mapping the customer journey for success

From Peppers & Rogers Groupjourneymapping

Just the Facts: In an ideal world, every customer who uses your company’s website to gather product informa-tion, or enters into a chat exchange with an agent, or uses any number of channels to interact with your company would have a smooth, easy and satisfying experience.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world.To attract and retain customers in today’s hyper-

competitive business environment, companies need to provide great experiences across every channel they use. According to a recent study by Ovum, 74 percent of cus-tomers use three or more channels for support interactions.

Simply providing customers with their choice of mul-tiple support options isn’t enough to attract and retain their business. Instead, companies need to understand how customers use various channels and to identify obstructions they may encounter as they move from one channel to the next.

The ability to provide customers with seamless mul-tichannel and cross-channel support interactions is a must-have for companies that will survive the cutthroat global market. According to a survey by inContact and Harris Interactive of 2,191 adult consumers in the U.S., more than half (56 percent) said they’d likely switch to another company if it provided them more options for connecting with the company. And for the 45 year-old and under set, that number increases to more than 75 percent.

Creating and using a customer journey map is an extremely effec-tive way for companies to fully understand a customer’s multichannel support experiences, including ease of use, challenges encountered at individual touchpoints, and the handoffs occurring between channels. This is a visual representation of what individual customers experience as they move from one channel to the next in their interactions with your company.

Customer journey maps can provide employees with a clear picture of what it’s like to be their company’s customer and help them better understand customers’ behaviors, needs and perceptions.

“Companies that develop and use customer journey maps effectively can create a distinct competitive advantage,” says Michelle Burrows, vice president of demand generation at inContact.

Organizations committed to mapping the customer journey across

different areas of the enterprise can also reap impressive business results. “Understanding how to optimize the customer experience helps

companies improve first call resolution and call deflection; strengthens customer satisfaction and loyalty; boosts customer lifetime value; and even generates incremental revenue through word-of-mouth recom-mendations,” says Dietrich Chen, Principal at Peppers & Rogers Group.

While you don’t have to be a cartographer to develop a customer jour-ney map, there are important steps that project champions should take to drive successful mapping. Among the most important: Developing programs that encourage adoption across the enterprise and imple-menting practices to gain buy-in among key stakeholders.

Technology can also help facilitate customer journey mapping and gain valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of a custom-er’s experiences. For instance, the use of a universal queue gives agents a single view of all the channels customers are using, along with real-time insights that can be leveraged to better assist those customers.

The following pages include our additional recommendations for driv-ing successful customer journey mapping efforts.

Mapping the Customer Journey for SuccessCompanies that understand their customers’ needs and pain points across touchpoints can optimize customer experiences and strengthen business results

TOPIC: Journey Mapping

An “Outside-In” Approach to Customer Journey MappingA well-defined map should illustrate the journey from the customer’s point of view, with a clear description of touchpoints along the way. The customer journey map below was created by Emirates and illustrates the customer’s end-to-end experience with the airline, from research-ing a flight to booking to boarding to in-flight and post-flight experiences. Emirates printed life-size versions of its map that would literally walk employees through different phases of the customer journey during internal training and role-playing.

© 2013 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group. 2

5 Tips for Creating Awesome Customer Journey MapsCreating a customer journey map requires more than simply developing a deep understanding of what cus-tomers are trying to accomplish in their multichannel interactions with a company. Project champions must also consider how maps will actually be applied in the organization, as well as how to make them usable—and useful—for employees. Here are five tips for crafting effective and compelling customer journey maps that bring results:

1. Apply a loose definition of the word ‘channel.’ When contact center leaders and other executives eval-uate their companies’ customer touchpoints, they often discover that the organization operates more channels than it realized. To effectively ascertain the channels cus-tomers use the most, conduct an audit of your company touchpoints, says Jonathan Browne, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research. You can do this by monitoring all the different ways customers interact with your company and comparing that to each of the known channels the company supports.

