The Value of Creating a Customer Journey Map
Many companies are realizing the value of creating a customer journey map, especially given the significant rise in customer purchasing power.
The purpose of creating a customer journey map is to better understand the various interactions your customers have with your company through an outside-in approach while improving customer experiences throughout the customer life cycle.
Whether the interaction with the customer occurs during acquisition, onboarding, engagement while using your product or service, or even within retention, customers’ expectations are higher than they have ever been. Creating a customer journey map provides meaningful insight to meet those higher expectations and drives significant value by defining actionable and measurable outcomes.
Our Customer Experience (CX) is Our Priority
I am currently leading my third customer journey map initiative through various leadership roles I have previously held within sales, marketing, and commercial teams. All three initiatives were unique and all of them provided tremendous insight, resulting in improved customer experiences. The current initiative with Miller Tanner Associates has been the most significant effort whereby our team is currently assessing all touchpoints our customers have with us.
In order to complete a comprehensive customer journey map, it is important to engage the right internal stakeholders in the process. Taking this comprehensive approach has resulted in the following:
- We have identified nearly 250 unique customer touchpoints across the different functions within the company (marketing, proposals, sales, operations, finance, and technical service).
- The working groups have identified over 100 unique opportunities to improve the customer journey through revising internal processes, closing a potential gap with a customer touchpoint, or implementing stronger engagement through a new solution altogether.
- By taking an outside-in approach and maintaining focus on the customer’s perspective, we have created greater alignment and engagement across the different departments in not only identifying potential gaps but collaborating to find solutions.
While we were surprised at the overall number of touchpoints and opportunities, especially for a company who prides itself on creating unique and memorable client experiences, the customer journey map allowed us to capture this information in a highly organized way. In order to create a more manageable list of opportunities that will ultimately improve the customer journey, the internal committee leading the effort took an additional step to prioritize and rank the potential solutions. We are now working through our highest priority items first, pulling together working groups from the functional leaders involved with any given customer touchpoint, to review and implement the best possible solution.
As we work our way through the priority list, we will improve the overall customer experience throughout their journey while also removing internal pain points. Beyond having a deeper understanding of our customers and their needs, we are improving our process and closing gaps throughout the customer journey, some of which were hidden beneath the surface and unknown to us before completing the customer journey map. The results have been extremely positive, creating a strong sense of collaboration between different internal groups as we remain focused on doing what is right – improving the customer journey to provide an even greater experience working with Miller Tanner Associates.
Best regards,
Scott Nodolf, Chief Revenue Officer
