This article is based on the event with Michael Brandt, Founder and Senior Consultant at CX-Excellence, where he shared an outlook on global-scale market changes and their effect on customer expectations, talked about today’s importance of customer journey mapping, and attested to it being a team exercise.
Have you ever wondered what factors influence customers’ spending habits and choice behavior? Turns out, it’s a complex blend of the current trends and demands, value for money, and quality of service. And the best litmus test for checking and adjusting customer experience is visualizing their journey.
Read on to discover the essentials, virtues, and impact that customer journey mapping can have on your business and the best practices for approaching it.
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To understand how outside factors affect customer journeys, think back to the COVID response measures about two years ago. What were your expectations of businesses when the whole world was facing restricted mobility, lockdowns, and store closures? Were they met?
Well, all companies reacted differently, and some could adapt better than others. Particularly those businesses that leveraged technology, or quickly rearranged their usual workflows. Michael gave examples from his personal experience to prove this point.
Spring is a high season for people who enjoy gardening. And when the lockdowns first started in March 2020, garden centers weren’t allowed to accept customers at their premises anymore. To go around that, one company introduced limited in-person appointments. But their schedule was exhausted pretty quickly, leading to a three-week-long queue.
The other center took orders over the phone, confirmed them by email, and left each package and invoice in the parking lot of their store for self-service pick-up. This meant that they were able to handle a lot more customers in a day. This story clearly illustrates how the first company failed to keep up business as usual, while the second thrived against all restrictions.
The other example is an electronics chain that, like many other businesses, was restricted to selling products through their online store only. However, some items that were no longer available in the online inventory could still be found on the shelves of their closed brick-and-mortar locations.
To offer a more extensive stock variety, the company started to display the products from the closed stores online, with fast and free mail shipping. The clients were happy with the alternative, and the chain could increase sales and continue to use their staff in the offline stores to pack up orders, which was a win-win for everyone involved.
The world today is in constant flux: pandemics, high inflation, energy shortages, armed conflicts... As time goes on and the situation changes, COVID isn’t the main concern for people anymore, and other issues take priority.
There will always be something else around the corner to affect the markets, either negatively or positively. Only businesses willing and prepared to adapt will continue to meet the changing customer expectations.
As costs increase and pay raises cannot follow that pace, people end up having less disposable income. And they still have the usual expenses for credit cards, medical bills, utilities, rent, mortgages, etc.
So your customers are asking themselves: how am I going to spend my money, and where do I spend it? For your business, it ultimately means they are either going to spend their money with you or with someone else.
So what makes a customer decide to continue to do business with a specific company? 6 in 10 consumers said low prices would become more influential when choosing where to shop and what to buy in the next two years. Still, about a third of those who were asked were prepared to pay more to guarantee good customer service.
Customers’ buying habits have also changed. In an article by McKinsey, the firm points out five significant trends that came on after COVID-19:
Expert tip
“While it’s important to learn from the mistakes that you might have made in the past, you also need to look forward and see where’s the world going, what that means for you and your company, and what measures you need to take in order to adapt. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in the future, so try to keep up-to-date with the world and the economy. And most of all, with your customers — to know what kinds of things are a concern to them.”
The voice of the customer, data analysis, and customer feedback can help you lay the foundation for change. There are three main things to look at:
The key questions you need to be asking yourself:
The customer portfolio is an essential element to consider when you’re looking at their journey. As things change, it is critical to keep your business strategy aligned with the customer purpose. And a journey map will ensure that this alignment is optimized to create maximum value for both the company and its clients.
If you have ever contacted call centers or companies to discuss a problem, how often were you handed off to a different department and asked to repeat the issue? This is something that causes immense frustration to customers. It is a perfect example of how there are disconnects at the various stages of the journey.
