Customer Experience Management (CXM) emphasizes that everything an organization does contributes to the customer experience. This includes the messages used across various channels, the sales process, and post-sale service, as well as internal factors like how departments interact, leadership, and company culture.
Every touchpoint a customer has during their journey should be consistent and feel like part of a seamless whole. Systematically working to deliver the right customer experience at every touchpoint is the essence of CXM.
Another way to define customer experience is the impression left on your customers, i.e., how they feel and think about your organization or brand at all stages of their journey. Every touchpoint contributes to the customer experience, and these can occur in various parts of the organization. Thus, CX work involves a lot of continuous organizational change.
Building a customer-centric organization often requires a significant shift in how the company thinks and acts. CXM isn’t just about delivering good customer service or improving the user experience on digital platforms; it often involves major changes in decision-making processes and culture.
Let us help you make CX happen.
Are you struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help!
Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noise and get you back on track.
A hallmark of a customer-centric organization is making decisions based on customer insights, focusing on meeting customers’ needs and wishes. However, many organizations face strategic challenges such as:
Short-term focus. Working on the customer experience takes time, and you might even need to fail a few times to get it right. The time and resources required depend on the scope of changes needed, but it’s common to give up when results don’t appear as quickly as desired.
Low willingness to invest. Many organizations view CX work as a cost and a necessary evil. There can be a reluctance to invest in CX without a very clear return on investment, which can be hard to demonstrate directly.
Choosing which metrics to measure and follow up. Some organizations place too much faith in metrics, following too many, which makes it hard for employees to get an overview. But it can also be that the organization follows the wrong metrics, or that data for these metrics is collected incorrectly.
Lack of a declared strategy for the customer experience to be delivered. More and more organizations recognize the value of a declared CX strategy. This strategy should align with the overall business strategy and goals and be known and actionable by the departments delivering the customer experience (usually, all departments in an organization).
Unclear mandates. It’s important to clarify ownership of all touchpoints in the customer journey to ensure all parts of the organization are aligned toward the same goals.
Organizational silos. Silos occur when different departments or teams within an organization work in isolation from each other, lacking collaboration or communication. Silo mentality can lead to inefficiency, poor coordination, overlapping work, poor communication, and failed projects. There’s no room for silo thinking in CX work, as the key is to collaborate across organizational boundaries. Customers don’t care about internal organization but expect the same experience regardless of which channel or person they interact with.
Breaking down silos, for example, by promoting a better culture of collaboration and information sharing between departments, can lead to cost savings. When information and knowledge flow freely between departments, it becomes easier to solve problems and optimize processes, which can reduce unnecessary costs.
A key to reducing barriers between departments is clarifying ownership of all touchpoints in the customer journey. One purpose of working with customer journey maps is to create a shared internal understanding of the customer’s reality to facilitate work on a holistic experience that involves multiple parts of the organization. A clear customer journey map makes it easier to address poor customer experiences that require collaboration between departments and enables collaboration toward common goals with a clear vision.
To overcome these challenges, it’s necessary to involve management effectively. When organizations undergo changes, it’s often easy to identify managers and employees who are reluctant to change – they obstruct, criticize, and are simply difficult to manage. A major challenge arises when resistance comes from management, as having management on board is a critical success factor in change work. One of the biggest mistakes in CX work is starting the journey without involving corporate management. Without management’s support, you might need to request their time and resources, so it’s crucial to get management to drive CX change and act as role models. Here are some concrete tips to help achieve this:
CX Elevator Pitch. An elevator pitch is a useful tool for summarizing messages in a short and compelling way. To create a compelling elevator pitch, focus on the key message and develop a summary tailored to leaders’ interests and needs.
It’s significantly cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. By investing in the customer experience, we can reduce costs for customer service and complaints while increasing sales through satisfied, returning customers.
By focusing on the customer experience, we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors and create a positively charged brand that will make us more attractive to potential customers.