2. Create maps with a clear purpose. Before devel-oping a customer journey map, identify how it’s going to be used so that it meets the intended purpose. Some organizations use maps to identify and correct problems in current customer interactions by installing “listening

posts” at different touchpoints, such as a click-to-chat option during self-service website visits. Journey maps can show employees what the ideal customer experi-ence should look like and guide their interactions with customers. These maps can also be important tools in making the business case for investments needed to improve the customer experience. Interestingly, journey maps even enable cross-functional teams to envision what customer experiences could look like in the future. A cloud contact center platform can be extremely use-ful to integrate information from the various touchpoints that customers use for support.

3. Conduct research with real customers. Truly understanding customers’ journeys requires project teams to carefully examine how they interact with a particular brand— for example, whether they struggle to find product information online. Companies can gain valuable insights by conducting short surveys with cus-tomers immediately after a support interaction and by coordinating one-on-one interviews between agents and customers to identify what’s working well and what isn’t.

This research should include segmenting custom-ers and identifying where they are in their respective journeys, says Chen. These kinds of insights not only help identify issues customers are trying to resolve at a particular stage, but also allow agents to offer the next best action that will help them move to the next stage in the journey.

4. Create intuitive maps. It’s important for cross-func-tional project teams to create maps that are easy to use and navigate by employee groups across the company. Intuitive maps help those in disparate corporate func-tions (e.g., IT, accounting, customer service) to visualize the touchpoints needed to deliver a superior customer experience, whether through a call center or a mobile self-service app. Remember, the first iteration of a map doesn’t have to be a work of art. Project teams can begin mapping the journey with sticky notes and gradually develop a more detailed visual model as the journey is more clearly defined.

5. Embed maps into the company’s culture. Successful customer journey mapping needs to be based on a continuous improvement program that has buy-in from key stakeholders at every stage of the project. Initially, make sure the initiative has, at mini-mum, an owner and business sponsor. And, don’t try to execute from a single department. Journey map-ping requires cross-functional commitment, which is critical for identifying customer workflows and making changes to the customer experience when functional involvement (e.g., IT) is needed.

Developing Maps to Help CustomerA good customer journey map shouldn’t just illustrate how a customer uses various channels for different purposes. It should also consider the custom-er’s emotional state, which will help deliver the best possible experiences based on current circumstances and frame of mind. Created by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois (BCBS-IL), the customer journey map below has integrated a member’s emotions and perspective, as he or she feels the shock of a job loss Day 1. BCBS-IL uses this map to help employees clearly and compassionately explain this member’s options for healthcare insur-ance during different stages of the post-employment life cycle.

Understanding how to optimize the customer experience helps compa-nies strengthen customer satisfaction and loyalty; boosts customer lifetime value; and even gener-ates incremental revenue through word-of-mouth.

— Dietrich Chen, Principal, Peppers & Rogers Group


From Peppers & Rogers Group


FROM PEPPERS & ROGERS GROUP



Three Tips for Gathering Customer Feedback

Know Thy Customer

When doing research to develop and fine-tune cus-tomer journey maps and create new customer experiences, there are three proven ways to solicit customer input, according to Forrester Research:

Exploratory research. Encourage customers to describe in their own words what they experience when interacting with your company and how they feel about it. Leave the research format and surveys open-ended to encourage customers to share their views.

Evolutionary research. Develop prototypes for new customer experiences (e.g., mobile video support) and share them with customers to elicit their reactions. Especially rewarding: Participatory exercises that invite customers to actually help design new experiences.

Evaluative research. Once your organization nears the final customer experience it intends to roll out, bring in a panel of customers to test it out and get their feedback.

When developing customer journey maps, it’s equally important to know why customers choose differ-ent channels for certain types of support and why they sidestep other channels. “Customers who use channels like the web or mobile are often looking to avoid long hold times and complex IVR menus,” says Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction at Ovum.

A cloud contact center platform, complemented with workforce optimization tools, enables organiza-tions to gather this kind of insight about customer behaviors across different channels. Based on cus-tomer demand and available skill sets, contact center leaders can then determine which agents to sched-ule in certain channels to support particular customer segments.





Case Study: RBS Banks on Closed-Loop Customer FeedbackRoyal Bank of Scotland (RBS) uses explor-

atory research to understand customer

needs and behaviors and to tailor prod-

ucts and support services accordingly.