A journey map is intended to avoid these handoffs in communication, and you can’t do that if you’re mapping by yourself in a vacuum. To eliminate breakdowns, you need to collaborate and align with other departments that are also part of the customer journey. Basically, you’re going from an “is” state where you see the disconnects to a “target” state of smooth stage-by-stage transitions, where the handoffs from one department to the other are unnoticed by the customer.
Another thing is breaking down the silos. Effective journey maps aren’t the responsibility of one department alone. Those driving the exercise need to involve stakeholders and experts from the appropriate teams in the process. But which departments to involve will depend on your company structure and the map you’re working on.
When it comes to staffing mapping workshops, here are the people you should approach:
As for ways to involve customers in journey mapping, look at these four approaches:
You’ll find that most customers appreciate the opportunity to give their input and participate in feedback sessions. Because, at the end of the day, it’s going to improve their customer experience.
Preparation is key, and to get ready for brainstorming sessions during the mapping project, go through the following five steps:
Expert tip: “Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew: it’s better to start small.”
Facilitation is a critical part of your initiative’s success. It actually implies a heavy workload and has a few nuances if done internally, so you might consider seeking external consultancy. Use the table below to help you make a decision.
Read UXPressia’s tips on synchronous and asynchronous collaboration if you choose to facilitate mapping workshops within your organization.
| Facilitator | Pros | Cons |
| Internal | Knows the company processes and stakeholders. | - May be unable to take an unbiased view; - Might have preconceived ideas that make it difficult to be completely impartial; - Might have a history with other members of the workshop. |
| External | - Has a less biased view; - Has no prior history with the participants; - Is in the position to ask questions from an outside view; - Has less difficulty in taking a customer perspective. | May need more time to understand the product/service and who's involved. |
You might be thinking, is all the effort that goes into journey mapping really worth it? Well, the map you build can actually serve a lot of different purposes.
A customer journey map is:
Expert tip
For prioritizing improvements, you can go with something as simple as an impact matrix, with the benefit of the customer on one axis and business value on the other. Take the resources and effort that it would take to implement the changes, and prioritize which initiatives you want to implement first.
We’ve covered what steps you need to take to facilitate and carry out the exercise, but there are also a few principles to keep in mind across the whole process of creating a journey map and implementing changes:
Remember: there are a lot of right ways to design a journey map. Don’t hesitate to be creative once you follow these basic principles:
Expert tip
“Based on your goals, the customer's goals, and what you discover when you're looking through your journey map, look at the improvement opportunities that are offered by each touchpoint or within each phase. Then prioritize and decide what changes to make. What's really important is to make someone responsible and to agree on a deadline for the execution.”
Sustainability is an essential part of making the change in customer experience. Things often fail because of a lack of accountability, ownership, and responsibility. And because people end up pointing the finger and assigning blame. So for all new initiatives, you need to put together a RACI chart:
“A RACI chart is something that's fairly simple, but it gives you clarity as to who's responsible and who has to do what. And in most cases, that will ensure that your projects actually get carried out, rather than just falling between the cracks and getting forgotten.”
The cycle for working with journey maps or designing customer experience is the following: plan, do, check, act, and review. Similarly, there are five phases to the design thinking process: emphasize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. So if things go wrong, don’t hesitate to do another iteration.
And if you want an in-depth look into the guiding principles of CX design, click on the image below to open it in a new tab and learn how you can engage and understand the customer, create a better experience for them, learn and adapt to feedback, and make an impact on long-term loyalty.
Even when you recognize the importance of customer journey mapping, there are some common mistakes that might still hinder the map creation process:
In the fast-changing world, people continue to look for value for money, even if they are now more cautious about how they spend it. Don’t underestimate the importance of customer journey mapping and leverage customer journeys to have a clear picture of where you are today and where you want to be in the future. Tackle the exercise together with your team, and sooner or later, you should be able to arrive at a win-win situation for business growth and an enhanced customer experience.
Watch the full recording of our event with Michael for even more CX tips, stories, and examples, and the invaluable practical advice he shared during the Q&A session.