Keep it simple – touchpoint mapping

There are many approaches to doing touchpoint mapping

My recommendation is always to keep it simple. One client told me they had “Visio blindness” from the hundreds of hours spent mapping every customer process. That’s not going to get you traction and prove the work.

This is what will get you traction: Map the stages and get to the set of initial priority touchoints along the customer journey.

We have great success by first meeting with cross-silo groups of employees to engage them in the one company responsibility to customer experience. As you know, this work sometimes makes people uneasy. They feel we are standing in judgment of their hard work. This type of session brings all the silo workers together to establish an understanding that they are all working hard – but they are all working hard separately. It also level sets on the stages of the experience, customer emotions. If done well, it ends with a group of energized people – many whom you’ll want to tap when customer issues fall into their part of the experience.

In this first session, have employees map a draft of all the touchpoints and identify what they think are the priorities. And then validate the map with customers in a co-creation session where customers come up with new touchpoints as well as identify the priority touchpoints.

Building a Roadmap

Out of these sessions, do not start to map touchpoints. The biggest outcome should simply be a roadmap that states by stage:

• touchpoints
• emerging priorities from customers’ standpoint

Later as you establish focus with your leadership team, deeper mapping should occur as you are trying to solve a particular customer problem or innovate new experiences. But please don’t map it all out at this initial stage.