you may find yourself and your team jumping among sections as the responses flow.

The most common question from participants at the beginning of this exercise is “Are we saying what the customer is thinking/hearing/saying/doing/seeing/feeling now, or do we say what we want the customer to think/hear/say/do/see/ feel?” This is an extremely valid question.

Rather than force the group into staying in either a "now" or "want" state of mind, when I lead Empathy Map discussions, I let groups respond in terms of both. This allows the group to capitalize on the inevitable brainstorming around the customer experience that arises during the Empathy Map exercise. The key is to distinguish between the “now” and “want” by using different colors of ink. Be sure to include a key somewhere that identifies which color is assigned to each type of response.

Once you’ve worked through each of the empathy map sections, you’ll have a lens through which you can view your business, your operations, your staff’s training, and your product and service offerings from your customer’s perspective. Understanding the customer’s perspective and adopting it as your own are invaluable as you move toward improved customer engagement and greater success.

-- by Beverly Ingle