This guide presents 5 proven strategies that you can start integrating into your operations today. These strategies are designed to offer immediate benefits and pave the way for a more satisfied and engaged customer base. From customer journey mapping to effective communication methods, these strategies are meant to optimize every touchpoint. After all, customer loyalty isn’t just about meeting expectations—it’s about exceeding them.

Ready to see how a few strategic adjustments can lead to significant improvements in both customer satisfaction and business success? Let’s dive in.

Understanding customer experience

Importance of customer experience

Customer experience has become a critical differentiator in today’s crowded marketplace. When you prioritize it, you build a foundation of trust and loyalty that can lead to repeat business and glowing referrals. Studies have shown that customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Just think about companies like Amazon or Apple, whose focus on seamless, positive customer experiences has set them apart from competitors.

Moreover, strong customer experience strategies helps reduce churn. Satisfied customers are far less likely to switch to competitors. In fact, by focusing on customer satisfaction, you’re not just improving your brand’s reputation—you’re also investing in long-term growth.

If you haven’t already, now’s the time to evaluate your approach to customer experience. How do your current efforts measure up?

Impact on business growth

The link between customer experience and business growth is undeniable. Research consistently shows that businesses that prioritize customer experience see higher revenue and market share. Why? Happy customers are loyal customers—and loyal customers are your best marketers.

Consider Zappos, an online shoe retailer known for its exceptional customer service. By focusing on customer satisfaction and building strong relationships, Zappos was able to foster a community of brand advocates. Word-of-mouth recommendations and positive reviews led to significant organic growth, all stemming from an unwavering commitment to customer experience.

By identifying pain points in the customer journey, businesses like Zappos streamline their processes, cutting costs while enhancing satisfaction. Investing in customer experience strategies isn’t just about meeting customer needs; it’s about positioning your company for long-term success in a rapidly evolving market.

Proven customer experience strategies

1. Start customer journey mapping

Have you ever sat down with your team to map out the customer journey? If not, you’re missing a key opportunity to improve satisfaction at every stage.

Start by identifying the key stages in your customer’s journey, from the first interaction to post-purchase follow-up. Visual collaboration tools like Custellence can make even the most complex customer journeys easy to understand and optimize.

One company that used journey mapping effectively is IKEA. By studying customer interactions and pain points in their stores, IKEA was able to redesign key touchpoints, like the store layout and checkout process, resulting in a smoother shopping experience and happier customers.

Regularly revisiting and updating your customer journey map ensures you’re aligned with current customer expectations. It’s a living document that evolves as your business grows, enabling you to identify actionable insights and implement them for better results.

2. Streamline communication channels

In today’s digital world, customers expect seamless communication, no matter the platform. Are your channels integrated and accessible enough to meet their needs?

One standout example is Sephora, the global cosmetics retailer, which excels in multichannel communication. Whether customers interact via in-store visits, online chat, or social media, they experience seamless communication and consistent messaging. This not only improves satisfaction but also fosters a sense of trust and loyalty.

By implementing a multichannel customer experience strategy, you allow customers to engage with your brand on their terms. Regularly review your communication processes, invest in CRM systems, and make sure your team is trained to deliver clear and empathetic responses. The result? Stronger relationships and a more satisfied customer base.

3. Personalize customer interactions

Customers appreciate personalization—and there’s plenty of data to prove it. But it’s not just about addressing someone by their first name in an email. Real personalization means understanding your customers’ preferences, behaviors, and needs, and then tailoring interactions accordingly.

Take Spotify, for example. Its personalized playlists, tailored to individual listening habits, have become a cornerstone of its user experience. Spotify uses data and AI to create a unique experience for each user, leading to higher engagement and brand loyalty. You don’t need to be a tech giant like Spotify to leverage personalization. Even small gestures—like acknowledging a customer’s previous purchases or preferences—can make a huge difference.

By making personalization a priority, you’ll show customers that you value them as individuals, not just transactions.

4. Foster a customer-centric culture

It’s one thing to talk about customer experience, but another to live it through your company culture. Does your team embody customer-centric values? A great example of a company that successfully implemented this is Nordstrom, which has long been praised for its customer-first approach.

Start by integrating customer experience strategies into your mission, vision, and core values. Ensure every employee, from front-line staff to executives, understands how their role impacts the customer experience. Offer regular training and recognize employees who exemplify customer-focused behaviors and use customer journey maps to bridge the gap between the customer and every part of your organization. With journey mapping, customer centricity transforms from an abstract idea into a visible, tangible reality.

5. Measure and improve customer satisfaction

One of the most important customer experience strategies is measuring the result—You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Start by implementing feedback tools, such as surveys, net promoter scores (NPS), or customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), to gauge how well you’re meeting customer needs.

One brand that continually measures and improves its customer experience is Slack. The company uses real-time feedback from users to fine-tune its platform and address issues immediately, ensuring the product remains aligned with user needs.

Don’t just collect feedback—act on it. Regularly analyze data to identify trends and areas of improvement. Showing customers that you listen and respond to their concerns reinforces trust and strengthens your relationship with them.

Conclusion

Incorporating customer experience strategies into your business can yield immediate improvements and long-term benefits. Each small step you take in simplifying the customer journey, streamlining communication, personalizing interactions, fostering a customer-centric culture, and measuring satisfaction will create a ripple effect that strengthens customer loyalty and fuels sustainable growth.

