Once Upon a Dime: Using Story Maps to Transform Customer Engagement
Purchasing can feel like pure power. Acquire an item, an object, or an experience, and you are granted a feeling of control, a taste of personal agency. An active consumer possesses both the right to decide and the resources to buy, and at the moment of investment, she or he exercises both—reinforcing a sense of self and place within a larger ecosystem.
I buy therefore I am.
Your customer's journey to that moment of purchasing power began long before they saw your logo or heard your pitch. And their journey continues long after the transaction's complete and the value's delivered. You are a player in their larger story, a friend who comes along at the right time and place to influence the trajectory of their work and life.
Brands and organizations that devote themselves to mapping the broad arc of a customer's story are poised to deliver what every human with a dollar in their pocket really hopes to get with it: a chance to be the hero in the story of their life.
These days, consumers don't buy to own. They buy to speak. When we see our values threatened or our position in a culture or community disrupted, our affiliation with certain products becomes both safe harbor and soap box: by publicly aligning ourselves with a brand, we use the power of a purchase to reinforce our worldviews, and extend ourselves and our beliefs across whatever sphere we travel.
This quickly transforms brands into global gathering places, a kind of mobile public commons, where the like-minded coagulate to connect, engage, trumpet, demand. Brands are the organizing mechanism: under their banner, we find ourselves, we locate our tribes, and we have a chance to create the world we want. My purchase is now also my voice, and I lend it only to those brands who stand for what I stand for, who advance the causes I believe in, and who support the tribe I call my own.
That’s why Story-Based Thinking can transform an organization’s perspective of their customers. Moving beyond the limitations of journey-mapping, narrative intelligence offers a more powerful lens through which to see and understand the humans who choose to buy from us.