Objectives For This Episode:
How customer journey maps are used in the wild to strategically improve sales, marketing, and product workflows
How to capture feedback, validate the journey, and iterate to understand the customer perspective
How to create a customer journey map that’ll help you lock down the ROI that your company is looking to achieve
Episode Overview:
More so than ever, prospective customers will bounce if they’re confused or experience too much friction along the customer journey. In this exclusive influencer webinar, Annette Franz, a highly sought after CX expert, and Aaron Fulkerson, the CEO of MindTouch, will discuss tactics on how to create a customer journey map that will help you lock down the ROI that your company is looking to achieve.
Meet The Speakers:
Aaron Fulkerson, CEO & Co-Founder of MindTouch
Fulkerson is a leading innovator in open-source and SaaS software. Under his leadership, MindTouch became a pioneering leader in customer engagement software, and consistently posts negative churn rates alongside industry-leading NPS and CES scores. MindTouch has helped companies like Docker, Zenefits and Zuora ensure their customers’ success and achieve hyper growth by revolutionizing the way companies engage customers through content.
Annette Franz, Founder of CX Journey
For more than a decade, Annette Franz (Gleneicki) has helped companies understand the importance of the employee experience and its role in delivering an exceptional customer experience, as well as how to transform their cultures to ensure the customer is at the center of every conversation. She’s CCXP, CEM Certified, and an active member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA).
Episode 1: Lessons On Customer Journey Mapping For Executives
Episode Transcription:
Aaron: Thanks for the introduction on the logistics and really happy to be here with Annette Franz. She has a great deal of experience that she’s going to share with us.
As Hsin-Ju mentioned, my name is Aaron Fulkerson. I’m one of the founders and the CEO of MindTouch. Just briefly on MindTouch, we’re very unique in how we approach customer engagement. We take the content that companies are already producing in the form of user manual documentation, customer support content, and turn that into an engagement channel that often times doubles or triples website traffic within the first six months through the user event stream of both buyers and customers accessing the content. We’ve helped companies to inform everything from marketing strategy to product strategy, sales execution and of course customer success and customer support execution. It’s interesting in that we’re taking space of customer self-service, agent enablement and field service and turning it into revenue generation through resources that companies already have with cloud based products. That’s the only thing I’ll say about MindTouch in this and let’s hear it from Annette.
Annette, would you do an introduction on your background, please?
Annette: Oh, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me. I think this is awesome and you know the topic that we’re going to be talking about today is absolutely one of my favorite topics. My name is Annette Franz. I am a customer experience consultant and author of the blog CX Journey. I’ve been in this customer experience space for over 20 years and am excited to share some of the things that I’ve learned. So thanks again for having me. I really appreciate that.
Aaron: Yeah, thank you for taking the time. I know that you’re widely respected. It’s clear through just from all of the social channels, how people are turning to you and asking questions. So really, an honor to have you here. Annette, let’s start off with the question.
Question: What is Customer Journey Mapping and how is it used in the wild? I hear this often and I’m just really eager to hear how you seen this applied and tell us about this?
“Customer Journey Mapping is a way for companies to walk in their customers’ shoes”…
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Annette: Yeah, so Customer Journey Mapping in a nutshell, is a way for companies to walk in their customers’ shoes and really understand the experience that customers are having as they try to accomplish whatever it is that they’re trying to do with the company.
For example, if they’re trying to call customer support or make a purchase, we deep dive into the steps that customers take through that journey: from making the decision, to landing that call, and executing on the steps that it takes to make that happen. So it’s a great way, again, for companies to understand their customers and their experience. It really helps to build empathy so that they can figure out where the pain points are, where things are going well, and where things are going wrong so that they can then redesign the experience to make it better for their customers.
Question: What industries employ Customer Journey Mapping? Is it across all industries? Is it stronger in specific industries? And what does it “look” like?
Annette: That’s a great question and it’s relevant for and is used by all industries. If you’ve got a customer who’s trying to do something with your company, you’re going to use a customer journey map. I’ve seen it used across all industries from retail, to fitness, to whatever. I mean, I’ve seen it used even for non-profit organizations. It really runs the gamut and it’s both B2C and B2C.
Aaron: What does it look like? I mean does that differ based on who’s implementing Customer Journey Mapping or is there a standard as to what it looks like? Does it differ by industry? By the way, I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen it through tools or technologies that generate the customer journey map through various interaction points, but does it differ by industry and can you tell us a little bit about what it looks like?