Ask managers to “walk in the customer’s shoes.” To increase understanding of the current customer experience, management can be invited to go on a journey where they experience what the customer goes through. The idea is to let them see the friction and problems customers face, which gives them insight into how their decisions and actions affect CX work. This can raise awareness of the importance of investing in CX and making improvements within the organization.
Invite management to participate in CX workshops. To engage management in CX, they can be invited to workshops with other participants, where the purpose might be to map the customer journey or create a persona.
Use Storytelling. Tell compelling stories about customers’ experiences and how changes in CX have made a real difference in their lives. Management can relate better to stories than to dry numbers and graphs.
In conclusion, as we strive to shape a customer-centric organization, CX leaders face a range of challenges. It’s not uncommon for them to struggle to get their issues and initiatives the attention they deserve in the boardroom. It’s paradoxical that the customer’s voice is often weak in many organizations, despite being central to our work.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that creating value for the customer is the primary reason organizations exist. Organizations are born from the need to meet customers’ desires, solve their problems, and deliver products or services that improve their lives. This fundamental purpose is often forgotten in the complex world of business strategies and financial goals.
Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits. She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change. Helén is part of the management team and a course leader in several educational programs for customer experience management, including at IHM Business School. She is also the Swedish ambassador and a member of the management team of the European Customer Experience organization. Her latest book on CX is “Customer Experience Management på svenska - konsten att leverera rätt kundupplevelse” (Customer Experience Management in Swedish - The Art of Delivering the Right Customer Experience).
Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin
]]>In an age where data seems to flood in from every corner, many companies face a unique challenge: it’s not that we’re lacking customer data, but rather, we struggle to effectively use the insights this data provides.
It’s a common belief that more data directly leads to smarter decisions and better customer experiences. However, the truth is, we often already have a good idea of what’s souring the customer experience. We don’t need to ask if a missed delivery was disappointing or if a frustrating call to customer service felt positive. These moments are clear signs of where our customer experience might be falling short. Instead of constantly seeking more data, the emphasis should be on acting on the valuable insights we already hold.
Let us help you make CX happen.
Are you struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help!
Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noise and get you back on track.
When you’re looking to boost customer experience, it’s critical to show the financial benefits expected from these investments to the internal decision makers. For example, if we aim to enhance our website’s user experience, we’ll likely need to invest in UX resources or web development. It’s important to demonstrate the potential financial return from these investments. Measuring return on investment (ROI) allows companies to determine whether their investments are paying off or if there might be better ways to allocate resources. A strong ROI indicates a profitable investment, while a weak ROI suggests the investment might not be cost-effective.
In CX, it’s essential not just to look at the returns but also any potential cost savings. For instance, an enhanced customer experience could lead to fewer complaints, reducing customer service costs. By comparing cost savings before and after a CX investment, we gain insights into how the investment has impacted the company’s bottom line. However, quantifying the exact impact of CX investments on sales poses a challenge, as it’s difficult to separate this impact from other factors like marketing, pricing, and product development.
Here are a few accessible examples where the investment return is clear and relatively straightforward:
Cutting Customer Service Costs: By improving the customer experience, companies can reduce the influx of customer service inquiries. This leads to savings on staffing and support, showcasing a rapid ROI.
Boosting Conversion Rates: Enhancing the digital experience can lead to a higher conversion rate from visitors to paying customers. This direct boost in sales contributes to a positive ROI.
Reducing Churn: CX efforts aimed at keeping customers from leaving can minimize revenue loss. Keeping customers around means continued revenue, enhancing ROI.
Lowering the Cost of Handling Complaints: A focused approach to CX can decrease the number of complaints and the costs to manage them. This leads to better profitability and a positive ROI.
Minimizing Return Rates: Improving product information and customer feedback can reduce return rates and associated costs. This results in a positive ROI through reduced expenses.
