In the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray re-lives the same day over and over again. He sees the outcome from his actions and behaviours as plain as day. After a while, it starts to drive him slightly insane. Only when he works out he needs to do something different does he finally start to get a different result and win the heart of the girl of his dreams (Andy MacDowell).
Insanity: (Definition) – doing the same thing every day and expecting a different result.
From a customer experience perspective most organisations are insane. Most desperately want to deliver better for customers, but despite the best of intentions, they keep making the same mistakes. Day in day out. These things turn their customers off and reduce financial returns. As in the film, it’s like watching a car crash waiting to happen. To get customers to love you and your brand you need to understand what really makes a difference to customers and business outcomes and then invest in the changes to make it so.
Mapping Customer Journeys and truly comparing against real customer needs helps break the cycle. And it can be done in days not months in 5 easy steps.
Step 1 – Get the cross-functional team (and customer) in the same room
Get the cross-functional team in the room at the same time, or at least in the same room looking at the same map over a short period. Get them to bring the facts, data, analysis and insights with them. Bring the customer into the room too, whether virtually (with insights, verbatims, videos) or physically. And don’t be frightened to bring some frontline staff too (they always have a good handle on the real issues). You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the speed of progress that can be made. And if you haven’t done this before, you’ll be amazed the clarity that’s brought and understanding that’s built through having all the functional experts in the room, seeing the same picture.
Step 2 – Walk the Journey & add a proven Customer Journey Mapping methodology
You’ve got to walk the customer journey looking through the customer’s eyes. We’ve found over the years that bringing the journey map to life visually, with all the facts together on one piece of paper galvanises thoughts around the big issues and potential solutions. The secret is looking at business and customer issues at the same time and finding solutions that solve both simultaneously.
Step 3 – Evaluate the options financially
Customer Experience investments are no different to any other business investment. So, we also rapidly build a business case model to evaluate costs and returns of the various solution options. This needs enough detail to be credible and to include customer dynamics (revenue and behaviour), interacting with fixed and variable cost to serve. To ensure buy-in we always get Finance to sign the model off.
Step 4 – Walk the Senior Team through it
The cut through that can be achieved through a fact-based discussion around these Journey Maps with the senior team is compelling. Especially when you bring it to life with customer and employee stories.
As one client CEO said, when he was reviewing the maps with his executive team:
“You can take it you have our full support, now what do you need from us…”
Step 5 – Execute on improvement plan
For that organisation, focusing on 3 vital but important actions was the first step away from Customer Experience Insanity and becoming a Smart Organisation. The returns from the quick wins they discovered more than paid for the engagement in the short term, let alone the £Multi-M longer term returns.
HOWTOEXPERIENCE has worked with many blue-chips to quickly map customer journeys in order to identify and fix those “groundhog day” issues. Improving business returns AND customer love quickly.
Start this next week
You could start this next week. Think about that gnarly touchpoint or customer journey that you know is destroying value. Chances are, whilst you’re thinking about it, you’ll have already lost more value than the small investment required in identifying and nailing the solution with our support.