Now is the perfect time to start implementing these strategies. By focusing on the customer experience, you’re not just improving your current operations—you’re laying the foundation for future success.

So, why wait? Begin applying these customer experience strategies today and watch how they improve your customer relationships and business growth.

By Tove Lundell

The post 5 Proven customer experience strategies to boost your business growth appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

Every touchpoint a customer has during their journey should be consistent and feel like part of a seamless whole. Systematically working to deliver the right customer experience at every touchpoint is the essence of CXM.

Another way to define customer experience is the impression left on your customers, i.e., how they feel and think about your organization or brand at all stages of their journey. Every touchpoint contributes to the customer experience, and these can occur in various parts of the organization. Thus, CX work involves a lot of continuous organizational change.

Building a customer-centric organization often requires a significant shift in how the company thinks and acts. CXM isn’t just about delivering good customer service or improving the user experience on digital platforms. It often involves major changes in decision-making processes and culture.

Let us help you make CX happen – Are your struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help! Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noice and get you back on track.

Six common strategic challenges in CX

A hallmark of a customer-centric organization is making decisions based on customer insights, focusing on meeting customers’ needs and wishes. However, many organizations face strategic challenges such as:

Short-term focus

Working on the customer experience takes time, and you might even need to fail a few times to get it right. The time and resources required depend on the scope of changes needed, but it’s common to give up when results don’t appear as quickly as desired.

Low willingness to invest

Many organizations view CX work as a cost and a necessary evil. There can be a reluctance to invest in CX without a very clear return on investment, which can be hard to demonstrate directly.

Choosing which metrics to measure and follow up

Some organizations place too much faith in metrics, following too many, which makes it hard for employees to get an overview. But it can also be that the organization follows the wrong metrics, or that data for these metrics is collected incorrectly.

Lack of a declared strategy for the customer experience to be delivered

More and more organizations recognize the value of a declared CX strategy. This strategy should align with the overall business strategy. Goals to be known and actionable by the departments delivering the customer experience (usually, all departments in an organization).

Unclear mandates

It’s important to clarify ownership of all touchpoints in the customer journey. This is to ensure all parts of the organization are aligned toward the same goals.

Organizational silos

Silos occur when different departments or teams within an organization work in isolation from each other, lacking collaboration or communication. Silo mentality can lead to inefficiency, poor coordination, overlapping work, poor communication, and failed projects. There’s no room for silo thinking in CX work, as the key is to collaborate across organizational boundaries. Customers don’t care about internal organization but expect the same experience regardless of which channel or person they interact with.

Breaking down silos, for example, by promoting a better culture of collaboration and information sharing between departments, can lead to cost savings. When information and knowledge flow freely between departments, it becomes easier to solve problems and optimize processes, which can reduce unnecessary costs.

A key to reducing barriers between departments is clarifying ownership of all touchpoints in the customer journey. One purpose of working with customer journey maps is to create a shared internal understanding of the customer’s reality. This is to facilitate work on a holistic experience that involves multiple parts of the organization. A clear customer journey map makes it easier to address poor customer experiences, that require collaboration between departments and enables collaboration toward common goals with a clear vision.

Four creative ways to get management on board towards a customer-centric organization:

To overcome these challenges, it’s necessary to involve management effectively. When organizations undergo changes, it’s often easy to identify managers and employees who are reluctant to change – they obstruct, criticize, and are simply difficult to manage. A major challenge arises when resistance comes from management, as having management on board is a critical success factor in change work. One of the biggest mistakes in CX work is starting the journey without involving corporate management. Without management’s support, you might need to request their time and resources, so it’s crucial to get management to drive CX change and act as role models. Here are some concrete tips to help achieve this:

CX Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a useful tool for summarizing messages in a short and compelling way. To create a compelling elevator pitch, focus on the key message and develop a summary tailored to leaders’ interests and needs.

Elevator Pitches – Two Examples:

It’s significantly cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. By investing in the customer experience, we can reduce costs for customer service and complaints while increasing sales through satisfied, returning customers.

By focusing on the customer experience, we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors and create a positively charged brand that will make us more attractive to potential customers.

Ask managers to “walk in the customer’s shoes”

To increase understanding of the current customer experience, management can be invited to go on a journey where they experience what the customer goes through. The idea is to let them see the friction and problems customers face, which gives them insight into how their decisions and actions affect CX work. This can raise awareness of the importance of investing in CX and making improvements within the organization.

Invite management to participate in CX workshops

To engage management in CX, they can be invited to workshops with other participants, where the purpose might be to map the customer journey or create a persona.

Customer-centric organisation storytelling

Tell compelling stories about customers’ experiences and how changes in CX have made a real difference in their lives. Management can relate better to stories than to dry numbers and graphs.

In conclusion, as we strive to shape a customer-centric organization, CX leaders face a range of challenges. It’s not uncommon for them to struggle to get their issues and initiatives the attention they deserve in the boardroom. Paradoxically, the customer’s voice is often weak in many organizations, despite being central to our work.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that creating value for the customer is the primary reason organizations exist. Organizations are born from the need to meet customers’ desires, solve their problems, and deliver products or services that improve their lives. This fundamental purpose is often forgotten in the complex world of business strategies and financial goals.

All articles in the series

Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits.

She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change.

Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin

By Helén Rigamonti 

The post Silo-smashing saves money for a customer-centric organization appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

It’s a common belief that more data directly leads to smarter decisions and better customer experiences. However, the truth is, we often already have a good idea of what’s souring the customer experience. We don’t need to ask if a missed delivery was disappointing or if a frustrating call to customer service felt positive. These moments are clear signs of where our customer experience might be falling short. Instead of constantly seeking more data, the emphasis should be on acting on the valuable insights we already hold to improve the business CX ROI.

Let us help you make CX happen – Are your struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help! Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noice and get you back on track.

CX ROI –Proving the worth of CX investments

When you’re looking to boost customer experience, it’s critical to show the financial benefits expected from these investments to the internal decision makers. For example, if we aim to enhance our website’s user experience, we’ll likely need to invest in UX resources or web development. It’s important to demonstrate the potential financial return from these investments. Measuring return on investment (ROI) allows companies to determine whether their investments are paying off or if there might be better ways to allocate resources. A strong CX ROI indicates a profitable investment, while a weak CX ROI suggests the investment might not be cost-effective.

In CX, it’s essential not just to look at the returns but also any potential cost savings. For instance, an enhanced customer experience could lead to fewer complaints, reducing customer service costs. By comparing cost savings before and after a CX investment, we gain insights into how the investment has impacted the company’s bottom line. However, quantifying the exact impact of CX investments on sales poses a challenge, as it’s difficult to separate this impact from other factors like marketing, pricing, and product development.

Five low-hanging fruit to improve your CX ROI

Here are a few accessible examples where the investment return is clear and relatively straightforward:

Cutting customer service costs

By improving the customer experience, companies can reduce the influx of customer service inquiries. This leads to savings on staffing and support, showcasing a rapid CX ROI.

Boosting conversion rates

Enhancing the digital experience can lead to a higher conversion rate from visitors to paying customers. This direct boost in sales contributes to a positive ROI.

Reducing churn

CX efforts aimed at keeping customers from leaving can minimize revenue loss. Keeping customers around means continued revenue, enhancing ROI.

Lowering the cost of handling complaints

A focused approach to CX can decrease the number of complaints and the costs to manage them. This leads to better profitability and a positive ROI.

Minimizing return rates

Improving product information and customer feedback can reduce return rates and associated costs. This results in a positive CX ROI through reduced expenses.

CX ROI summary

In demonstrating the business value of CX, a balanced and focused approach is key, targeting areas with significant return potential. It’s about cutting back on unnecessary expenses and boosting income through smart, targeted changes that yield quick returns. Adopting a strategy that minimizes costs and maximizes returns through an insight-driven CX approach is a wise business move. By identifying and leveraging easily attainable opportunities, companies can quickly see improvements, enhancing customer experiences while making their operations more efficient.

All articles in the series

Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits.

She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change.

Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin

By Helén Rigamonti 

The post Unlock CX ROI: 5 easy wins appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

Financial metrics revolve around the company’s financial health, including sales, profit margins, costs, and similar factors. These metrics help companies evaluate their economic performance and identify areas for improvement. Non-financial metrics focus on other aspects of the organization, such as customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and product quality. We can’t measure these metrics in monetary terms, but they are still crucial for assessing how the organization is performing. Non-financial metrics are often assumed to impact the future development of financial metrics. For example, decreased customer satisfaction leads to reduced revenue per customer.

Let us help you make CX happen – Are your struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help! Our Free CX Discovery Session with Helén Rigamonti will guide you through the noice and get you back on track.

Six CX financial metrics

To demonstrate the impact of CX, it is essential to be clear about which customer experience initiatives can influence CX financial metrics. In other words, linking customer experience work to the business is crucial. Here are some examples of financial metrics that can indicate a positive customer experience:

Revenue per customer: 

If customers are satisfied with the product or service, they are more likely to continue using it, purchase more products, or upgrade to more expensive options.

Reduced complaint costs: 

If customers are satisfied with the product, it is less likely that problems or errors will occur, leading to complaints, and this can result in reduced costs for handling complaints and thus increase the company’s profitability.

Increased sales: 

Satisfied customers can spread positive reviews about the company to other potential customers, improving sales and thus expanding the company’s revenue.

Increased repeat sales: 

If customers are satisfied with the product or service, they are more likely to return and make more purchases, which can boost the company’s repeat sales and thus contribute to its profitability.

Fewer lost customers: 

If customers are satisfied with the product, they are less likely to switch to another product or terminate their service, which can reduce the number of lost customers and thus increase revenue and company profitability.

Reduced customer service costs: 

A well-designed product that is easy to navigate enhances the customer experience and minimizes the need for user support issues. The reduced costs for handling customer service issues will increase the company’s profitability.

CX financial metrics example:

A company can lower its customer service costs by mapping the customer journey and identifying issues through a fictional global retail company called “GlobalMart.”

GlobalMart has an extensive presence worldwide, with stores in many different countries. The company has a centralized marketing department responsible for global campaigns and customer offers.

GlobalMart began noticing an increase in complaints and a decrease in customer satisfaction locally. It then initiated a customer insight effort to identify the root cause, which consisted of a selection of customer and employee interviews, AI analysis of customer service issues, and customer feedback. Through a clear visualization of the customer journey, GlobalMart identified a pattern of confusion and frustration regarding the global mailings. This was a clear indication that there was an obstacle in the customer journey

GlobalMart used customer journey-based insights to develop an action plan to halve the “campaign issue” type in their global customer service. Factors such as the average cost per customer service issue and the number of problems avoided through improvements were included to estimate the savings.