In demonstrating the business value of CX, a balanced and focused approach is key, targeting areas with significant return potential. It’s about cutting back on unnecessary expenses and boosting income through smart, targeted changes that yield quick returns. Adopting a strategy that minimizes costs and maximizes returns through an insight-driven CX approach is a wise business move. By identifying and leveraging easily attainable opportunities, companies can quickly see improvements, enhancing customer experiences while making their operations more efficient.
Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits. She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change. Helén is part of the management team and a course leader in several educational programs for customer experience management, including at IHM Business School. She is also the Swedish ambassador and a member of the management team of the European Customer Experience organization. Her latest book on CX is “Customer Experience Management på svenska - konsten att leverera rätt kundupplevelse” (Customer Experience Management in Swedish - The Art of Delivering the Right Customer Experience).
Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin
]]>Organizations often settle for NPS as a comprehensive assessment of customer satisfaction, but CX work is more complex. Linking CX efforts to tangible financial outcomes is necessary to communicate effectively with the CFO. This article explores examples and warns against relying solely on customer surveys to measure customer experience.
Financial metrics revolve around the company’s financial health, including sales, profit margins, costs, and similar factors. These metrics help companies evaluate their economic performance and identify areas for improvement. Non-financial metrics focus on other aspects of the organization, such as customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and product quality. We can’t measure these metrics in monetary terms, but they are still crucial for assessing how the organization is performing. Non-financial metrics are often assumed to impact the future development of financial metrics. For example, decreased customer satisfaction leads to reduced revenue per customer.
Let us help you make CX happen.
Are you struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help!
Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noise and get you back on track.
To demonstrate the impact of CX, it is essential to be clear about which customer experience initiatives can influence financial metrics. In other words, linking customer experience work to the business is crucial. Here are some examples of financial metrics that can indicate a positive customer experience:
Revenue per customer: If customers are satisfied with the product or service, they are more likely to continue using it, purchase more products, or upgrade to more expensive options.
Reduced complaint costs: If customers are satisfied with the product, it is less likely that problems or errors will occur, leading to complaints, and this can result in reduced costs for handling complaints and thus increase the company’s profitability.
Increased sales: Satisfied customers can spread positive reviews about the company to other potential customers, improving sales and thus expanding the company’s revenue.
Increased repeat sales: If customers are satisfied with the product or service, they are more likely to return and make more purchases, which can boost the company’s repeat sales and thus contribute to its profitability.
Fewer lost customers: If customers are satisfied with the product, they are less likely to switch to another product or terminate their service, which can reduce the number of lost customers and thus increase revenue and company profitability.
Reduced customer service costs: A well-designed product that is easy to navigate enhances the customer experience and minimizes the need for user support issues. The reduced costs for handling customer service issues will increase the company’s profitability.
Example: A company can lower its customer service costs by mapping the customer journey and identifying issues through a fictional global retail company called “GlobalMart.”
GlobalMart has an extensive presence worldwide, with stores in many different countries. The company has a centralized marketing department responsible for global campaigns and customer offers.
GlobalMart began noticing an increase in complaints and a decrease in customer satisfaction locally. It then initiated a customer insight effort to identify the root cause, which consisted of a selection of customer and employee interviews, AI analysis of customer service issues, and customer feedback. Through a clear visualization of the customer journey, GlobalMart identified a pattern of confusion and frustration regarding the global mailings. This was a clear indication that there was an obstacle in the customer journey, as clearly shown in the mapping below… (insert customer journey)
GlobalMart used customer journey-based insights to develop an action plan to halve the “campaign issue” type in their global customer service. Factors such as the average cost per customer service issue and the number of problems avoided through improvements were included to estimate the savings.
GlobalMart had previously handled 10,000 unnecessary customer service issues per month due to confusion about global campaigns, with an average cost of $10 per issue (including personnel, infrastructure, and other related expenses). By reducing these issues by 50%, the company would make an annual saving of $600,000, excluding other economic benefits from improved customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty.
