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Customer Journey Mapping – ensuring success

March 03, 2015

Forrester Research’s[1] recent report suggested that despite good intent many Customer Journey Mapping initiatives fail. Why is this so despite the often significant investment required, the many consultants offering help, and the good intent of the people involved? The key reason in our findings is that fundamentally Customer Journey Mapping does not sufficiently represent the Complete Customer Experience and instead skates the surface and emphasizes just customer touch points and the customer lifecycle.

The BP Groups research with 800+ clients worldwide in the last two years provides us with an easy to apply 1-2-3 guide to maximise the chances of success.

  1. Ensure your mapping exercise encompasses (a) the customer experience – the moments of truth, and (b) the internal interactions which contribute to the moments of truth, the handovers and business rules within our organizations.[2]The reality here is that all work an organization does is ultimately spawned from those moments of truth. Hence you need to map the complete customer experience.

  2. Understand the Successful Customer Outcome[3]. Mapping is a worthy task however it needs to have context. Do you fully comprehend the real customer needs that shape the customer experience? There are organizations that spend years customer journey mapping with context. Why are we doing this and what is the ultimate Successful Customer Outcome?It should come as no great surprise that top teams lose faith with efforts that lack clear definition and purposeful delivery.

  3. Focus on mapping the Causes of Work[4]. It stands to reason that identifying the causes of work and then seeking to eliminate them will significantly reduce costs and improve service simultaneously. All too often process improvement work focuses on the tasks and activities that are an ‘effect’ created by a ’cause’. Masking the pain never works, it will get worse and spreads. You need to identify the Cause of the pain and eliminate it. This then becomes a ‘seek and destroy’ mission and as a consequence Customer Journey Map’s should be broad and deep. It is about the Causes of Work that create the activity across functional silo’s. By identifying the very Causes of Work and in subsequently fixing them much of the internal complexity becomes unnecessary. Do not get deflected by specialists who may be fixed in a shape of work created decades ago.

Customer journey mapping is just the beginning of customer centric transformation. To deliver ultimate success you need to include the complete customer experience – not just the bits directly experienced by the customer but as importantly how the internal systems and processes are wired. Reframing the organisation to achieve success requires a multi disciplinary effort involving the front line, the back office, the top team and the technologists. For a more detailed review of emerging shape of organisations James Dodkins latest book ‘Foundations for Customer Centricity’ is short and stimulating read. You can download a complimentary copy at this link:http://bit.ly/foundationsEbook

In summary Customer Journey Mapping should be inclusive – let’s make it so.