GlobalMart had previously handled 10,000 unnecessary customer service issues per month due to confusion about global campaigns, with an average cost of $10 per issue (including personnel, infrastructure, and other related expenses). By reducing these issues by 50%, the company would make an annual saving of $600,000, excluding other economic benefits from improved customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty.

10,000 issues/month x 50% x $10/issue = $50,000/month

Four risks with common non-financial metrics: Customer surveys with questionnaires

Most CX organizations devote significant resources to tracking various metrics from customer surveys in the form of questionnaires. One of the biggest challenges with customer surveys is ensuring an adequate response rate. The risk of a low response rate is that the result may differ from customers’ actual opinions, leading to incorrect decisions.

These decisions can, at worst, worsen the customer experience, but above all, they can lead to incorrect resource prioritization. There are also other risks associated with using customer surveys as the sole method for measuring customer experience:

Selection bias

Can occur when the company does not receive feedback from all its customers but only from a specific group, for example, if the survey is only sent to a specific customer group or if a particular channel is used to send out the survey. It can also happen that only customers with a strong opinion about the company respond to the study. To avoid selection bias, using different channels to send out surveys and ensuring that the survey reaches the right customers are essential.

Question bias

Can occur when the questions in the survey are formulated in a way that leads to a particular answer. For example, questions like “Did you like our product?” or “Was our support good?” can lead to a positive response because they are formulated in such a way that the respondent feels pressured to respond positively. To avoid question bias, it is vital to compose the questions neutrally.

Response bias

Can occur when customers respond to the survey in a way that does not reflect their actual opinion or behavior. This can happen if customers want to maintain the company’s reputation and if they want to give positive feedback for various reasons. So-called social desirability is a common form of response bias. Respondents are more likely to respond in a way they believe the survey requires rather than honestly answering it. This may be because respondents want to appear in a positive light or avoid being labeled as unreliable, controversial, or inconsistent.

Over-reliance on results

Is another problem with customer surveys. Companies may make decisions based on survey results without considering other factors affecting the customer experience. It is important to remember that customer surveys only provide part of the picture and that other factors, such as customer behavior and customer relationship quality, are also essential to consider.

Summary

Customer Experience Management extends beyond simple measurement of customer satisfaction. Effective communication with those responsible for finance requires linking CX initiatives to actual financial results. This means understanding and using both financial and non-financial metrics.

In this article, we have explored these metrics and highlighted the risks of relying solely on customer surveys to assess customer experience. Customer surveys can provide valuable insights, but they only sometimes capture the complete picture, which can lead to incorrect conclusions and missed opportunities for improvement.

All articles in the series

Helén Rigamonti has more than 25 years of experience as an executive manager. She has led several major projects aimed at improving CX in various organizations, including B2B, B2C, and non-profits.

She combines her expertise in organizational development with her current roles as an author, interim manager, educator, and speaker to enhance customer experience and lead customer-centric change.

Visit her website at rigamonti.se, or linkedin

By Helén Rigamonti 

The post Six CX financial metrics appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

Sentences like “The customer at the center”, “We love our customers”, and “We are nothing without our customers” write themselves. It goes without saying that no company can exist without a customer at the other end. We all depend on offering something that the customer wants, pays for, and is willing to recommend to others.

“We need to spend the money on other things right now. The customers have to wait.”

If you run CX and customer-centricity in your organization, you may currently be scratching your head over a tighter budget or the priorities being made. Priorities that you know will put the business-critical customer experience at risk. You may also be scratching your head over how to bring the topic to the table. For you, I have collected some points to bring to your next management or board meeting.

Why is CX important right now:

Customers review their costs and question what was previously routine.

Accounts, agreements, subscriptions, and direct debits are renegotiated or terminated. What do we need to prioritize and offer in order to prevent increasing churn and a declining customer base?

Industries that were previously of low interest suddenly become highly topical.

How can you be relevant in rapid change? (I’m probably not the only one having conversations about energy suppliers and prices at dinner parties lately.)

A good customer experience can justify higher prices.

How can you justify increased overheads and price levels if the customer experience is not up to par?

Stop doing!

Which offers, products and services incur costs without creating customer value? What can you stop doing?

Why is CX important for business results?

It is a common misconception that good customer experiences need large investments. Rather, it is the bad customer experiences that cost money. Both in the forms of reduced demand and the internal processes required to help the situation. Read more about CX ROI here.

One thing we all know for sure is that eventually the dark economic clouds will dissipate. Whether or not your company will be a winner can be decided by the priorities that are made now.

Another certainty is that the customer relationship is like any relationship – the best way to destroy it is by not prioritizing it.

Let us help you make CX happen – Are your struggling with CX initiatives? We’re here to help! Our Free CX Discovery Session with Ulrika Ewerman will guide you through the noice and get you back on track.

Ulrika Ewerman is an Independent CX (Customer Experience) Advisor and expert in CX Management and CX Strategy Execution. Over the past 20 years, she’s been working globally, creating impact through CX Methodology, Management, Organization, and Execution. She holds an MFA in Design and has headed senior management roles at Veryday, McKinsey, and Volvo Car Mobility.

Today she supports organizations and brands to unlock the CX potential to become truly customer-centric, with a human-centered, possibility-driven, and iterative approach. Find more about Ulrika on her LinkedIn profile.

By Ulrika Ewerman 

The post Why is CX important for business success appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

What are customer journey maps and Service Blueprints? 

A customer journey map uses an external focus on the customer perspective. This should answer the question: How can we deliver value to the customer? 