Most CX organizations devote significant resources to tracking various metrics from customer surveys in the form of questionnaires. One of the biggest challenges with customer surveys is ensuring an adequate response rate. The risk of a low response rate is that the result may differ from customers’ actual opinions, leading to incorrect decisions. These decisions can, at worst, worsen the customer experience, but above all, they can lead to incorrect resource prioritization. There are also other risks associated with using customer surveys as the sole method for measuring customer experience:
Selection bias can occur when the company does not receive feedback from all its customers but only from a specific group, for example, if the survey is only sent to a specific customer group or if a particular channel is used to send out the survey. It can also happen that only customers with a strong opinion about the company respond to the study. To avoid selection bias, using different channels to send out surveys and ensuring that the survey reaches the right customers are essential.
Question bias can occur when the questions in the survey are formulated in a way that leads to a particular answer. For example, questions like “Did you like our product?” or “Was our support good?” can lead to a positive response because they are formulated in such a way that the respondent feels pressured to respond positively. To avoid question bias, it is vital to compose the questions neutrally.
Response bias can occur when customers respond to the survey in a way that does not reflect their actual opinion or behavior. This can happen if customers want to maintain the company’s reputation and if they want to give positive feedback for various reasons. So-called social desirability is a common form of response bias. Respondents are more likely to respond in a way they believe the survey requires rather than honestly answering it. This may be because respondents want to appear in a positive light or avoid being labeled as unreliable, controversial, or inconsistent.
Over-reliance on results is another problem with customer surveys. Companies may make decisions based on survey results without considering other factors affecting the customer experience. It is important to remember that customer surveys only provide part of the picture and that other factors, such as customer behavior and customer relationship quality, are also essential to consider.
Customer Experience Management extends beyond simple measurement of customer satisfaction. Effective communication with those responsible for finance requires linking CX initiatives to actual financial results. This means understanding and using both financial and non-financial metrics. In this article, we have explored these metrics and highlighted the risks of relying solely on customer surveys to assess customer experience. Customer surveys can provide valuable insights, but they only sometimes capture the complete picture, which can lead to incorrect conclusions and missed opportunities for improvement.
Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits. She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change. Helén is part of the management team and a course leader in several educational programs for customer experience management, including at IHM Business School. She is also the Swedish ambassador and a member of the management team of the European Customer Experience organization. Her latest book on CX is “Customer Experience Management på svenska - konsten att leverera rätt kundupplevelse” (Customer Experience Management in Swedish - The Art of Delivering the Right Customer Experience).
Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin
]]>– At Custellence, we are dedicated to creating a world where bad customer experiences are a thing of the past. I am thrilled to have Karin join us in this mission, and I am confident that her leadership and vision will help us create even more impactful solutions for our customers, says Daniel Ewerman, Chief Strategy Officer and Founder.
As a leader Karin focuses on building engaged, high-performing teams based on the customer’s perspective and connects it strongly with the business and the company’s value proposition:
– As I strongly believe in letting companies grow through committed employees who understand the value of working from the customer’s perspective, the choice was easy to accept the role as the new CEO at Custellence, says Karin. Each employee needs to see the connection between how their daily work brings value to the customer.
– I am also extremely impressed by what this small team has achieved, building the company product-lead from the start. We see that working with CX as a part of the company’s main strategy and starting work cross-functional will be crucial to success. What is extraordinary about Custellence is that we have a product-market fit and serve customers in 120 countries, which proves the scalability of the product. The tool is already world-class and can be used by all types of businesses. I really look forward to growing this business and continuing to develop the product together with our customers and help them become more customer-centric.
The CX-tech company Custellence was founded in 2015 with the vision of making organizations more empathetic and customer-centric. Custellence has built a tool for customer journeys that help organizations work more customer-centric and where critical business decisions are taken with the customer at heart. Custellence supports organizations in succeeding in their work and in creating strong and credible customer cases that are easy for management to support and get through in the organization.
