In our previous articles, we emphasized the importance of rich customer insights and mentioned some tools which are used to achieve them: Six Paths Framework, Three Tiers of Non-customers, and Customer Journey. In all these tools, the key point is putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and thinking from their perspective. These remind us of this golden word: empathy. You have to empathize to understand what your customers are feeling or experiencing during their interactions with your brand. Empathy mapping offers a simple and systematic way to achieve this goal.

What is Empathy Mapping?

Empathy mapping is a tool to understand what customers are feeling, thinking, doing, and saying. It allows you to visualize and articulate your customers’ behaviors and attitudes. By using empathy mapping, you will be able to better understand your customers and tailor your services and products accordingly.

How to Create an Empathy Map?

Traditional empathy maps are composed of four main categories: say, think, do, and feel. As can be seen from the chart below, your customers are in the center of the map.

 

An empathy map can be for one particular customer as well as an aggregation of multiple customers. In order to fill these quadrants, you can use the result of interviews, some customer research or you can simply observe your customers when they are interacting with your product or service.

The first quadrant, SAYS, includes:

• What the customers say about your product or service. These are the explicit things they say during an interview or research. Ideally, it should contain the exact words as a direct quote that your customers used to describe their experience.

The second quadrant, THINKS, includes:

• What your customers are thinking throughout their experience with your brand. You should try to understand what their thoughts are. These are implicit things that your customers do not actually say but you can extract them from your customers’ behaviors. Thus, you should focus on things that they are thinking but not saying and try to understand why they are reluctant to say them.

The third quadrant, FEELS, includes:

• What your customer’s emotional state is. How do your customers feel during their interaction with your brand? These are usually in the form of adjectives and explanations that describes the reason for that emotional state. For example, a customer might be confused because your website is complicated. Similar to the second quadrant, these are also subtle and may not be visible explicitly. So, you will need to derive them from your customers.

The final quadrant, DOES, includes:

• What your customers are doing. What actions do they take? What behavior do you observe from your customers? These are explicit actions that you notice your customers are taking.

After you create your empathy map, you will be able to understand your customer more precisely. The best aspect is that you will have done so by thinking from their perspective, not your own. Now you can innovate your services or products based on what you have learned from the empathy map.

An Updated Version: Empathy Map Canvas

In addition to the traditional version, creator of the empathy map, Dave Gray, came up with an updated and more comprehensive version of the empathy map. The new tool is more usable and expected to deliver better experiences and outcomes.

In this version, sections are numbered so the process is sequential and easier to complete. “Think and Feel” element is put to center and placed in the head to emphasize that they come from inside the head and therefore cannot be observed.

You should fill out the map by starting from the first section and then moving clockwise. Only after you complete the part outside of their head, you should focus on what is inside the heads of your customers.

 An Adjustment for Covid-19

With the profound effect of the coronavirus in the lives of the customers, their behaviors and routines have changed significantly. Thus, what they say, think, feel, and do also changed accordingly. As a result, you should be creating your empathy map considering these changes and tailoring your empathy map to meet post-crisis customer needs.

Contact us to innovate new products/services, upgrade existing ones, and get ready for the post-corona customer needs.