The foundation of the map is to understand the customer’s situation or activities going through the offer, service, or experience. It can also include the touchpoints that a customer has with the organization. Mapping out their journey to help highlight and expose pain points. The first step in a traditional service blueprint is to map out the customer journey or perspective in the top lanes.

The service blueprint uses an internal view of the processes of an organization. Asking the question: What are we doing to deliver the service?

Anything that has to do with answering that question relates to the service blueprints. The lanes below the customer journey are the true heart of the service blueprint. They visualize the various kinds of support systems, employee activities, and actions behind the lines of visibility of the customers to deliver the experience.

Want to learn more about the differences between customer journey maps and service blueprints? We recommend reading this excellent article by Megan Erin Miller from Practical Service Design

Practical Service Design

Other common map types

What about other map types? There are many more different types of journey maps that you can come across and that you may find useful. Here is a list of 3 of the most common journey maps.

What is a user map

Customer journey maps become user maps when the individuals or groups whose journey you’re mapping, are not customers or have no monetary transactions. Examples of this are when projects are in a state of development. When the user whose journey you are mapping is a child. Particularly in the public sector, when mapping the journey of citizens or patients. The term User is better suited and more applicable than Customer. 

What is an experience map

Experience maps is the part of the customer journey that focuses on the customer experience and emotion. The intention of an experience map is to help the organization internally build empathy for the customer’s point of view. Directing attention to the touchpoints with negative experiences for the customer to find ways to improve their journey.

What is an employee journey map

An employee journey is similar to a customer journey, except that the focus is on the employee’s steps and activities within the organization. The idea behind employee journey maps is to help understand the employee experience because their experiences will affect the customers. It can be a powerful tool to map the employee’s journey below the customer’s journey to see both touchpoints as well as the activities that can indirectly affect the customers.

When to use each journey map type?

Knowing the different map types is only half the struggle, and knowing when to create and use these map types is the other half. Here is a little guide to remind you what the purpose is of each of the different journey maps and when to use them.

If you don’t want to start mapping from scratch, take a look at our free templates. You’ll find template examples for customer journey maps, service blueprints, experience maps and many others. All of our templates are versatile and applicable in more than one industry. They are also easily adjusted and tailored to your specific business an customer needs.

Are you curious about how to start mapping customer journeys, service blueprints, or user maps like a professional? Check out our step-by-step guide on how to create a journey map and get started today!

Customer journey mapping essentials masterclass

What’s the difference between customer journey, user journey, experience, employee journey maps, and service blueprints? And when should you do what? Watch the fourth lesson in the Masterclass, created by Custellence and The Service Design Show.

By Benny Farnworth

The post What’s the difference between customer journey maps, experience maps and service blueprints – When to use what? appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

I think you’ll agree when I say that most brands exist because there are customers that want, or need, what a brand has to offer. Maybe you’d also agree if I say that customer-centricity is becoming a trendy commodity. Brands are drowning in unprecedented amounts of feedback and data gathered to tell them about their existing customers’ behaviors, thoughts, and actions. Some brands have even begun to master the art of combining qualitative and quantitative data to truly benefit from CX and customer-centricity.

The customer journey used to live a somewhat quiet and somewhat peaceful life tucked away on a wall in a design-, UX-, or CX department. Now, in this growing and demanding landscape of customer-centricity, it is finding its way into the product, marketing, sales, and management teams. Customer journey mapping will soon be a prerequisite in any important workshop worth mentioning. And searching for people with “customer journey” in their title on LinkedIn will give you nearly a million hits. The future of the CX community has never looked better!

A masterfully executed customer journey is where you visualize all the business-critical insights around your customers. The customers you have, the customers you want to have, the pains and gains, aspirations, and needs that will unlock moments of interest.

A masterfully executed customer journey will tell you where you shine, where you have gaps in your offer or communication, and how to prioritize work. E.g., Shall we focus on maintenance in a broken payment flow or launch a new feature for cats? It will tell you how to connect the dots and be the guideline to prioritize the MVP* to get ahead of the competition.

*MVP, or Minimal Viable Product: a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback.

To summarize, all the amazing things about the customer journey I have just mentioned lead us to one common denominator; Business Benefits.

Why the vertical aspect of the customer journey is crucial

I could go on forever, listing the benefits of a masterfully executed, horizontally addressed customer journey, but I won’t (not in this post, anyway).

Instead, I would like to talk about how the customer journey can play the role of an enabler for organizational change. They can align an organization, on all levels, around complex strategic and critical decisions. They can also act as a springboard (or a battering ram, depending on the task) for making the prioritizations, eliminating risks, and choosing the right decisions fast.

The key here is to address the customer journey vertically.

But why vertically?

Because when your customer experiences your product or service, this is how you support and serve them.

E.g., When a customer is on-boarding for the first time to your service. They are dependent on all the touch points and support systems handling this specific action vertically. Customers don’t care about how you organize or how your product is supposed to be perceived further down their journey. You have to be relevant at the right moment to build loyalty and avoid churn.

Below I will exemplify how the customer journey can be the role of an enabler. Both for aligning and facilitating organizational change on all levels, helping with complex strategies, and critical decision-making.

How a tech start-up switched from working in silos to organizing around the customer journey map

Imagine that you are working at a solidly invested tech start-up. The product this tech start-up is building has the potential to solve a massive consumer challenge, and the date of the Beta* launch is approaching with frightful speed. 

