Three customer journey mapping power-moves

Customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a top investment priority for CX practitioners according to recent CX Network research.

Customer experience management tech provider Quadient, the lead sponsor of CXN Live: Customer Journey Management 2021 explained in a recent report: “Customer journey mapping is the process of capturing what the customer is doing, thinking and feeling as they complete an interaction or transaction while attempting to achieve some goal or outcome. It is a visualization of the steps that the customer takes on the journey, from the moment they had a need until it is fulfilled.”

The ultimate goal of these maps is to uncover opportunities to remove points of friction, create meaningful moments of delight and build proactive processes that can boost customer loyalty.

However, with the tech’s high price points, journey mapping is commonly criticized for diminishing business returns if not executed properly. To support your efforts, CX Network presents three power moves to unlock meaningful business benefits through customer journey mapping, they include:

• Catch stakeholder attention through customized customer journey map insights.
• Ask yourself: does the customer want to be wowed, or do they just want the job done?
• Remember there is life outside of your own digital channels.

Let us now take a look at each of these three power moves in detail.

1. Catch stakeholder attention through customized customer journey map insights

   In the quest to encourage stakeholders to operationalize customer journey mapping insights, Nick Macfarlane, currently VP of customer engagement at Sky Ticket, realized along with Sky’s CX team that “the answer lied in understanding what was important to the various specific business units and what they needed to know.”

   This realization inspired feedback dashboards that were customized to specific departments with relevant, real-time voice of the customer (VoC) data. Rather than having to trawl through endless verbatim customer comments, departments had access to “beautiful-looking dashboards tailored to their exact questions and interests”, notes Macfarlane.

   As a result, Sky Spain’s ecommerce customer journey saw impressive results when VoC data flagged customer confusion around the media company’s partnership with a takeaway pizza company.

   “We changed one thing in the journey and the sign-up rate went up by 80 percent,” said Macfarlane. “Suddenly we were getting numbers through this partnership that we hadn’t seen before, just from the ability for departments to listen to customers at scale with their own individualized VoC feedback dashboards.”

2. Ask yourself: does the customer want to be wowed, or do they just want the job done?

   January’s CX Network Advisory Board discussion raised the importance of recognizing the difference between ‘wow’ moments in a customer journey, that go the extra mile to delight, and good CX hygiene, best practice that provides frictionless and convenient interactions.

   Rather than pouring resources into expensive strategies to wow customers at every turn, the Advisory Board noted that CX practitioners should ask themselves: in this particular journey are customers actually looking for delight or do they just want the job done?

   Consider how customer intentions and goals compare when attending a music concert versus calling a telecoms provider for a connectivity fix. In the former situation, the customer is looking to be entertained, amazed and wowed, whereas in the latter the customer simply wants to be online in a fast and simple way so they can continue with their daily tasks.

   This differentiation is helpful for providing targeted and lean CX that is not wasteful. VoC data, goal flow reports and empathy mapping will shed light on whether your brand is helping customers achieve their goals and discover any low-value journey stages that can be removed.

3. Remember there is life outside of your own digital channels

   Deb Zell, director of UX/CX/product strategy and marketing at Dell states that most customer journey maps only account for customer interactions on a brand’s own website. However, pre-website interactions in the customer journey, that happened on various sources and channels, represent a significant opportunity to gain competitive advantage and identify new products and services.

   Analysis on pre-website interactions revealed major disconnects between how customers were articulating their needs in online searches and how Dell was describing its own services, said Zell.  As a result the international tech company corrected its engagement strategy so it aligned with the taxonomy customers used in search engines and on social media, to ensure Dell would appear in relevant search results.

   This broader view opened up Dell’s awareness to new buyers and customer drivers that unlocked new channels of business.

   Look to third party data, search engine analytics and VoC insights to unlock the full picture of the customer lifecycle and journey.

   Rather than leaving your journey maps to gather dust, using these power-moves can unlock valuable customer experience upgrades that will boost your business’ bottom line. These wins will prove handy when you require stakeholder buy-in for future CX projects.