the blog for experience innovators

CX Industry Insights

photo of a young female doctor doing eye surgery

November 2, 2022

11 impressive examples of how to design healthcare experiences

Design thinking in healthcare is not only here to develop services that are shiny and exciting; it also helps to make unpleasant moments smoother and easier to consume. Using healthcare services is not something that people enjoy. In this field, design thinking is rather about improving patient experience by creating services that reduce insecurity and pain. We collected a few great practice examples from all over the world to demonstrate that sometimes it doesn’t take much effort to ease difficult situations – it just takes empathy and the knowledge of pain points.

Isabel Grillmayr

colorful wall with sign: "accessible entry"

June 21, 2022

38 examples of how to design for diversity, inclusion and accessibility

Users of products and services are diverse; they have different needs, abilities, interests, and desires. As service designers / CX managers we must consider diversity, and design for it. But how can we make products and services inclusive and accessible to everyone? We collected a few best practice examples from all over the world to show: Sometimes it doesn’t take much to design for diversity.

Isabel Grillmayr

June 14, 2022

Legal design: how to innovate the experience of law services with journey mapping

For the legal profession, customer experience is of the utmost importance. Legal practitioners are constantly in contact with people in delicate situations. May it be going through a divorce, being accused of a crime, or having experienced severe financial or bodily damages, oftentimes the very fate of the affected individuals is at stake.

Andreas Seelos

Shoes and handbags displayed in a nice store.

May 25, 2022

7 products and services that improve experiences in shopping and retail

In some cases, small changes and improvements make a big difference for customers when consuming a product or service. In the following examples you get an idea of how service design could improve shopping and retail experiences. Enjoy!

Isabel Grillmayr

A photo of houses on the hillside with colorful facades

April 26, 2022

8 products and services that improve customer experience in architecture, interior, and building

In the following images, you can see some extraordinary experiences in the field of architecture, interior design, and building that might be helpful and convenient –or, in some cases, even life-saving. The examples range from easier evacuation in case of emergency, over clever space-saving hacks in hotel rooms, to a practical and fancy-looking way of storing skateboards in schools.

Isabel Grillmayr

A friendly doctor looking after a woman who just gets her bloodpressure checked

February 23, 2022

Journey mapping in healthcare: innovating patient experience

Healthcare services are among the most essential human needs. It does not matter what place on earth, culture, age, gender, predisposition – at some point we all need medical help. And in those sensitive moments, we are glad to have a health system where we can trust both the processes, and the human interaction.

Katharina Rainer

a bike standing in a room with art in the background

February 22, 2022

10 surprising examples of customer experience innovation from traffic and transportation

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a product or service come with a better customer experience. Here are some examples where (service) designers, based on the pain points they found and after some out-of-the-box thinking, further developed services that sometimes even go beyond the initial purpose.

Isabel Grillmayr

Display panes at an airport showing the departure and arrival of planes.

July 6, 2021

Journey mapping in tourism

Service design, and specifically journey mapping, has huge potential to change the travel & tourism industry in a positive way. As individual suppliers harness the potential journey mapping offers, they can craft more compelling experiences for their guests. Whether approaches are applied to services in a small hotel, or within a large destination management organization (DMO), journey maps can be created to suit different contexts and use cases within the travel industry.

Isabel Grillmayr

Sheets of paper with a cup, a mouse and a pen.

June 30, 2021

Journey mapping in government services

When was the last time you used a government service? Sometimes it can be hard to bring a particular service to mind because they often play such a background role in our lives, only standing out during moments when they inconvenience us. However, in people's everyday lives they benefit from a vast range of different government services that support the way that they, as well as their communities, are able to function.

Cambrian Berry

MacBook standing on a desk. On the screen a yellow couch is visible.

March 4, 2021

Create an e-commerce customer journey map with a free tool

Customer journey mapping in e-commerce is a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your online business. It starts when they first become aware of your products, to completing a purchase. It can extend to after-purchase care.

Antonia Cramer

little kids waiting for school to start in front of a building

February 2, 2021

Journey mapping in education

Education has the power to change people's lives and the world we live in. By developing an understanding of the experiences students go through, we are much better prepared when creating meaningful educational journeys and we can thus achieve better outcomes with our students. Journey mapping can help us understand and improve the education journey.

Cambrian Berry

A man playing chess and drinking coffee.

November 18, 2020

Journey mapping in strategic planning

Customer centricity is the core of every successful business. Only if we plan and deliver products that solve real customer needs, our business will survive in the long run. Hence, having a clear understanding of what the customer needs and how we can meet these needs better than any other actor on the market is key to sustainable success.

Katharina Rainer

Candidate journey mapping improving the hiring process

November 11, 2020

Journey mapping in recruiting

As recruiters, we know: The candidate has moved into a powerful position and has changed our game. It’s not only on the candidate to apply and perform, but also on us recruiters to convince the candidate to become part of our organization. It’s on us to leave a good impression and to provide a great candidate experience in order to stand out and compete with other organizations.

Melina Savvidis

November 9, 2020

Journey mapping in banking

Like many other sectors, the world of banking is facing persistent pressure to innovate within a society undergoing rapid technological, environmental and social change. Due to these changes, the way we engage with banks and access money isn't the same as it was five years ago. Short: the customer experience in banking has changed – and it's highly likely it won't be the same five years from now into the future.

Cambrian Berry

October 21, 2020

Journey mapping in SaaS

As a software-as-a-service company that develops SaaS tools for journey mapping, this topic is at the very heart of our culture. Throughout the last few years, journey mapping has grown deeper and deeper into our daily routines, now we are using it along the entire business lifecycle, with the entire team, and not only on an operational level but also on a strategic level too.

Klaus Schwarzenberger

a person's hands leaning on a table with sharpies, color samples, files and coffee

September 30, 2020

Journey mapping in marketing

Journey mapping and marketing go so much hand in hand that one might think it’s self-explanatory. But just like for any other person, also marketers sometimes have a hard time empathizing with customers. Customer journey mapping can help marketers to ensure they act for the customers’ sake and that it’s really the customer who’s in the focus of what they’re doing – rather than tools and processes.

Katharina Rainer

little girl and woman holding hands and walking away

September 22, 2020

Journey mapping in NGOs: volunteer management

NGOs have experience management in their DNA: the primary goal of both NGOs and experience designers is to make the world a better place. Journey mapping as a tool can support them in reaching this goal in a more structured way.

Katharina Rainer

Mother with a newborn baby, holding it tight.

March 1, 2019

Case study: journey mapping in healthcare

This case shows how the Community Empowerment Lab, a global health research and innovation organization, used Smaply to help design a model for scaling Kangaroo Mother Care in rural India.

Katharina Rainer

July 11, 2017

Case study: journey mapping in a global japanese electronics corporation

This case shares how a global Japanese electronics company used journey mapping to improve its business to business operations, specifically with external partners. Through a number of service design workshops internal staff gained awareness of the problem of poor service delivery and became part of the solution.

Katharina Rainer