*Beta: knowingly releasing an unfinished product with known bugs to users to identify its most critical bugs, like usability friction and poor performance, before releasing it in its finished version.

You have already started to invite and onboard paying customers into the Beta. At the last management meeting, the key investor sternly says that “failure is not an option”.

The offering is a hybrid of digital and physical consumer experiences, which requires high demand among partners, adding to the difficulties of this scenario. All teams are working around the clock to make this high-stakes Beta launch a big success. Product, tech, data, marketing, hardware, finance, communication, operations, and management are all running side by side. Stand-ups, big room plannings, all hands on deck- everything is centered around the coming launch, and the dependencies are extensive.

With 12 weeks until the Beta launch, the teams, management, and the investors collectively realized that this way of working was not working. Something had to change.

And so it happened that someone at the tech start-up came up with a brilliant idea. They suggest using Custellence to map the customer journey as the foundation for propelling.

The following steps were to tear down the silos and move towards customer-centricity.

Step 1. Establishing the Beta customer journey

This process started by co-creating a Beta customer journey. The co-creation process includes drawing every piece of information that could inform the mapping process from all key stakeholders. After a couple of rounds of iterations and refinements, the entire organization was ready to sign off on the Beta customer journey. This included the customer’s phases, activities, and emotional experience, on top of the *preferred customer experience. 

(*Preferred customer experience – What you want your customer to experience interacting with your offer in a specific situation.)

Having the Beta customer journey in place, the tech start-up was ready to move on to step 2.

Step 2. Creating vertical divides and dedicated coordinators

The customer journey was divided into six vertical pieces, with each piece representing the customer’s phases. In this specific example, the journey would have phases like Awareness, Becoming a customer, Using the product for the first time, Payment, etc.

Every individual divided vertical piece was then appointed one dedicated coordinator. This Beta-Team of dedicated coordinators was responsible for identifying gaps, raising concerns, and ensuring conditions for a successful launch. One crucial success factor was that the Beta Team was cross-functional, representing different parts of the organization and securing buy-in and fast decision loops when needed. Always with the mindset to stay true to the customer experience the entire organization had approved and signed off on.

Step 3. Starting the work and having a hallelujah moment

The vertical coordinators started by mapping ready, or soon-to-be ready, features and solutions into the customer journey to purposefully identify gaps. After the first round of mapping, it was clear that there were several significant and critical gaps that hadn’t been recognized before. Having the identified gaps mapped and visualized for the entire organization to see and reflect upon led to a little bit of a hallelujah moment. This visualization clearly showed where to problem-solve and how to re-prioritize going forward. For the first time, the product and all its touch points were directly connected to the customer promise and the purpose it was supposed to serve.

Step 4. Moving on in the vertical direction

In the following weeks, the coordinators made regular updates with the teams and functions. Updating the customer journey and changing red flags to yellow flags and finally, to green flags.

The Beta-team worked closely together, always with the same mindset. That challenges occurring in one of the verticals could cause a massive error and, eventually, even churn in another. The constantly updated customer journey map was accessible for all teams, forming a base in daily stand-ups. The process, progress, and achievements were easy to follow, prioritize and celebrate regularly.

The visuality of the customer journey brought to the table created a sense of control and peace of mind among the management and investors. Despite the potential risks and red flags, the customer journey map was so fruitful that one of the conference rooms was temporarily transformed into a Beta-Room. The walls were primed with concepts, sketches, wireframes, pictures, and physical samples making the launch even more tangible for everyone involved. Creating a sense of belonging and pride throughout all teams and functions.

The effects and learnings of the new way of working

So, was this new way of organizing and working a success? Here are some of the immediate takeaways and effects that were the results of this customer journey mapping.

• Within the first week of applying this new way of organizing and working, several concerning risks that needed immediate reprioritization was recognized. Risks that most likely would not have been recognized at this stage otherwise.
• Imaginary walls were torn down, with the knowledge that any challenge occurring in one of the verticals could cause a massive error and even churn in another. Leading to a new way of thinking in the future, dismantling the unproductive silo structure, and cultivating a culture that is even more customer-centric, curious, and inclusive.
• Gathering the entire organization around the customer journey brought the teams closer together. Being able to follow the progress visually in real-time nurtured the sense of working truly collaboratively towards a common goal.
• For the first time, management and investors had access to a clear status overview. That brought a sense of control and peace of mind seeing all the things already in place, giving them clear indications on how to best support the team.

The story doesn’t tell if the Beta launch became a success, but I’m quite sure it was.

Ulrika Ewerman is an Independent CX (Customer Experience) Advisor and expert in CX Management and CX Strategy Execution. Over the past 20 years, she’s been working globally, creating impact through CX Methodology, Management, Organization, and Execution. She holds an MFA in Design and has headed senior management roles at Veryday, McKinsey, and Volvo Car Mobility.

Today she supports organizations and brands to unlock the CX potential to become truly customer-centric, with a human-centered, possibility-driven, and iterative approach. Find more about Ulrika on her LinkedIn profile.

By Ulrika Ewerman

The post 4 Steps to easily organize around the Customer Journey appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels

As a journey manager or customer experience manager, we know you work hard to put the customer journey on the management’s agenda. You need to bring a convincing and strong customer case to your leaders and colleagues to quickly seize their interest, motivate them, and make the customer story understood and accepted. The tools you use should be helping you get your job done, and saving you time on tedious tasks so you can focus on the things you are hired for.