For example, the bank’s design team jot-

ted down some concepts on paper for a

new mobile banking app it was consider-

ing. After preliminary customer feedback

described how the app would potentially

be used, the design team incorporated

the feedback and refined its designs in

the app’s next iteration.

As part of this exercise, the bank’s

design team developed a simplified

journey map that it shared with cus-

tomers to illustrate how the mobile app

might work.

The simplified map shows a customer

stuck at a train station with no money

and no credit cards after her purse was

lost or stolen. But the customer still

has her smartphone and can use RBS’

mobile app to buy a train ticket.

The RBS design team asked customers

if this would be a useful service and how

the bank could further improve the app.

Based on the feedback, a third-party

developer created a prototype and con-

ducted usability testing with customers

for additional feedback. That helped guide

further enhancements prior to the final

rollout of the mobile app.

A good customer journey map shouldn’t just illustrate how a customer uses various channels for different purposes. It should also consider the customer’s emotional state, which will help deliver the best possible experiences based on current cir-cumstances and frame of mind.

Simplified customer-facing maps Showed how the idea would work.



Customer journey maps provide companies with incredibly valuable insights that can be used to improve the customer experience and strengthen business results. Companies benefit from learn-ing which channels customers use the most, along with which additional ones they’d like to have available for support, explains Brinsmead. Companies can address customer channel pref-erences by using a cloud contact center system, which makes it easy to seamlessly test and plug in new channel support capabilities.

Although it isn’t cost effective to develop jour-ney maps for every customer, companies can benefit from mapping the journeys—experiences and preferences—for customer personas they’ve created (e.g., `Aidan’, a frequent Millennial shop-per who regularly interacts with his smartphone) to represent key customer groups.

“If you try to map the journeys of all custom-ers, you’re going to discover that 10 percent of your customers behave this way, and 15 percent behave a different way,” says Browne. “You’ll end up with spaghetti instead of a clean, linear map. It’s more effective to develop customer journey maps for the critical customer segments you’re trying to attract and retain.”

It’s also important to define the goals for customer journey mapping and how those

objectives will be measured—both of which will increase the likelihood of success, says Chen.

To increase buy-in for journey mapping across the company, think about incentives. What gets measured gets done, and what’s incented attracts attention. Giving people meaningful motivation and rewards for paying attention to journey mapping efforts will pay off.

Meanwhile, consider creative ways to strengthen participation. One software developer used a gamification strategy to demonstrate different customer experiences at restaurants. “Gamifying” the customer experience not only forced restau-rant managers, waitresses and kitchen staff to consider how they should react when things go wrong during customer visits but also strengthened engagement and collaboration among participants.

Finally and most importantly, be sure to approach customer journey mapping from the customer’s perspective. This may seem obvious, but it’s not. “The reason customers often have bad experiences with companies is because customer journey mapping and customer-facing processes are created from the company’s per-spective and not the customer’s,” says Burrows. “It’s also extremely useful to revisit existing pro-cesses to ensure they’re generating the kinds of experiences customers expect.”

Getting Started

inContact helps contact centers around the globe create profitable customer experiences through its pow erful portfolio of cloud-based contact center software solutions. The company’s services and solutions enable contact centers to operate more efficiently, optimize the cost and quality of every customer interaction, create new pathways to profit, and ensure ongoing customer-centric business improvement and growth.

For more information, please visit www.inContact.com

1to1® Media is dedicated to helping organizations across the globe realize the greatest value from their customer base. We provide resources that help senior executives to drive change and make customer-based initiatives the centerpiece of their growth strategy. 1to1 Media’s custom publications explore the best practices, trends, and developments from companies that are using customer initiatives to drive bottom-line im-pact. Backed by Peppers & Rogers Group, the globally recognized leader in customer strategy and relationship marketing, 1to1 Media combines thought leadership, field experience, and editorial expertise to deliver the content needed by our audience of more than 130,000 decision-makers.

For more information, please visit www.1to1media.com





By the Numbers: Correlating Customer Experience to Business Results

Positive changes in annual revenue by moving from a below-average to an above- average customer experience score, by industry:

Wireless service providers: $3.1 billion

Airlines: $2 billion+

Hotels: $1.1 billion+

Source: Forrester Research, “The Business Impact of Customer Experience, 2013”