Annette: Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to differ by industry. So I’ll take a step back at first and say that there are several different frameworks that people can use to map the customer journey and the key things that need to be included in that framework are what the customer’s doing, thinking, and feeling. So what the customer is doing? What are those steps? What the customer is thinking? What is the need or what is the thought process as he’s going from Step 1 to Step 2 to Step 20. And then what is he feeling? Is this step frustrating me or “I’m happy at this step” or “That was easy.” Other frameworks have different components and layers of data that are included. So we might have things like tools and processes that the customer is using as they’re going along this journey. We might include things that are happening during what we call “onstage” which is when the customer is interacting with the company.
But we might also add, to bring a little bit of color commentary and flavor to it, what is happening behind the scenes – what’s happening backstage. For example, using that customer support example again, what are the tools and processes that are supporting what the agent is doing as he’s working with the customer on the phone? That adds a lot more detail to it so that it becomes much easier to pinpoint where problems are and then to assign ownership. And that’s another component that I’d like to add to a journey map – ownership along each step of the way. Who owns that step?
Customer Journey Maps help pinpoint where problems are and then assign ownership…
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And a lot of times we think, “Oh, well, it’s a customer support experience. So customer support is the only one responsible for what’s happening there.” Well that’s not the case. The customer support experience has implications for sales, product design, marketing.
For example, if the folks in sales didn’t sell the product that I thought I was going to get, that creates an expectation there that now the customers going to call support and say, “Hey, this doesn’t do what I thought it did” kind of thing. So there’re a lot of different departments along the way that are involved in that support call.
So it’s important to include that ownership piece as well. So yeah, there’s no set framework. You just have to capture those three main things: what the customer is doing, thinking, and feeling and then any other details that you can add to bring the experience to life to help the organization understand who’s involved, who’s impacted, and who’s going to own or be accountable for each step along the way.
Question: How do you go about capturing the customers’ perspective along their journey? How do you approach that and how would somebody who’s new to this concept even begin to think about that?
Annette: So there’s a couple of different ways to do that. First of all, I think you bring up customer feedback. So again, let’s take the support example and say we’re sending out surveys to customers after the support call. If we were asking the right questions, we can bring that data back into the map, put it where it corresponds along the steps of the journey, and bring in the customers’ perspective and viewpoint.
The other thing that we can do is we can bring in not just the scores from the surveys, but we can also bring “verbatims” (or customer quotes) into it. Let’s say, for example, you’re placing a call to support. You had an issue with the TV. “Oh my goodness, I had to click nine different options to get to the person that I needed to speak to.” If you capture “verbatims” (or customer quotes) from your survey, you can bring that data into your map and share it with the rest of your org.
The other way to do that is to actually go out, take the maps that you’ve created, and validate them with your customers. Show them and say, “Hey, are these the steps that you have taken and have we missed anything? What happens at each of these steps? Talk to us about what’s happening. Where are your pain points? Where are we doing things well? That’s another way to bring the customer feedback and their viewpoint into the map.
Question: Are there software tools available for automating a customer journey map?
Aaron: So let’s say that you’re Hilton or some business that operates both online and brick and mortar space? I get that there’s like no way to necessarily track the customer journey through all the interaction points – or is there?
My background is more on software or online businesses side and there’s techniques that we can employ through web analytics. What MindTouch does is build a profile based on the user’s interaction with semantically rich contents. So before they ever talk to you, you start to get the sense of the customer based upon the content they’re consuming. But are there tools for automating a customer journey map that allows you to kind of get a sense of at least some of the touch points or all of the touch points? I don’t know this as well.
Annette: No. Yeah, that’s a great question. And no, not that I’m aware of. There’s nothing out there that would automate this for you. This is definitely a manual process. I think a key takeaway is that there is learning in the process itself. And the process helps to bring the organization together. Let’s say, you’re building your map and you’re going to start with an assumptive map. The assumptive map brings in both key stakeholders and cross-functional stakeholders. Then gets them to do something like map out a support call journey. The conversation in and of itself is a very rich process. It helps everybody in the room. I’ve been in these workshops and everybody in the room is just like, “Ah, we actually do that to our customers?” It’s a very great learning experience for everybody. So no, to go back to your question, no automated tools. There is huge value in the process itself and so I don’t think we would ever want to automate this.
Question: Are people Journey Mapping during the sales & pre-sales experience?
