Supporter Journeys: They’re everywhere!
Our history with supporters.
We have recently been trying some new ways of thinking about the wide range of people who support carers- employers; volunteers; professionals and even the general public- and how we can improve their journey. We call these people ‘supporters’. We are all supporters in some way or another!
Previously, we have tended to tell supporters about what we do- which is a great place to start and there is not anything ‘wrong’ with doing this. However, the journey work has started to shift our perspective to really trying to understand what supporters need to help carers. We are starting to understand that we have the potential to play an important role in a supporter’s journey, but, we may not be the start or the end!
So, what did we do?
The supporter journey workshop really encouraged collaborative learning with a mix of colleagues using Miro as the main tool. As an organisation, we have been using Miro more and more and it is something that seems to work for us. Each workshop lasted for a few hours with plenty of time for team work, individual thinking and breaks.
Each workshop included a range of tasks to get the team to start thinking from a new perspective. One task encouraged us to think about our own real life experiences with the group of supporters. Had we received particularly good customer service from an airline? Did a shop issue a refund even though we didn’t have a receipt? Or, did our local café make a booking error which meant we couldn’t eat there?! As each member of the team shared their stories, the facilitator listened carefully and noted key words and phrases. We then used these to help us understand how supporters could be feeling and the how an experience may affect their journey.
We also worked collaboratively to map a supporter’s journey. This is something the majority of us had done before but this time the journey was simplified which helped the group stay focused. The facilitator prompted us the group with questions which put the supporter’s perspective as the priority such as ‘What do employers want to hear?’ and ‘What do professionals want to achieve?’. These were key questions to avoid us slipping into our past ways of working which was only really thinking about the Carers’ Centre and what we do.
What happens next?
At the end of each workshop, we the group left with achievable actions for the future. We broke these down into small steps so we could see the true workload behind each action and shared tasks between the group. For example, lots of the actions from the ‘volunteers’ workshop are to be carried out by the Volunteer Officer but they now have support from the rest of the group.
The supporter journey’s workshops were really insightful and will definitely encourage thinking in a new way about supporters moving forward now we understand the difference that it could make for them as well as for carers.
