How Two Leaders Use Customer Journey Mapping As a Tool to Unite Leadership and Address Customer Retention Concerns

In my recent vlog, Jeanne’s Daily Dose…Of Reality, I discuss the importance of customer journey mapping and how you can use it to break down silos and unite your leadership team. In today’s episode, we’re continuing the conversation around journey mapping by revisiting two conversations I’ve had with previous guests on the show.

First, we’ll hear from Kathy Tobiasen, the Vice President of Customer Experience at The Nature’s Bounty Company. Kathy has mapped three different journeys to better understand how customer onboarding, win-back strategies, and loyalty programs impact the business and the customer’s journey. Next, you’ll hear from Sami Nuwar, the VP of CX Transformation at American Bath Group, who shares how they use the journey map as a tool to measure success and unite leadership.

Develop a Customer Health Dashboard to Help You Focus Your Journey Map Needs

In my conversation with Kathy Tobiasen, who is responsible for creating great end-to-end experiences for customers, Kathy explains that at The Nature’s Bounty, customer experience was more of a reactive process than something that was deliberate. There was a lot of work being done in silos and Kathy needed to figure out how to align the experience across the functional groups.

When first starting her work, similar to all of the other leaders I’ve spoken to on the podcast, Kathy spent a lot of time listening to customers and her frontline staff. One of the first things she did after gathering feedback from customers and the frontline was to look at how The Nature’s Bounty could focus on customer growth. By trying to understand what was happening with customer growth, they needed to know was it going up, going down? Where were they losing customers? Where were they gaining customers? This focus led them to create a customer health dashboard that helped them look at customer behavior trends from a very high level. In my first book, Chief Customer Officer, I explain how a customer dashboard can be used internally as a tool to monitor trends, feedback, and issues.

Don’t Be Afraid to Create Multiple Journey Maps to Address Different Business Concerns

The dashboard helped them see some of the larger problems they were having, which showed Kathy and her team that they needed to improve in the following areas: customer onboarding and retention, an apology/win-back strategy, and a loyalty program. In terms of retention, they’re using a customer journey map to improve the customer onboarding journey so that new customers face less challenges when purchasing from The Nature’s Bounty.

An apology/win-back journey allows the team to look more deeply into The Nature’s Bounty inventory and supply chain. Since their customers rely on the vitamin and supplements to help keep them healthy, they lose trust when these products are not available. Not having a product is a sure way for your customers to start looking elsewhere to find what they need, thereby deeming you less dependable. Creating a win-back journey allowed Kathy and her team to connect the dots between something that happens in the business that directly affects customer loss.

Journey mapping also helped Kathy and her team develop a loyalty program for the devoted customers. Kathy now has enough data on customers to recognize how many times they’ve purchased a specific product, how satisfied these customers are, and uses the data to continuously improve the way they learn and know their customers. For Kathy’s team, journey mapping was an important tool that allowed them to translate the customer experience into the language of the business. By using and gathering consumer data, they’re able to manage customers as assets and collaborate across the organization with the customer in mind.

Journey mapping is an important way to translate the customer experience into the language of the business. -Kathy Tobiasen, VP of CX @NaturesBounty Share on X

Use the Journey Map to Unite Leaders and Stakeholders

Sami Nuwar has used journey mapping at American Bath Group to unite the C-suite around accountability across the customer journey. The journey map was used as a guide to help leaders, and the frontline understand how to act and respond to customer behaviors according to each stage in the chart.

The journey map was a tool that allowed employees to visualize customer interaction points, while also learning how the business operates. It served as an overview of the customer’s overall interaction with the company from beginning to end. Sami also used the map as a tool with business stakeholders, so they could have a better understanding of how the business flows from a customers’ point of view. This was something ABG never did before. By walking stakeholders through the journey map, ABG was able to use the map as a way to unite the organization under one culture.

Click here to check out my full interview with Kathy Tobiasen.

The Journey Map Can Be Used as a Tool for Sharing Results

As the customer journey map is used to help unite leaders and get folks to understand critical customer touchpoints, it has also been used as a tool to share results. Sami mentions something that I’ve previously discussed in my podcast with senior CX leader, Bob Buiaroski, — share customer feedback and results in a human way without a bunch of presentation slides. So, though Sami looked at charts and dials to get the actual data of how the CX work was affecting customers, he presented his results by creating a condensed version of the journey map with all of the customer feedback baked into it.

As the human duct tape of his organization, after reporting on customer feedback, Sami began hosting internal monthly meetings with people from different departments to facilitate improvements amongst the teams that ties back to how it directly affects points in the journey map.

Through these meetings, Sami and his teammates decided it would be helpful to create inter-team commitments. They created internal objectives that gave each team the ability to hold each other accountable in solving the root cause of a customer problem. By working with ABG’s various departments, he was able to create multiple initiatives with his team that was tied to a single purpose, customer improvement, and customer-driven growth.

When you work with your organization's various departments to break through silos, create initiatives with the teams that are tied to a single purpose, customer improvement, and customer-driven growth. Sami Nuwar, @AmericanBath Share on X

Click here to check out my full interview with Sami Nuwar.

Both Sami and Kathy have found customer journey mapping to be extremely valuable tools while transforming customer experience within their organizations, ultimately, affecting the overall culture, and employee approach to achieving customer-driven growth. If you haven’t already checked out my latest vlog post about customer journey mapping, click here to hear my thoughts on it, and take a look at the worksheet I’ve developed for you to use internally, so you can work on changing the lives of your customers.

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This partnership ensures that I can continue these shows that you’ve shared such positive feedback on.  Thanks so much to Customervillle! Enjoy the show!