THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY: THE FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW NOW

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY IS A MACRO/MICRO CONCEPT ........ 3

A MAP IS IMPORTANT FOR ANY JOURNEY ..................................... 3

FEEDBACK COMES IN MANY FORMS ................................................ 4

KEEP IT EASY AND CONSISTENT ............................................................... 4

FLEXIBILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL .................................................................. 5

SUMMING IT UP ................................................................................ 6

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The customer journey unfolds every minute of every day, every time a customer interacts with a company she does business with, across any channel and at any point along her own customer lifecycle. All our panelists agreed that, although the customer journey may have some common components, it can be as singular as the individual traveling it.

Brian said that managing the customer journey requires companies to understand “who is the customer, what are they trying to accomplish, how are they trying to accomplish (it) and how do we do a much better job of responding and creating a great experience for them?” Companies must be able to take a macro/micro view of the journey: what happens in the aggregate, at the mass level and how does the journey play out at a granular, personal level, with each individual’s needs and context.

Organizations often seek to capture the journey, in all of its twists and turns, through a process called “customer experience mapping.” Mapping is an “organization’s attempt at understanding [interactions] from the customers’ viewpoint,” Brian explained. “How customers interact with companies is super-fragmented,” he said, citing a study of 3,000 customers in which each customer journey was different. The customer journey map, as an overarching concept, may not reflect all customers’ realities. But mapping, as an exercise, helps to create a macro template of how interactions should unfold.

Mapping is a way, Krissy said, for companies to “follow in their customers’ footsteps, to see what’s working and what’s not.” Service organizations seeking to understand and optimize the customer journey must “focus on what your customers expect of their experience and modify your touchpoints and processes accordingly,” Krissy said.

THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY IS A MACRO/MICRO CONCEPT

A MAP IS IMPORTANT FOR ANY JOURNEY

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Seeking to shed some light on the sometimes shadowy subject of the customer journey, NICE Systems called together three accomplished practitioners of the customer experience for a frank roundtable discussion about the paths customers travel in their interactions with service providers.

Based on their spirited conversation, here are the five take-aways companies need to know about the customer journey.

Esteban Kolsky, founder of thinkJar

Brian Vellmure, principal at Innovantage

Krissy Espindola, director of Knowledge Management and Social Customer Support for T-Mobile USA served as panelists

Adit Moskovitch of NICE Systems moderated the discussion

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KEEP IT EASY AND CONSISTENT

In building an infrastructure over which the customer journey will play out, Krissy said, it’s important to minimize customer effort. Adit noted that NICE’s own research (NICE Customer Experience Survey, 2013) showed that customers want to expend as little effort as possible during service interactions. Ninety-six percent of customers reward low effort with greater loyalty. Additionally, in a survey conducted by Forrester, nearly 80% of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good customer service (“Demand For Effortless Service Must Influence Your Customer Strategy,” Forrester Research, Inc., June 10, 2014). Service organizations would do well to understand what’s happening with customers along their journey and optimize in a way that makes it seamless for them, Krissy concurred.

Plus, Krissy added, at every touchpoint, the experience should be consistent. “Organizations must understand the holistic customer journey—from marketing to customer service to retention, and make a concerted effort across departments to be able to provide an experience that is similar, no matter what channel an interaction occurs on.”

Adit agreed: “The customer experience should be seamless and continuous, consistent and cohesive for customers. They should not be exposed to the ‘noise’ that’s created by organizational silos, broken processes and other service clutter.”

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When mapping or seeking to optimize the customer journey, Krissy said, “the voice of the customer is probably the most important thing for any organization to look at.” That voice, she said, can help companies to understand “what customers are saying about your brand and use it to inform decisions about marketing, servicing and channels, and take meaningful action” to shape the customer experience. But, Krissy pointed out, there are a variety of ways to “hear” the voice of the customer—not just formal surveys. “You don’t always have to be pinging your customers, asking for their feedback,” she said.

