MMR Strategy Group » Customer Journey Maps

Don’t Miss! Dr. Bruce Isaacson to Speak on Improving Customer Experience with Customer Journey Maps at Corporate Researchers Conference

Elesia Kreinces — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:08:48 +0000

What does it take for an organization to offer outstanding customer experience? One element is that a company typically must act as a single seamless entity across the different touchpoints where customers are involved with the company.

This is not easy. To do so, a company must improve the touchpoints that most need improvement, and not waste resources improving those that are less important to customers, or that do not need as much improvement.

Dr. Bruce Isaacson, President of MMR Strategy Group, will be speaking at the 2013 Corporate Researchers Conference (CRC) on Wednesday, October 16th from 3:00 – 4:00 PM at The Fairmont Dallas hotel. His presentation titled, “How to Improve Your Customer’s Experience with Customer Journey Maps,” will describe customer journey maps, which are a powerful tool to help companies visualize and evaluate the customer experience from the customer’s point of view. Using customer journey maps can help companies identify areas that need improvement, and provide a common vision to improve the customer experience.

For more information about the conference or to register, click here.

CRC was designed to help move researchers and their organizations ahead of change. CRC sessions – presented largely by corporate researchers – show how insights are maximized through recent case studies and real life experiences covering key areas such as the value of marketing research, mixed mode research, social media and big data, customer intelligence, business intelligence, and more.

The Corporate Researchers Conference is co-sponsored by the Marketing Research Association, Quirk’s Marketing Research Media and the CEB Market Insights Leadership Council.

For more information about customer journey maps click here.

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How Research Can Improve Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Dominique Romanowski — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:49:11 +0000

Do you wish that your customer retention research gave you more specific insight into how to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, even among the most profitable customers?

Here are a few ways to get the most out of your research and encourage your customers to keep coming back for more!

Understanding overall drivers of customer loyalty
To understand the overall drivers of customer loyalty, retention research should include both current customers and lapsed customers. Lapsed customers are often hard to reach but the investment is necessary.

Current customers are by definition positive about the brand or product. Their input alone is not enough to understand the key drivers of loyalty. Talking to lapsed customers helps identify the elements of your product or service that cause switching. Looking at the difference in results between current and lapsed customers is key to identifying where to focus resources to improve loyalty. For example, do changes need to be made in your product, service, or price?

Perhaps the issue is not your product or service. Looking at differences in demographics, behaviors, and attitudes between current and lapsed customers may reveal that lapsed users have lower income, are very price sensitive, are not benefit driven, and shop frequently. There may be nothing wrong with your product or service. Your sales force may be targeting and recruiting the wrong customers, customers who are by nature not likely to stay with your brand.

Understanding loyalty among the most profitable customers
The research, if designed properly, can help you identify how to increase loyalty among your most profitable customers. By talking to customer segments most important to the business, results can indicate how differentiated products, marketing, or services can improve loyalty with the most profitable customers.

For example, prior to the research, identify your high, medium, and low value customers. Make sure the research includes a sample of all three groups. Design the survey to help you understand if there are differences in levels of satisfaction, where, and why. You may choose to map the customer experience through customer journey mapping. This will identify where and what improvements would make the largest difference in loyalty among the highest value customer. Management can then allocate resources to retain the most profitable customers.

Or, prior to the research, identify your new, medium tenure, and longer tenure customers. Include a sample of all three groups. Compare satisfaction between groups. Use the research to find out when the level of satisfaction is the lowest and the likelihood of switching the highest and why. Educate your marketing and sales team to identify critical moments in a customer life cycle and when to commit more resources to which activities.

If the research results show that long tenure customers are less satisfied, additional data might reveal these customers to have higher income, buy your product or services with greater frequency, and do not feel like they are valued by the company. Losing these customers can have a negative impact on your bottom line. Results may also show longer tenure customers are more demanding, expect higher service levels or more discounts in reward for loyalty. Perhaps they get frustrated about poor response time when they call with a problem. This information can be very useful to map out a specific action plan to improve satisfaction of your most profitable segment.

When doing your next customer retention research, think and plan carefully about which customers you want to talk to. Make sure the research is designed to look at specific segments, identify differences in satisfaction, and understand differences in attitudes and behaviors. This way, the results will generate actionable insights that lead to more profitable ways to improve customer loyalty and retention.

Dominique Romanowski
Vice President
MMR Strategy Group

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[White Paper] Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Your Customer Experience

Elesia Kreinces — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:04:09 +0000

This white paper explains how Customer Journey Maps can be a powerful tool to help companies visualize and evaluate the customer experience from the customer’s point of view.

You’ll learn:

Examples of the different types of Customer Journey Maps
How to create and use Customer Journey Maps
The differences between Process Maps and Customer Journey Maps
Why it’s important to create a users’ manual to guide implementation

Click here to download white paper.

The post [White Paper] Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Your Customer Experience appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

Replace Your Process Map with a Customer Journey Map

Bruce Isaacson — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:06:06 +0000

I’ve written about customer journey maps in other posts, and I’ve also provided a detailed white paper defining and describing customer journey maps.

This post discusses the circumstances when you might want to use customer journey maps instead of (or in conjunction with) process maps.

