The Customer Journey Map Starts with Customers

The customer journey map offers a new starting point for the CX work of the organization. Instead of starting with the silos, you are starting with your customers’ lives.

In its simplest form, when used with consistency, the customer journey map provides rigor to understand the priorities in customers’ lives.

Companies that transform how they grow do so because they think about the customers at the end of their decisions. Their intent is to “earn the right” to grow by improving their customers’ lives.

Give Leaders a Framework to Drive Accountability

By  looking comprehensively at what the company delivers stage by stage, the customer journey map enables leadership to make choices. They have a framework to use in how they talk about the business and how they drive accountability.

The work moves away from driving improvement on all the touchpoints to focusing on the specific ones that matter most in the lives of customers.

Every leadership team I have worked with and coached have asked for language in a simple manner to help them motivate people around customer-driven growth. The customer journey map is the tool that provides it.

Shift from Survey Score to the Impact on the Customer’s Life

The customer journey map begins the shift from focusing only on the survey score to focusing on how the customer’s life was helped (or hindered) by the experience you delivered.

The story starts with customer asset growth (competency 1):

‘As a result of the experience we delivered to our customers in the last month / quarter / or year, here is the growth or loss of our customer asset:…’

And it continues with aligning around experience (competency 2): ‘

‘Now we will traverse across the journey stages to diagnose where we helped or hindered growth…’

Conclusion

The customer journey map provides a framework that aligns the organization around experience. Leaders become consistent and united in how they use the framework, which enables them to focus and prioritize the work of the organization.

This includes:

• optimizing investments
• managing resources most effectively
• improving experiences that impact customer asset growth

Read More:
Customer Math is the First Step in Customer Experience Reliability
Focus on Customer Life Improvement in Your Customer Experience Stages
CX Competency 2: Align Around Experience