]]>While on a sabbatical year in the Netherlands, she studied music theory and focused on enjoying life and music production. As her time off was coming to an end, she began passively looking for work, and that’s when she saw an ad for a job on Facebook she couldn’t ignore. “Because it had a dog in the thumbnail”. Fortunately for us, that cute pooch Folke did the heavy lifting, and Custellence reaped the rewards.
Sofie always had an interest in cyber security, sparked by the dissonance between her views of its importance and that cyber security is not commonly high up on the agenda. “Longer term, I want to be part of changing that and raising the status of security”. Beginning as a full-stack developer for Custellence, Sofie took over more security responsibilities as we began to transition to a more security-focused company.
Thanks in part to her efforts, Custellence is constantly taking strides to improve security and building a culture with security top of mind in all areas. “I don’t just want it perceived as important; I want people to think it is important. And know that it sells. You get a return on investment. It costs quite a bit of money and it’s harder to see what you get in return. It’s my job to sell it”.
“We need to spend the money on other things right now. The customers have to wait.”
If you run CX and customer-centricity in your organization, you may currently be scratching your head over a tighter budget or the priorities being made. Priorities that you know will put the business-critical customer experience at risk. You may also be scratching your head over how to bring the topic to the table. For you, I have collected some points to bring to your next management or board meeting.
Why customer-centricity is crucial right now:
1️⃣ Customers review their costs and question what was previously routine.
Accounts, agreements, subscriptions, and direct debits are renegotiated or terminated. What do we need to prioritize and offer in order to prevent increasing churn and a declining customer base?
2️⃣ Industries that were previously of low interest suddenly become highly topical.
How can you be relevant in rapid change? (I’m probably not the only one having conversations about energy suppliers and prices at dinner parties lately.)
3️⃣ A good customer experience can justify higher prices.
How can you justify increased overheads and price levels if the customer experience is not up to par?
4️⃣ Stop doing!
Which offers, products and services incur costs without creating customer value? What can you stop doing?
5️⃣ It’s very rarely the good customer experiences that cost money.
It is a common misconception that good customer experiences need large investments. Rather, it is the bad customer experiences that cost money. Both in the forms of reduced demand and the internal processes required to help the situation.
💰 One thing we all know for sure is that eventually the dark economic clouds will dissipate. Whether or not your company will be a winner can be decided by the priorities that are made now.
❤️ Another certainty is that the customer relationship is like any relationship - the best way to destroy it is by not prioritizing it.
/Ulrika
Ulrika Ewerman is an Independent CX (Customer Experience) Advisor and expert in CX Management and CX Strategy Execution. Over the past 20 years, she’s been working globally, creating impact through CX Methodology, Management, Organization, and Execution. She holds an MFA in Design and has headed senior management roles at Veryday, McKinsey, and Volvo Car Mobility.
Today she supports organizations and brands to unlock the CX potential to become truly customer-centric, with a human-centered, possibility-driven, and iterative approach. Find more about Ulrika on her LinkedIn profile.
]]>He can pinpoint the exact moment he fell in love with computers at the age of 5 while visiting the exhibit “Hej Dator” at the Tekniska Museet in Stockholm. That love only grew, and by age 11, he did what all great programmers do, learned how to cheat in video games. Between his love for exploring code, learning how all the pieces fit together, and his love for electronic music. Programming has always been the bridge between technology and his artistic and creative expression. Still, after working professionally with several programming languages, like a true programmer, when asked how many languages he was comfortable in, he said, “I don’t know, it’s really difficult to say. I think none is probably the best answer.”
Olof is the original member of the Custellence team. While living in Sicily on paternity leave, he was contacted by Custellence founder Daniel Ewerman, who asked to help him build a customer journey mapping tool. Daniel said the world needed it, and he wanted Olof to help him make it. “I remember thinking that this is a golden opportunity in so many ways. That I more or less begged them, on my knees ‘Do not start the project until I’ll be back from parental leave in about 3 or 4 months. Just give it the summer and consider it because I really wanted to be a part of it.’”