However, Brian sounded a note of caution about the voice of the customer as expressed on social channels: research shows that people are most likely to share either the positive or the negative on social media. But as Esteban pointed out, it’s not only about what customers say on digital networks, but also what they do online—or digital behavioral data. If your infrastructure is capable of gathering and aggregating digital data in sufficient volume, you will find, he said, the middle between the extremes, or “the truth about what customers care about.” It is this broader, Big Data-driven interpretation of the voice of the customer that’s most relevant to understanding the customer journey today.

Social media, including Facebook, Twitter and even Google, are excellent sources of contextual information and feedback. Esteban pointed out that, when seeking resolution to a problem, most customers start their journey on Google. Our panelists also cited high-profile success stories of leading companies using online communities (a relatively new social channel for companies to explore) to engage customers in the journey of other customers. Clearly, when analyzing the journey, social networks need to be considered as another feedback—and service—channel.

FEEDBACK COMES IN MANY FORMS

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FLEXIBILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL

However, as Esteban pointed out, “channels are inherently inconsistent.” Plus, customers don’t take the same path, and they don’t think the same as companies do. And Brian brought up the specter of obsolescence. He warned against the danger of building an infrastructure to provide consistency across channels when, in five years, the entire model of how we serve customers, including the kinds of questions they ask and how they ask them, is likely to change. To him, the ability to understand and respond to the context of interactions—not providing consistency—is critical.

Adit concurred: “As service providers, we can expect (and certainly create) an experience that’s consistent. But we can’t expect the process of the journey—that is, the actual steps each customer takes—to be. A customer should always experience her journey as a seamless and cohesive experience, but behind the scenes, our technology has to be flexible enough to follow and support whatever path her journey takes. It’s service consistency and process adaptability we should strive for.”

According to Esteban, the best solution is to “build an infrastructure that enables customers to get what they want.” Instead of rigid systems and corporate bureaucracies, Esteban advocated building a nimble system that supports the individual journeys customers take. This kind of flexibility may require companies to look at service in new and different ways, he said.

Continuing old bureaucracies and legacy ways of doing business may hamper the natural flow of the customer journey, he said, which may be much more random than corporate structures can comfortably accommodate. The customer journey is not about “organizations needing to justify their own existence,” Esteban said. “You have to find the balance between trying to do what’s right for the customer and what’s necessary for the organization,” he said.

“The journey is organic and reflects what happens in the customer’s world,” Adit agreed. “By analyzing the journey across all touchpoints,” she said, “we can discover pain points for our customers—things like bottlenecks, channel deflection, self-service disconnects and so on. Understanding the customer journey should inform the design of customer-facing touchpoints, processes and procedures, not the other way around!”

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A Customer Strategist who helps organizations succeed with initiatives across marketing, sales, customer service, contact centers and more. He is a researcher, speaker, and consultant who deeply studies the issues and trends in this space to provide the best thinking and

practical advice.

Helps B2B and B2C organizations across a variety of industries and sizes accelerate growth through customer focused transformation initiatives. He is an accomplished business leader, management consultant, keynote speaker, and an award winning syndicated blogger.

Digital service and collaboration lead for Ernst and Youngs’ emerging technology and cloud advisory practice, and former Director of Knowledge Management and Social Customer Support at T-Mobile USA.

Director of Solution Marketing, NICE Voice of the Customer. Adit Moskovitch has over 10 years of experience in the worldwide customer service industry, gaining insights into the issues that brands face daily and leveraging technology based solutions to help them differentiate their brand based on CX excellence.

About the participants:

Esteban Kolsky

Brian Vellmure

Krissy Espindola

Adit Moskovitch

SUMMING IT UP

The customer journey is a multi-faceted array of interactions and exchanges, online and offline, direct (to/with the company) and indirect (to friends or followers on social media or peers in online communities). Our panelists agreed that it’s important for service organizations to visualize, map, and (therefore) understand and optimize the customer journey, and to cast a wide net for voice of the customer feedback to support that the process. As you work to make the journey seamless and consistent, you also must maintain flexibility to support customers’ individual journeys, in all their unique contexts. That might mean letting go of comfortable legacy process that may hinder you in supporting new journey paths. Be open, be nimble and remember that the journey is constantly evolving.

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DATE 9/2014 • WP-35123 • CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT ARE COPYRIGHT © 2014.

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