2011-02 – Slides – Customer Journey Mapping

This month’s talk was given by Martin Wright of Martin Wright Associates and Oakleigh Wood of Customer Service Measurement Ltd. (also the B&BMN Group organisers).

Another great free Marketing Network event in Bristol, 63 marketers from both client and agency side attended to hear practical advice and tips on mapping customer journeys.

Both Martin and Oakleigh hail from a research background and work with big brands to hep them ‘unpack their values’ and achieve their end business goals. They help brands understand more about customer behaviour and how people interact with their brand.

Oakleigh reminded us that everyone has different views about ‘the customer journey’. And often separate departments within organisations truly believe that they solely ‘own’ the customer.

Martin went on to explain how ‘mapping’ the customer journey can be a powerful qualitative tool. ‘What makes people want to interact with brands?’ he asks. Can brands identify ‘a moment of truth’ for the customer?

Oakleigh and Martin outlined a three stage approach to mapping the journey:

1) Customer journey mapping: The ‘who, what, where, when’.

2) Customer experience mapping: Did the customer find what they wanted?

3) Brand experience mapping: Does the proposition meet the customer’s expectations?

1. Customer Journey Mapping

The customer journey can be broad and long, and customers can exit at anytime. They can move between communication channels (face-to-face, web, outbound, product & services marketing etc), and therefore between silo departments. This can result in a wash of metrics within an organisation without common measures, processes or reporting. This, Martin believes, is where a problem lies. There needs to be a common language.

The solution

By talking to staff, undertaking mystery shopping and time and motion techniques, an organisation can get vital feedback and start to see the bigger picture.  The main point that Martin makes is that we need to be clear about how the customers interact with our brand. Quantitative research can add numbers against this, which in turn can build business cases. This can then start to galvanise departments, and guide staff training and development.

Case study:

Martin gave a case study about a particular Halifax web journey where mapping was undertaken. 38 quick wins were highlighted which represented a 15% incremental sales benefit. Simple content changes, were made, price strategies were altered and broken functionality was fixed.  The exercise also highlighted 15 long-term opportunities.

Mapping had help to identify how to drive more value out the business.

2. Customer Experience Mapping

Oakleigh used case studies to highlight different approaches to customer journey maps. ‘They need to be simple’ he explained. Their main objective should be to help organisations (and the staff within them) understand “moments of truth” that influence the lifetime value of the customer (example: P&O’s journey reflecting on the opportunities of ‘after cruise’, being an area for future growth). He also noted that the success of any customer journey map is measurement and clear accountability.

Case study:

Oakleigh outlined Phase Forwards global software support service. By managing the customer experience with quality and timely follow-up, email, response and reporting (qualitative and quantitative) CSM achieves a weekly 32% response rate. And with intelligent routing of calls, the client achieved a £1.1M cost saving across 93,000 calls. Through real-time data capture and dashboard reporting, Phase Forward was able to engage with their service users, make constant improvements, measure performance down to the individual level of the call centre agents and action service recovery for underperforming experiences. In addition, the data was centralised giving that all-important ‘big picture. It’s simple, the technology is available, you can enable this for your organisation’.

3. Brand Experience Mapping

Oakleigh then outlined a technique for capturing “moments of truth”, which can be applied to any organisation, including: commercial, not for profit, charity or membership.  By doing this you can identify key issues and start implementing solutions at an organisational level.

Martin then covered key challenges/actions for businesses wishing to implement customer journey maps:

Accountability: Most organisations know that one person should own the customer journey, and that should be the CEO. There’s usually only one profit centres too – the customer.

Alignment: Alignment between functions must be a priority.

Martin’s main advice here was ‘Identify improvements and make them happen’.

Martin and Oakleigh agreed that the biggest challenge is getting buy in at the right level, the importance of mapping cannot be under sold, measuring and mapping the customer journey will deliver benefits for any organisation.  The findings often trigger strategic change, the customer is usually fundamental to organisation success, therefore this should be owned by organisation leaders.

Written by Cheryl Crichton | Associate Clear Thinker at Clear Thought Consulting