When mapping ur customers’ journey, focus on the key drivers, moments, & interactions…
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Annette: Yep. There are thousands of journeys that a customer could have with an organization. I think what you want to do is pick the key drivers, the key moments, the key interactions that – if you fix now – won’t become a problem down the line. So your point about the sales and pre-sales is a good one. The important thing is to really set your scope upfront so that you don’t feel like you have to map everything. Pick some journey, pick some experience, map that, and focus. Don’t get lost in the anxiety of, “Oh my gosh. I’ve got thousands of journeys that I’ve got to map.” But yes, pretty much any experience is mappable and it is being done.
Question: Having facilitated a number of these projects, where in the journey do most people focus?
Annette: Generally speaking, the focus is on a couple of things. The purchase process and then the support process. It varies by industry as well. So it’s going to be a different map for a retail versus a fitness versus a charitable organization.
Aaron: So of the industries you’ve worked on, and I know that they’re pretty diverse since you’re very experienced in this, what are the projects that you’ve been like, “Wow that was really cool.” And why was it so cool?
Annette: That’s a good question because they’re all so diverse. There was a furniture rental company that I worked with that I thought was really cool for two reasons. The sheer volume of people that were in the room – it just shows you how huge organizations are. It was just a reminder of how many different departments touch the customer along a journey. And the other reason it was cool was because their CEO came and sat in on the workshop for a little while and it was amazing the impression that exercise made on him.
I think that’s key. There are so many different ways that these maps can be used and one of them is to get that executive buy-in. If you’re doing workshops and you haven’t had executive buy-in or commitment to focus resources on improving a customer experience, this is a great way to obtain it.
It’s important to get executive buy-in or a commitment to focus resources on improving #cx…
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Aaron: I can imagine that, as a founder and CEO, the things that you’d uncover would be pretty frustrating.
Annette: Well, the reaction that came out of that workshop and several others was, “Oh, I do that to our customers?” or there’s the realization that our processes are truly complicated. It’s the validation of seeing it on paper, up on the wall, or online, depending on what tool you’re using for your mapping. It’s really eye opening for people.
Question: How did you get into this field? What pulled you into creating tools for helping companies empathize with their customers?
Annette: Well, it’s interesting because I started my career in the early ’90s with JD Power and Associates. At the time, customer experience wasn’t even something that we talked about. The focus was on customer satisfaction. We talked about customer loyalty and over the course of my career, I’ve seen this evolution in how we go about understanding the customer, listening to the voice, to the experience that they’re going through.
I think this was just a part of the evolution and working for some of the enterprise feedback management vendors and listening to the customer voice through surveys, all the various listening posts, and the way that I was presenting the data. I was presenting the story back to clients in a journey format long before I actually started even doing journey mapping and then it just made sense.
It was sort of this transition, this evolution. That’s pretty much how it came about and clients were asking, “Well, I have this customer, how can I track him over time and over the life of the relationship and over the steps that he took to first buy the product and then what happened after he bought it and what was the experience?” I think maps help us see the big picture, but they can also help hone down on the details so that we can get into the nitty-gritty to improve the experience overall.
Question: What’s the most important skill needed to help companies better empathize with their customers?
Companies learn a lot from listening to customers, but to create empathy, they need to:…
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Annette: Yeah. So I think there are two things that come to mind. One of them is listening. I mean that’s huge. And listening in a bunch of different ways: what the company is trying to do, what their pain points are, what their needs are, and what their desired outcomes are. Then obviously, listening to customers and listening to employees.
Another hugely important skill is storytelling. We hear a lot of things when we listen, but then we need to distill that in a way and share it back to the organization in such a way that compels people, draws them in, and creates that empathy that we were talking about.
So storytelling, I think listening and storytelling are two huge skills and there’s a lot of other ones, but those are the top two that come top of mind.
Question: Do you have a set of Customer Journey Mapping methodologies to help navigate large organizations?
Annette: Yeah. There’s a lot of that for sure. The one thing that I think is really helpful is we talk about building your business case. You want to have some really solid wins with what you’re doing and when you show that you’ve done something really impressive and has made an impact, that’s when you can convince people that this is real and will make a difference.
The politics will always be there, but people can’t argue with the numbers and people can’t argue with what it means to your customers and the impact that it has upon them. So I think the key is to really focus on one project or one piece of it. Do it really well and show the impact that it had on your customers.
Aaron: Well, let’s go to the next topic because that’s a perfect transition right there.
Annette: Okay!
Question: How do you lock down a certain ROI outcome?
Annette: Yeah, the best way to do that is to, like I said, pick a project and an area. It can just be a simple thing, but should be something that’s going to make a big impact, a great story, or solve a really bad pain point for your customers.