We’ve set out to create the most helpful and professional journey mapping tool for customer experience professionals, and one of the first things we did was to ask Custellence-users from all over the world: “What is important in a customer journey mapping tool?”

Based on their answers we’ve not only shaped our development roadmap for Custellence, we’ve also created a list of what to look for in a journey mapping tool when evaluating different options.

1. Is it fast and fun to capture an idea or to sketch up a journey map?

Let’s say you have an idea and quickly want to dot down a customer journey. Maybe you would like to do a preliminary structure of a journey map as a start, and add customer insights, pain points, etc at a later stage. Sort of like a sketch. You don’t want to lose the momentum and your inspiration by having to spend time setting up the tool or learning the tool, right? You want to get to the mapping.

The key take-away in this case is to make sure to connect the insights to the conclusion (pain points and problem areas), all the way to the solutions, tests, and the changes that you want to implement.

In effect, you are then creating logical paths, that not only goes from left to right in the map but also top-down, starting with the customer perspective. This will enable you to communicate the customer journey better, helping your team to understand why you have arrived at the key issues, painpoints, and solutions that you’ll want to take action on.

Try this in the tool

Think of a customer journey you have been through yourself, for example buying a cup of coffee, going to the hairdresser, or visiting the museum. Now start the clock.

Map the journey:

• Start with adding the stages for before, during, and after in the map.
• Add your customer steps, maybe a maximum of 10 cards in total.
• Create a few lanes for 1) customer needs, 2) pain points, and one lane for 3) ideas for improvements, or next-step actions

Now, look at the clock, how long did this exercise take? Were you able to keep the focus on the task and create a small map of your customer journey, or were you interrupted by obstacles and other distractions in the tool? Did you find yourself restricted in any way or was it easy enough?

2. Can I create a graphically appealing Customer journey map that I can proudly present to others?

To be honest, nicely designed things that look appealing, will be taken more seriously and they tend to feel more professional and trustworthy. Information and data that are well presented are easier to take in and your chances to succeed will increase.

Test this in the tool

Take the map you just made and make it look a little bit nicer. For example:

• Change lane colors
• Choose some icons for the lanes
• Add icons for some of the cards
• Change the shape of the cards
• Change the cards with pain points to a different color.

Now export the map to a PDF, or share the map through a public link to a colleague or a not-so-convinced stakeholder. Would you be able to feel confident of what you’ve created?

3. Does the tool and the journey maps support our agile and iterative ways of working?

So you’ve created the first version of the journey map. As you know, this will probably not be the final version of the map. From this step, you will build on the map as you go along. This iterative process during the exploration phase often results in a growing journey map that expands in all directions: you will add more information, adjust the customer steps and lanes, maybe merge steps and lanes. You want to make sure that the journey map is easy to update and change when new insights are made.

Test this in the tool

Can you put in new data and content without destroying the structure of the map? To test how the map behaves when you quickly need to update and edit the map to reflect your findings, try doing this:

• Move cards from one place to another in a map
• Do the same with lanes
• Copy an existing card and add it somewhere else on the map
• Extend the length of cards
• Add additional lanes and columns
• Select a few random cards and delete them.
• Select a row of cards and move them to another place in the map

4. Can I have a place for “everything”, without creating a big hairy monster of a map?

You probably have a bunch of research used for building the map such as user interviews, quantitative and qualitative data, marketing data, metrics, and notes. When you attach the sources of insights and data to the map, you build credibility and context for your customer case. Any good tool for journey mapping should let add this, without making the map look like a big hairy monster.

Test this in the tool

• Create a sub-lane, and in the sub-lane create a sub-card where you attach a document or an image to one of the customer steps.
• Create a sub-card and add an image
• Create a sub-card and add a URL to create a hyperlink
• Try hide and show the sub-lanes
• Try the “pin lane to top” that makes it easier to orient yourself while scrolling the map

5. Does the journey map enable me to tell the Customer’s story?

So, now you have created a map, then what? One of the major tasks, apart from managing the actual journey mapping process – is to use the customer journey map to tell a story, or as some might put it: to sell the customer case. Great journey maps will help you to influence stakeholders’ and leaders’ thinking, by visualizing exactly which journey the customers take, what customers think, feel and say, and how we as a business may respond to it.

Test this

• Is the look and feel of your journey map professional? Does it give you the confidence to lead others through and create empathy for the customers?
• Can you zoom in and out of the map and easily navigate to show the horizontal steps and vertical themes in the customer journey?
• Are the journey maps readable and easy to quickly grasp, even for someone with a short span of attention?
• Can you easily show and tell the customer story on several levels; the high-level journey, and lower levels with the more detailed steps?

6. Will the tool support our customer journey work going forward?

Making a single journey map is often easy in any tool you choose. But if your goal is to drive customer-centric change, you know that the journey map is not the final deliverable.

To make the maps valuable and alive for more than the duration of a project, they need to become part of the operational systems of your organization. You may create dashboards, build more customer journeys that are similar, go back and edit things, add more insights, work on “as-is” and “to-be” journeys, and engage more people as you go along.

Therefore when choosing a journey mapping tool, it’s important to consider whether the tool is built to support continuous journey mapping and customer experience work.

Consider this

• Can I use the tool and the journey maps for continuous research and insights? Is it easy to go back and update the maps?
• Can I connect different customer journeys to one another as we develop more journey maps?
• Is it easy to get an overview of the maps we’ve built in the tool?
• Can I manage my team members’ access to the tool and maps?
• Can we use the tool on a greater scale in my organization?

