Treat stakeholders as customers

Okay, we are pretty good storytellers... but are we telling the right story?

As service design professionals, we nail it when it comes to what I call "Horizontal Storytelling".

We can walk anyone through the customer journey, step-by-step, building empathy for the user's pain and frustration over time.

But here is the somewhat inconvenient truth: As you might have experienced, your CEO or CFO often doesn't know what to do with that story. They are looking for something else.

They need "Vertical Storytelling".

They need to know how a specific pain point on the ground connects up to the strategic objectives of the business. They need to know the ROI. They need to know if the needle is actually moving.

In episode 8 of the Journey Management Playbook series, Tingting Lin and I are closing the loop.

We are moving from doing the work to measuring the impact.

If you’ve ever struggled to justify prove that your journey management efforts are actually influencing the bottom line, this episode is for you.

We dive into:

• How you can translate customer empathy into business language to get buy-in.

• Why you can't just rely on churn or NPS as your metrics, and how to find early warning signals that prove your work is having an effect now.
• How to connect your solutions back to the original business challenge to see if you actually solved the problem.
• And how to start measuring impact today without having to wait for perfect data integrations.

This episode provides the missing link between "making mapping a journey" and "driving business outcomes."

What is the one metric you struggle to track the most? Send me a reply or leave a comment on YouTube, we’d love to know where the biggest data hurdles are for you.

Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

Be well,

~ Marc

--- [ 1. LINKS 🔗 ] ---

👉 Playbook Slides -

✅ Sign up for TheyDo - https://go.servicedesignshow.com/scjwb

--- [ 2. GUIDE ] ---

01:00 What's in store episode 08

03:45 Power of Vertical Storytelling

05:30 Proving Your Journey Map Worth the Investment

07:00 Biggest Mistake People Make in Journey Mapping

11:00 When a Simple Insight Changes Everything

16:30 'Horizontal' View vs. the 'Vertical'

23:00 How to Operationalize Your Journey Map

25:00 Start Small, But Map the Full Customer Story

26:00 Closing the Loop and Feedback Mechanisms

30:00 Summary: 3 Pillars of a Successful Journey Strategy

31:34 Differentiating Horizontal and Vertical Stories

33:00 Overcoming Internal Resistance to New Mapping

36:00 Stakeholders as customers

38:45 Translating Empathy into Actionable Design

39:45 Mapping an Employee Onboarding Journey

45:00 Debunking misconceptions

50:30 Software and Resources We Recommend

54:45 Second Essential Technique

58:00 Final Takeaways & Last-Minute Advice

1:00:00 5 Practical Tips You Can Implement Today

--- [ 3. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

• Spotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-08-spotify
• Apple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-08-apple
• Snipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-08-snipd
• Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/journey-management-playbook-08-youtube