Do all the right things that you need to do to make improvements. Listen to your customers, map their journeys, understand their experiences, get the right people onboard to start making improvements, and track your numbers. “What does that mean? What you just did, how did that impact retention? How did that reduce call volume?”
I had a company, an insurance company, that I worked with years ago. We tracked the entire journey over the course of two years and the impact that they made was huge. It really got the executives to perk their ears and say,”Wow, you saved us how many customers? You saved us how much money?”
All of that is just a strong story that really makes people go, “Okay, let’s keep going. Let’s keep doing this. Let’s pick another department or let’s pick another experience or another journey that we can impact and do the same thing.”
Question: Are you using any of the popular industry metrics like Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score? Or are you just focused on customer renewal & upsell? How are you measuring?
Annette: I think it’s got to be a combination of both. Your executives and your CEO are going to be looking at the customer metrics hopefully from the experience perspective and he’s going to want to know how that links to the actual outcome in terms of revenue, profitability, dollars in terms of retention, and those kinds of things. So it’s definitely got to be both.
When we do the maps, we typically want to factor: time to fix, cost to fix, and impact to fix. Then we can talk about the impact both in terms of how this will improve your Satisfaction Scores, your Customer Effort Scores, NPS, all those things. But then we need to definitely link it to the dollar metrics as well because that’s what they’re typically focused on.
Question: Do you have a standard Journey Mapping Process that you roll out regardless of the project that you’re working on?
Annette: Well, I have a tool that I love to use and it’s one that I’ve worked with in the past. It’s an online tool which can help you set up whatever framework you want very easily. You can bring in customer data, which you can’t do on butcher paper and post-it notes. You can have an API setup that feeds customer data right into the touch points and into your map.
It’s very easy to bring in other artifacts like pictures and videos and the actual audio files. So that’s a kind of tool that I like to use because it allows the map to evolve as the experience is redesigned. Did that answer your question? I hope it did.
Aaron: No, it totally does. When you go into a project, do you go in bearing some expectations of what the outcome will be? For example like, “Hey, we’re going to improve your net promoter by X or your customer satisfaction by Y.” Or is it just you just go in and say, “We’re going to improve”?
Annette: No, I think we want to go in with a sense of what the objectives and desired outcomes are. And those desired outcomes typically, companies have the need to put some kind of a percentage or dollar amount or whatever it is onto that. So yeah, it’s not going to be a generic or just coming in to improve. We’re going to put some number to that for sure.
Question: What’s the key takeaway from this podcast?
Annette: So it’s hard to have just one key message there, but I think, I’ll kind of wrap it up in maybe two or three.
So number one, you have to journey map because if you don’t understand what the experience is today, you can’t transform the experience to something different tomorrow. So I think the key takeaway is, if you’re not doing it, do it because I can guarantee you that your entire organization does not understand what the customer experience is and this will help bring the experience to life.
Customer Journey Mapping helps every employee see how they impact the experience…
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The other thing that it does is allow every employee to understand how they impact the experience. By bringing in different stakeholders and different departments, we’re assigning ownership along the steps of the journey. So we can use those journey maps then for training and onboarding.
On that note, since I mentioned employees, the other thing that I mentioned to you is that journey maps aren’t just for the customer experience. It’s also for mapping the employee experience because without a great employee experience, we’re certainly not going to have a great experience. I think those are probably my two key messages.
Aaron: That’s great. That’s really helpful and you’ve definitely convinced me. The thing that I really liked was, and I’ve heard this before, but it didn’t quite hit me until you said it at the beginning of this, is – really mapping out the customers’ journey through its touch points with the company and defining it in terms what they are doing, thinking and feeling. Or is it thinking, doing, feeling? Does the order even matter?
Annette: The order doesn’t matter, but you definitely got to have the doing. So let’s put doing first. Yeah.
Aaron: Okay. That was something that really resonated with me. So really thanks so much for your time, Annette and it’s been a real pleasure. I hope to do this again with you.
Annette: That would be awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
How To Reach The Speakers
Aaron: Thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate your interest in this topic. I think it’s a very important topic for businesses and we want your feedback. Please email us at webinars@mindtouch.com. That will insure the timeliest response on the MindTouch side. You can always reach me at aaron@mindtouch.com.Annette, what’s the best way to reach you?
Annette: The best way to reach me is either through my Twitter account @annettefranz or through my website which is www.cx-journey.com.
Aaron: And there’s great resources up at http://www.cx-journey.com so I strongly encourage you to check that out and Annette’s a great resource on this topic. Again, thank you all for attending and really interested in getting your feedback. Have a wonderful day.
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