Having the chance to work on a project like this from the ground up with no code written. Taking the idea and building something people will actually use, was too great of an opportunity to pass. He has helped Custellence evolve into what it has become today.
He recognized that in most organizations, there was a gap between how businesses thought of their customer’s journey and how the customers actually experienced a service/product. Organizations tend to focus on touchpoints thinking that they explain the entirety of their customer’s journey. But a true customer journey is so much more than that. Understanding the real customer journey requires you to step inside the customer’s shoes. Using empathy, describe the situations the customer goes through leading up to, during, and after the touchpoints. And the emotions, thoughts, and attitudes beyond those touchpoints. In 1998, this was pioneering thinking.
In a previous life, before his venture into service design, Daniel was the bassist for a Swedish grunge alternative rock band called Salt. As a musician, Daniel understood the power of timing and structure of a melody. One misplaced or out-of-tune note affects the whole song. The need for harmony between the various parts of a track is similar to the need for harmony in the customer’s journey. One night while working on a song in the digital audio workstation Logic, Daniel had this epiphany. Mastering the customer journey and creating music are fundamentally the same. They are sequences where the timeline is holy.
Around this same time, there were digital tools on the market to help with customer journey mapping. Yet they all had two common flaws. They were all digitalized methods but not a model for customer journey mapping, and they lacked versatility. For Daniel, the most common struggle was getting his clients to understand their customer’s situations. They needed a way to better understand the customer journeys. A way to picture them tangibly and flexibly so that they could make them more understandable to create customer empathy internally.
Custellence began as a tool for Transfomator Design to help their clients work with their customer journeys. Helping them center their offering around a customer-centric perspective. But Custellence quickly grew beyond its beginnings, and by 2017 the two companies officially separated. The vision for Custellence from day one was to be versatile with a global design. The tool was built with the understanding of the two things Customer Experience professionals needed most:
As of today, Custellence has become synonymous with customer-centric driven change around the world, with users in over 125 countries. Helping bring a more empathetic approach to customer experience in multiple industries from insurance to energy, healthcare to banking, and so much more. At Custellence, we share Daniel’s passion for creating better customer experiences. By being the tool to help you easily map out your customer’s journey to drive customer-centric change in your organization.
]]>When I started with CX, it had nearly an exclusive focus on surveys. Now, companies understand that it’s a framework and one of the tools to carry profitability. It’s all about creating experiences that make people feel good around your brand or product so that they want to keep engaging with the company.
Over the last four years, Sabrina has worked as Customer Experience Manager at ICA Banken, the first to take on that role. When she started, ICA Banken hadn’t come as far in their customer experience methodology as it has now. She knows all about the ups and downs of transforming an entire organization’s CX processes and the time and dedication it takes.
A CX transformation journey can take roughly 8-10 years, and we’re only a few years in now. We’ve met our fair share of resistance within the organization, after all, it is a bank, and talking about feelings and emotions isn’t the usual. But we’ve worked hard advocating in the organization for what CX is, why it is indispensable, and how the CX process is attainable. Also, how important every individual is in this journey and that they play a crucial role in the long-term success of the customer experience. But most of all, how CX correlates to revenue in the long run, and now we’re starting to see results, which is very rewarding.
At ICA Banken, we strive for our customer journeys to be easy, personal, digital, and great value for your money. With that foundation, we start building relationships with customers over time. Still, CX isn’t just good from an external perspective but from an internal perspective as well.
How is that?
Well, it’s super valuable for an organization to gather a team of people with different skills around a process or product. When starting a CX journey, every team member probably has their ideas about it. The customer journey is often thought of from an inside-out perspective when it should be the opposite. Seeing it this way when gathering knowledge within the organization helps you to dive deeper into the customer’s needs at every touchpoint. Map the journey as-is from the customer’s perspective, looking at their needs to identify what works well today and what aspects can be improved.
