What Is Relationship Mapping and Why is It Important?

Relationship mapping involves the creation of a visual illustration depicting important individuals within your business ecosystem, as well as their roles and motivations, based on certain goals and outcomes. This is sometimes referred to as a context diagram or interaction model and can include entities both inside and outside of your company.

By having a visual chart in place where colours and symbols indicate the type of interactions and relationships happening within your organisation and with external customers and clients, it is easier to develop wider strategies and initiatives to achieve tangible business objectives.

The Benefits of Relationship Mapping

A relationship map can help to highlight key entities in business processes and operations, as well as the kind of relationships that exist between multiple parties, whether its individuals or whole organisations.

Processes within large organisations especially can often be complex involving multiple stakeholders. Relationship mapping can make sophisticated operations easier to understand and help you to think more strategically about your strategy and approach.

Leaders, account managers, and anyone making important decisions in your organisation can benefit from an accurate relationship map when considering changes to operations or building strategies for achieving key goals.

It can also help your teams to better understand their current roles as well as their future ones, if you are undergoing a rebrand or change in your organisation.

What Can Relationship Mapping be Used For?

Relationship maps are used in several areas. As a sales tool, it can be incredibly effective at mapping out complicated sales funnels and routes to deal closures through understanding who the key decision makers are and ways to influence them.

Customer and client experiences can also be improved with relationship mapping that records the motivations of different individuals and groups. This visual representation can help your customer service and sales team deliver the right strategy to influence leads within the buying journey. This is especially the case in projects and sales journeys that involve several influencers.

Customer experience managers might use relationship maps when refining their internal strategies or making improvements. New team members will also find it useful to visualise the kind of roles and customer interactions that take place so they can position themselves within an existing system more effectively.

Business leaders can also use this process to get a better understanding of the way their business functions, the role of teams and individuals, as well as the power and influence certain people have within their ranks.

What Should a Relationship Map Include?

The type of map you develop will vary depending on your goals. And every project or business may have a structure that is unique. This is why these maps must be completed by those with a high contextual knowledge of how your business runs.

Framed by a single goal or outcome, map out all the parties who are involved in its success. Then, arrange individual entities in boxes that represent their level of hierarchy and influence. The final result should be a clear visual image of the entire network of your organisation and the key stakeholders that are involved in project outcomes.

Work with Us to Create Change

As professional business consultants, we’re often hired by global organisations to build strategies for internal improvements that help them to achieve tangible goals. One of the tools we use to do this is accurate relationship mapping that can be used as a framework for planning positive change.

The right process should help you to streamline the exercise and uncover the important information needed to create an accurate overview so that you can facilitate various processes like rolling out new brand guidelines, hiring new management, improving organisational alignment or achieving better customer success rates.

If you’re looking for help in any of these areas, or support with customer service strategy and training in London, get in touch with us at Service Brand Global. We offer a range of services and activities aimed at empowering authentic service providers to deliver a brand-consistent customer experience.

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