3 Steps to Mapping the Customer Journey

I've been reading David Lee King's book Designing the Digital Experience [courtesy of David himself] and I can tell you that many corporate Web masters could learn a thing or two about designing sites from the users' point of view. If you define the digital and customer experience from the point of view of the buyer, not the seller, there are several consideration to make.

Even as marketers understand the ideas of customer journey and persona, the hard part is translating that information into truly executing on the customer experience - digital or otherwise - when we're not there. The challenge is a real one. As King himself exemplifies in chapter 11, airlines are the most challenged when it comes to understanding the customer journey.

Mapping the customer journey means visualizing how customers interact with you and your business across multiple channels and touch points at each stage of their involvement with your service. You've probably also heard about the term "moment of truth". It was introduced by Jan Carlzon, former president of Scandinavian Airlines, in his book in 1986.

Any time a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business is an opportunity to form an impression. Those impressions become part of the experience customers have of your business and products. Any one of those touch points could be your customer's home page - and that may be the only landing page they'd interact with. That's why you need to be consistently good throughout your site - and service.

David talks about three great advantages to mapping a customer's journey:

1. identifying points of interaction - think in terms of timing, frequency, key messages communicated, media used at each stage
2. gaining insights into customer needs - from how the customer feels during the experience
3. revealing customer focus - who's at the center of your processes, you or the customer?

What are then the steps to mapping a customer's journey?

(1.) Connect the dots between internal preparedness and external needs - the moment of truth in this step is literally overcoming communications barriers, internal bureaucracy, disbelief, and misconception stalls. When you do that, you're taking your business from a position of unattractiveness, to one of interest in figuring out the points of interaction and staying focused on customer needs.

(2.) Integrate what you say with what you do - integration is not a great tactic only for your content. It works beautifully when it crosses over the realm of action. The moment of truth in integration is not just achieving the objectives you set with your strategy, but also how you get there. How are all of the messages you're sending out in each medium integrating with the feedback you receive in that medium, for example? What are you learning and feeding back into the process?

(3.) Innovate at each touch point - whenever you offer a customer something, do you think through the implications of delivering it to them, or them getting it however they find it easiest? What process or tool have you not updated for a long time and needs revisiting, for example? The moment of truth in this one is if your innovation is you-centered, in other words easy for you, or customer-centric, something that will make their experience better.

Blogging has evolved a great deal since I started this blog, and of all tools out there, WordPress has been innovating the most around customer needs - offering fresh and clean layouts and tool integration ahead of others.

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we're talking about moments of truth in service. What are your moments of truth? How do you integrate what you learn from customers into your business? Are your value propositions something customers would pay for?

[chart courtesy of at-one service innovation]

Comments

[John Spence]

Valeria - I love your blog! Out of the 70 or so blogs that I track on a regular basis yours always has some of the best and most relevant content. David's ideas about "mapping the customer experience" are spot on. I have given this topic a lot of thought as it related to general customer service, but I must admit that David's ideas and your blog have really made me take a look at this idea as it relates to my website -- thank you! To keep the conversation going and add some more ideas to the mix, below I've pasted in a blog I recently posted on "moments of truth" I hope you and your readers find it of value. Thanks so much Valeria keep up the fantastic work!

From John Spence's blog:

Moments of Truth

The process of delivering any product or service to a customer typically includes multiple steps. Although every step is important, there are few critical "Moments of Truth" that carry significantly more weight in the customer's mind.
Great service providers identify these critical touchpoints and are obsessive about creating systems and processes to ensure that they are delivered flawlessly every single time. For example, I made a list of every single touchpoint I could think of in the process of a customer going out to dine at a restaurant. I won't give you the complete list (I identified 157 touchpoints) but here are just a few to give you a flavor for what I'm talking about:

Signage is clear, access to parking lot is convenient, and parking spots are wide enough for large cars and trucks.
Parking lot is clean, landscaping is healthy and attractive, and the entrance is well lighted and safe.

Immediately upon entering, facilities are spotless, ambience is warm and relaxing, music is at an appropriate level.
Hostess greets patrons with a warm smile as they approach the reservations desk and welcomes them to the restaurant.

Hostess offers to take jackets, determines number of people in party, and inquires to see if they have a reservation or a special seating request.

Hostess determines approximate wait for table, informs guests of wait time, and offers to bring beverages while they wait for their table.

Beverage order is correct; drinks are mixed appropriately and served in an attractive manner.

Okay, we've just covered the first two minutes of a two-hour dining experience. As you can see, from pulling into the parking lot to driving away later in the evening after dinner, there are dozens of touchpoints that add up to either a positive or negative dining experience. However, out of all those various touchpoints, there are a few critical Moments of Truth that MUST go perfectly in order for the customer to be fully satisfied. For a restaurant those critical touchpoints include:

Cleanliness
Food quality
Service quality
Price

You can be spectacular on all of the other touchpoints, but if you don't nail these four, there is no way to create loyal, engaged in highly satisfied customers. For example:

Really clean restaurant, pretty good food, okay service, outlandishly high prices = no game.

Super high food quality, very good service, reasonable price, cockroaches walking across the floor = out of business.

Very clean restaurant, highly attentive waiters, very reasonable price, crappy food = empty restaurant.

The goal is to identify the short list of your company's key Moments of Truth -- your most critical customer touchpoints -- and design processes and systems to ensure they are done absolutely flawlessly each and every time. The aim here is to make it as easy as possible for your people to provide stunning service by removing opportunities for mistakes or failures.

Through checklists, standard operating procedures, computer systems and regular training programs you want to define exactly what "superior customer service" looks like in your business and then build a well thought-out system to make sure that you can consistently deliver it!

*** Now the key is to take your ideas Valeria, David's wonderful ideas, and the information I have listed above -- and focus at all on creating "Consistently Superior Digital Moments of Truth" ***

[Ian Truscott]

Really nice post. In my business - web content management - "engagement" seems to be today's buzzword, but there's way more to it than a few screen shots of Google analytics - and you've nailed that in this post. Now off to Fast Company to read 'moments of truth'... Thanks!

[Elizabeth]

I think you've really nailed it. The first step is to identify each touch point. Once you've identified them, take a look and see if you are sending a consistent message in each of those. Not all touch points can be controlled; however, those that can be must be managed and be consistent with the overall message you want to send out from your company.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@John - you're very kind and generous in sharing your content - thank you and I'm sure my readers also thank you. Alignment in the experience of a service is key. As you illustrated, one thing goes out of order and the whole experience falls flat.

@Ian - engagement indeed feels more like a commitment from two parties than a flyby, doesn't it? Or the content will just get filed without nobody acting on it. Some of today's darling keywords have no meaning unless they're actually done.

@Elizabeth - True, not all touch points can be controlled directly, but the culture your created in your organization can and sometimes does carry that message in the way the organization acts and responds to the rest.