My experience is that managers and executives are generally much more familiar with process maps than with customer journey maps. This is not always a good thing, as process maps are useful in many circumstances, but very inward-focused. Sometimes, process maps encourage thinking that puts internal processes ahead of the customer experience.

What is the Difference Between Process Maps and Customer Journey Maps ?

Although they both use the word “map”, process maps and customer journey maps are very different tools, looking at the company from very different perspectives.

As shown by Table 1, a process map takes the company’s perspective, describing a company’s internal processes using terms, typically jargon and acronyms specific to the company. Process maps are often developed by specialists (including those with Six Sigma experience) or by specific departments.

By contrast, the Customer Journey Map takes the customer’s perspective, describing the customer experience using the customer’s own language. In our experience, the Customer Journey Map is created by many or all groups involved in the customer experience. (It almost has to be, because the input is necessary to fully understand the customer experience.)

Table 1: Differences between Process Maps and Customer Journey Maps

The Problem with Using Process Maps Instead of Customer Journey Maps

There are many circumstances when process maps are helpful, particularly when a company needs to improve internal flows and processes that support the customer experience. However, too few companies use Customer Journey Maps, which offer the key benefit of taking the customer’s perspective, and mapping out the customer experience from the customer’s point of view. In other words, process maps start inward and look out of the company, while customer journey maps start outward and look inward at the company.

In many companies and many circumstances, the ability to look at the company outside-in, from the customer’s perspective, is a powerful yet under used tool. In these cases, if we use a process map instead of a customer journey map, the processes may be optimized from the company’s perspective, but not from the customer’s perspective.

Another powerful combination is to create these two types of maps in tandem, so that the internal perspective that arises from the process map is developed in conjunction with an understanding of the customer journey.

Want to learn more? Download our white paper on Customer Journey Maps or contact us today.

Dr. Bruce Isaacson
President
MMR Strategy Group

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How Customer Journey Maps Can Improve the Customer Experience

Bruce Isaacson — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:45:57 +0000

In most companies, the customer experience is complex. Companies typically organize people and processes into departments, functions, and business units. However, customers often have interactions and experiences with companies that cut across these divisions and departments.

For example, the experience for a customer of an Internet service provider may involve customer service representatives, technical support, installers, and other departments. Each of these departments may have their own set of metrics, objectives, and skill sets.

MMR Strategy Group’s Customer Journey Maps provide a way to depict the customer experience in clear and concise terms that provide a visual picture of the customer’s experience with a company. They provide a way to operationalize some old advice from the Harvard Business Review that managers should “Staple Yourself to an Order” to understand the customer’s experience.

Customer Journey Maps also identify key moments of truth in the customer experience. Not every step of the customer experience is equally important and not every customer needs to be highly satisfied on all steps. For some routine transactions, such as paying a bill, customers may want a simple interaction that goes smoothly but does not need to be memorable. For other transactions, customers may seek a higher and more memorable level of service. For example, consider the difference between taking out a new mortgage and making a monthly payment on the mortgage; taking out a mortgage is a less frequent and more emotional experience.

By identifying the key moments of truth – those steps that are most important to customer satisfaction and renewal – Customer Journey Maps identify the places where investments in higher levels of service are more likely to attract or retain customers. Equally, their graphical nature can help generate a common vision of the customer’s perspective.

MMR Strategy Group has a detailed white paper on Customer Journey maps. Download it today to learn more.

Dr. Bruce Isaacson
President
MMR Strategy Group

The post How Customer Journey Maps Can Improve the Customer Experience appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Bruce Isaacson — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:28:45 +0000

In other posts, I have described Customer Journey Maps, including how they can help your organization visualize the customer experience. This post describes how to create a Customer Journey Map.

Figure 1 describes MMR Strategy’s five step process involved in creating Customer Journey Maps. The steps include selecting the journey to map, creating an inventory of touch points, describing each touch point, identifying moments of truth and key metrics, and creating Users’ Manuals to guide implementation.

Figure 1: Five Steps to Creating a Customer Journey Map

Each of these steps are described in detail in a white paper. As described in that white paper, there are five design principles that apply to each step:

Take the customers’ perspective: The CJM should describe the customer experience from the customer’s perspective, using customer-friendly terms. Jargon, including any term that is not familiar to or not used by customers, should be banned from the map.

Be emotional: The CJM should incorporate and reflect the emotional, experiential, and functional elements of the customer experience. The emotional refers to how a customer is feeling, experiential refers to what a customer experiences, and functional refers to the logistics of how it happens.

Be universal: The CJM should be universal, applying to all customers. Later, use cases can be used to build CJMs for specific segments or distribution channels.

Keep it simple: The CJM should be easy to follow and colorful. It should be appropriate for a wide variety of levels and functions.

Gather lots of input: The CJM should be built with input and involvement from multiple departments that touch the customer’s interaction with the company. Gathering input from these departments will require a series of interviews and workshops throughout the process.

A Customer Journey Map is different than a process map, but the two are related. As shown by Table 1, a process map takes the company’s perspective, and describes a company’s internal processes, using terms, jargon, and acronyms specific to the company. Process maps are often developed by specialists (including those with Six Sigma experience) or by specific departments. By contrast, the Customer Journey Map takes the customer’s perspective, describing the customer experience using the customer’s own language.

Table 1: Differences between Process Maps and Customer Journey Maps

Dr. Bruce Isaacson
President
MMR Strategy Group

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