And that is doable in different ways, but it’s critical to analyze and use data you collect from various sources. In this case, by working with client panels and doing mystery shopping. Then once you finish the mapping, it’s time to design the journey how you want it to be, aligning it with your brand and vision. After which, you will probably have a list brimming with activities you need to start prioritizing. Basing it on the amount of effort it takes to implement and how much impact it has on satisfaction and experience.
For Sabrina, a big emphasis on working with customer experience is that it is a journey, both for the customer and the organization. The key is to be patient and humble during the process, as it takes time to create these transformations. At ICA Banken, it’s clear now that it’s not just a project but also a working method.
For those who haven’t yet started with customer journeys, my best advice would be to start small and simple. Use helpful tools, such as Custellence, that are custom-made for every step of the process, no matter the knowledge level.
And, of course, talk to other people in the business! The CX world is relatively small, although it is starting to grow, so invite someone out for a coffee and ask for some tips and tricks. We need to help one another and not see each other as competitors; everyone will benefit from better client experiences in society.
TIP! If you're looking to start a customer journey map but aren't sure how to, check this useful Professional Map Template guide for valuable insights. This template will help you navigate the steps of creating a journey map with helpful tips and answers to the most common journey mapping questions.
A Customer Journey Map uses an external focus on the customer perspective to answer the question: How can we deliver value to the customer? The foundation of a Customer Journey Map is understanding the customer’s situation or activities going through the offer, service, or experience. It can also include the touchpoints that a customer has with the organization, mapping out their journey to help highlight and expose pain points. The first step in a traditional Service Blueprint is to map out the customer journey or perspective in the top lanes.
The Service Blueprint uses an internal view of the processes of an organization, asking the question: What are we doing to deliver the service? Anything that has to do with answering that question relates to the Service Blueprint. The lanes below the customer journey are the true heart of the Service Blueprint. They visualize the various kinds of support systems, employee activities, and actions behind the lines of visibility of the customers to deliver the experience.
Tip! Want to learn more about the difference between a Customer Journey Map and a Service Blueprint? We recommend reading this excellent article by Megan Erin Miller from Practical Service Design.
What about other map types? There are many more different types of journey maps that you can come across and that you may find useful. Here is a list of 3 of the most common journey maps.
Customer Journey Maps become User Maps when the individuals or groups whose journey you’re mapping are not customers or have no monetary transactions. Examples of this are when projects are in a state of development or when the user whose journey you are mapping is a child. Particularly in the public sector, when mapping the journey of citizens or patients, the term User is better suited and more applicable than Customer.
An Experience Map is the part of the Customer Journey Map that focuses on the customer experience and emotion. The intention of an Experience Map is to help the organization internally build empathy for the customer’s point of view. Directing attention to the touchpoints with negative experiences for the customer to find ways to improve their journey.
An Employee Journey Map is similar to a Customer Journey Map, except that the focus is on the employee’s steps and activities within the organization. The idea behind Employee Journey Maps is to help understand the employee experience because their experiences will affect the customers. It can be a powerful tool to map the employee’s journey below the customer’s journey to see both touchpoints as well as the activities that can indirectly affect the customers.
Knowing the different map types is only half the struggle, and knowing when to create and use these map types is the other half. Here is a little guide to remind you what the purpose is of each of the different journey maps and when to use them.
Tip! If you don’t want to start mapping from scratch, take a look at our free templates. You’ll find template examples for Customer Journey Maps, Service Blueprints, and many others. All of our templates are versatile and applicable in more than one industry. They are also easily adjusted and tailored to your specific business and customer needs.
Are you curious about how to start mapping customer journeys, service blueprints, or user maps like a professional? Check out our step-by-step guide on how to create a journey map and get started today!
P.S. The video above is part of a Q&A series with questions from the participants in The Perfect Map Course. With professional customer journey mapping tips from our experts Daniel Ewerman, founder of Custellence, and Marc Fonteijn, host of the renowned Service Design Show. If you want to learn how to make better maps faster with more confidence, click the link to join The Perfect Map Course.
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