Align Around Experience to Transform Accountability

Alignment Around Experience (competency 2) is not merely about doing touchpoint mapping. It’s a competency to transform accountability and the language of leaders.

And here I insert a little rant and a plea:

Please don’t make mapping a shiny object that you take on because everyone is doing it. For this work to be successful, it must connect to leadership language and accountability and communication.

When I start this work with clients I always ask, “Have you done any journey mapping?” Often it has been done exhaustively. Every process of every moment of truth has been mapped and they are sitting in binders on somebody’s shelf. There are many versions of journey maps done by well-intended and enthusiastic teams. But again, they haven’t changed behavior or focus or accountability.

Done for the right reasons, and in a manageable way, having a customer journey (even a simple one) connects the silos in accountability to customer experiences, and embeds an aptitude for caring about the ‘why’?

This framework provides rigor to:

• step through (and understand) the lives of customers
• pick the places of focus that will have the most impact

The initial phase of doing a journey map that we have found to be the most beneficial is getting alignment on the number of customer journeys you may have to tackle over time. For example, you may have end customers, contractors, and suppliers. Over time, they all may have journey maps. I suggest you pick just one journey to focus on to learn a repeatable way for doing this that works for your company.

Your customer journey framework should be used regularly to provide leaders with consistency in determining organizational needs and priorities necessary for customer driven growth. Over time, it should be accepted as a united business decision blueprint that can be understood and adapted throughout all levels of the organization.