7. Additional resources for evaluation of journey mapping tools

If you want to dig even deeper into comparing and evaluating journey mapping tools, here are some helpful resources to check out.

Here is an extensive review of journey mapping tools

A comparison between Custellence and UXpressia

Custellence review

By Sabina Persson

The post A practical guide to evaluating customer journey mapping tools appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

The Corona crisis affects all of us in one way or another, and right now many organizations struggle to find ways to handle this extreme situation. As we all know, we have to do everything we can to minimize physical contact between people.

Yet, on the contrary, limiting human contact can be devastating for all those businesses that depend on customer-facing activities to carry out their service. And in difficult times it’s even more important to treat people well and to deliver in accordance with the customer needs. Here are two tips on how to use your customer journeys to quickly prioritize actions, to innovate and to find new ways to create customer value:

Prioritize touchpoints with physical contact

Take a look at your existing customer journey maps and identify the areas where human interaction is crucial for your business or service. Where is the business most affected by people (both employees and customers) staying at home? This should be your top priority now.

Now, perhaps more than ever, it’s important to gather as many people as possible around the customer journey maps. Your customer-facing co-workers, as well as teams or departments that can support them, should be involved, to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that you have a shared view of your priorities.

Redesign the prioritized touchpoints

Once you have prioritized the touchpoints, pick the quick- and easy ones first. What can be done immediately to avoid physical contact? Can we simply go digital or remote on certain touchpoints? If the answer is yes, then start with that.

In some of the touchpoints that you have prioritized, you probably need to understand the details of the customer interactions more. Here it’s a good idea to break out those particular touchpoints into separate customer journeys. In Custellence this is easy to do by creating a new journey map and connecting it to the prioritized touchpoint in the first map. This will be a “temporary journey map” to use as a base for problem-solving and ideation.

A final tip is to listen carefully to the insights and ideas of your customer-facing colleagues and teams. Being the closest ones to your customers, they might be your best source of insight right now.

Perhaps you will go back to the way you were doing things before the crisis, but don’t be surprised if you come up with some new ideas that you want to keep when we’re back to some kind of normal again.

Last but not least, stay safe and take care!

By Sabina Persson

The post Redesign your customer journey to minimize physical human contact appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.

To get some advice, we met with Anders Landström, a senior service designer at service design consultancy Antrop. Anders has helped many organizations to improve their customer experience, and is currently working as customer centric organization lead. We asked him about his best advice for keeping the the customer journey maps alive and relevant, to enable teams and organizations to stay on the customer centric track.

Anders says the challenge often arises when regular teams are expected to continuously stay customer centric in their day-to-day activities. Then the focus on the customer journey often begins to fade. A common question is “how can we make sure that the Customer Journey Map or Service Blueprint becomes a shared compass in our organization?

Anders’ best tips for keeping your Journey Maps alive

Make the map relevant and attractive to use

First of all, the customer journey activities in your map must be connected to touchpoints, channels and to the internal processes and activities that teams and people are involved in. According to Anders, one of the most important thing is to make sure that the map is relevant for the people that are supposed to contribute to the changes you strive for. You need to make it attractive for them to work with the map. The more useful information the map contains, the more it will contribute to people’s everyday work. They will then go to the map for information, as well as contribute to the map to create customer value.

Another basic but nevertheless important thing is to continuously educate and inform about the map and its content to make sure that everyone understands the structure and meaning of the map.

Assign ownership and responsibilities for the map

A second advice from Anders is to assign “map-owners”, responsible for updating and managing the content in the map. Depending on the scope, you will also need owners responsible for certain cards, lanes or areas in the map. For instance digital channels (lanes) or the onboarding (phase). To further increase the map’s business relevancy, as well as emphasizing ownership and responsibility, you could also connect cards or areas in the maps to performance metrics. Updated with current figures or KPI:s that are relevant for your organization, the map will then be a relevant key document to use and revisit in meetings, stand-ups or retrospectives.

Share, share, share!

The greater the amount of people who uses the map, updates it and refers to it— the greater the impact. By having many collaborators and viewers on a map, you’ll extend the value and lifetime of it. Also, sharing maps and making the customer journeys visible to many, as well as showing the work-in-progress, will build the customer centric mindset and create a shared view of the customer internally. Even those who are not working directly with the maps, should still have access to them and be able to follow. How about publishing the maps on the intranet? Or print them and put them in places where a lot of people can see them?

Make the map part of the workflow

Apart from sharing the maps and invite people to take ownership, updating maps and follow up on activities in them needs to be done on a regular basis. In a customer centric organization, the map should be the thing people refer to when new improvement plans are made. So how do you make the map part of the internal processes? One way is to introduce the customer journey map or service blueprint as part of the teams’ existing workflows. How about making the map part of the weekly or monthly team updates? Or as part of any business reporting routine already in place?

Adapt the map to your organization

There is not a simple answer to the complex question in the beginning of this post. But one thing stands clear from our talk with Anders: To drive a customer centric initiative by using the customer journey map as a shared compass — you need to understand the needs of your organization. And you need to adapt the map to meet and fulfill those needs. By doing so, you’ll keep the map relevant not only from a customer perspective, but also from the organizational perspective. And that’s a really good starting point when driving any kind of change.

By Sabina Persson

The post How do we keep the Customer Journey Maps alive? appeared first on Custellence - The #1 way to create customer journeys.