Empathy Relay

Learning Objective

Players can experience a real customer journey first-hand — including its waits, dead-ends, and small humiliations — and convert that felt empathy into specific fixes, not abstract sympathy.

How to Play

Setup

Design a relay course where each station recreates a real journey step (find the info, sign up, get support, resolve an issue), complete with the genuine friction customers hit. Form teams; each member runs one leg as the customer.

Rules

• Each runner must complete their station's task exactly as a real customer would — no insider shortcuts.
• Stations include real obstacles: a confusing form, a hold queue, a policy dead-end.
• Runners tag the next teammate only once their leg is genuinely "done" from the customer's view.
• Each runner notes, in one line, the moment that most frustrated them.
• Fastest team wins, but the friction notes are the real prize.

Debrief

Reserve ten minutes — felt empathy fades fast unless captured. Ask three questions in order:

• Which leg frustrated you most as the customer — and did it surprise you that we do that?
• Where did being the customer reveal friction your dashboards never show?
• Pick the friction that annoyed you most. What's the smallest fix that removes it?

CX Principle Reinforced

Empathy is built by experience, not instruction. Teams suffer the empathy gap — when we're not feeling a state, we systematically underestimate its intensity, so reading a customer complaint never lands like living it. Running the journey as the customer collapses that gap and exposes friction that internal views hide. The relay converts intellectual awareness into the visceral motivation that actually drives teams to fix the small, daily indignities customers endure.

Format

• Format: In-person (station course) — high-energy team event
• Players: 6–24
• Duration: 30–45 minutes
• Level: Easy