Giving customer journeys the
respect they deserve
January 2016
Neil Ward-Dutton, Research Director
MWD Advisors is a specialist advisory firm which provides practical, independent industry insights to business
analytics, process improvement and digital collaboration professionals working to drive change with the help of
technology. Our approach combines flexible, pragmatic mentoring and advisory services, built on a deep
industry best practice and technology research foundation.
This paper has been sponsored by Software AG
© MWD Advisors 2016
www.mwdadvisors.com
Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
2
Who cares about customer journeys, anyway?
The challenge of competing in a digital world
We live in a world – in our lives as individuals outside work, as well as our lives at work inside organisations –
where information and communications technology is arguably the most potent force driving change.
The accelerating global spread of ideas and expectations means that attempting to create a competitive
position based purely on the price of goods or services that you offer, or on product features and functions, is
increasingly difficult. When it comes to price, increasingly it’s the case that there’s somebody somewhere in the
world who is prepared to offer the same thing as you, cheaper. When it comes to products, increasingly it’s the
case that there’s somebody somewhere in the world who can copy your product (legally or illegally) and access
your market in what is, in historical business terms, the blink of an eye.
Delivering sustainable competitive differentiation in a digital world has to be about more than products and
price – it has to also be about aiming to deliver the best possible experience to each customer. As figure 1
shows: the availability of digital technologies shapes people’s expectations, as well as driving new
requirements in competitive strategies. Taking this new digital reality seriously means taking a structured
approach to understanding and improving customers’ experiences.
Figure 1
How digital technologies and services drive change and challenge
Global
competition,
commoditisation
Customer
expectations
Digital
technology,
services
Customer
Experience
focus
Source: MWD Advisors
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www.mwdadvisors.com
Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
3
Customer experience and customer journeys: looking from the
outside, in
When we talk about ‘customer experience’, what does that mean?
A ‘customer experience’ is the cumulative effect of multiple customer interactions with an organisation over
time.
Customers’ experiences aren’t only shaped by customer service teams: they’re shaped by the interactions they
have online; conversations with salespeople; the quality of a product; the accuracy of bills; and so on. By
definition, delivering great customer experiences depends on activities that your organisation carries out
across many teams and departments.
This is where the concept of the ‘customer journey’ comes in. A ‘customer journey’ is often metaphorical – it’s a
way of looking at all those interactions from the perspective of the customer as they experience them. It’s the
process through which a customer comes to have a particular total experience in dealing with your
organisation.
Typically speaking, at a very high level a generic customer journey has four main stages:
! Awareness. The beginning of a customer’s (or indeed a prospect’s) journey with us occurs when a
need that we can fulfil (perhaps the need to take out a mortgage, replace a worn-out refrigerator) first
comes to the surface.
! Exploration. In most circumstances, a potential buyer will then start to explore alternative ways of
fulfilling that need. They might examine the offerings of multiple suppliers; they might even look at
multiple different types of products or services. (For example, someone wanting to travel to Germany
to see their mother might explore not only flight options, but also train travel, etc.)
! Purchase. Assuming the need is still present, the customer makes a decision to purchase a particular
product or service that fulfils the need.
! Use. The customer makes use of the product or service that they’ve bought. Note that the details of
this stage can vary widely, particularly between customers using products and customers using
services. If I buy a new refrigerator, my experience here might be dictated by the installation service I
receive from a delivery company; the readability of the user manual; the reliability of the product. If I
take a flight, my experience might be dictated by my car journey to the airport; checking my bags; the
on-time arrival (or not) of my flight; the helpfulness of the cabin crew; and so on. Fundamentally, many
service businesses benefit from (but are also often challenged by) the fact that the value they deliver is
much more closely tied to in-person interactions with customers.
However it’s often helpful to also consider stages relating to upgrading, replacement, seeking help with
questions or problems, and evangelising the product or service to others.
If you’re serious about improving customer experiences, then you should be working to map out your
customers’ journeys – so you can start to more deeply understand how customers experience your organisation
over time, and so you can start to look for improvement priorities. Your ultimate goal should be to drive
changes in your organisation to ensure that as many customers as possible (at least, those within your key
target segments) travel a whole journey from awareness to evangelism; you don’t want them to ‘drop out’.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
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Dealing with changing expectations; hiding complexity
The value of exploring and mapping customer journeys comes fundamentally from the fact that it forces us to
take an ‘outside-in’ perspective of how our organisations behave and deliver value to customers over time.
There are two hugely important reasons why exploring customer journeys is so revealing – and important – in
today’s world, where so many services and experiences have already been digitised:
! Customers have all the power, and their behaviour can be hard to predict. 15 years ago, it was
suppliers selling to customers who had all the knowledge and power – customers were typically quite
knowledge-poor regarding product features and benefits, purchase alternatives, pricing and so on.
Customers’ expectations of being able to explore marketplaces and buy online were modest, and the
journeys that customers could take were predictable – and to a significant extent under your control.
Now, though, because of the widespread use of digital services customers’ journeys through
awareness, exploration, purchase and so on are less and less predictable: they may switch between
your website, a partner/reseller website, a comparison site, an online forum, a social network like
Facebook, a mobile app… the variety in the detail of customer journeys can be bewildering.
! Our organisations are generally not set up to support behaviours that promote customercentricity. Most organisations of any significant size, whatever their industry, are internally arranged
around functionally-specialised departments and divisions (sales, marketing, operations, customer
service, finance, and so on). None of these functionally-specified units can by itself get a true end-toend perspective of a customer’s journey, and none can make enough change by itself to really drive
end-to-end improvements in customer experience.
Exploring customer journeys gives you the opportunity to properly understand customers’ behaviour across
multiple channels and venues; and it also provides you a very powerful ‘outside-in’ counterpoint to the natural
‘inside-out’ perspective that individual teams and departments tend to have when considering how to improve
their strategies and operations.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
5
The importance of maps and mapping
Digging into customer journey maps
Despite the clear business value of customer journey maps and mapping, our experience is that it’s still very
much the preserve of innovators and market leaders. One result of this is that there’s no clear agreed industrystandard approach or notation to follow when creating customer journey maps.
Figure 2
An example customer journey map template
CUSTOMER
STEREOTYPE
PROFILE
CUSTOMER
GOALS
TOUCHPOINTS
& EMOTIONAL
RESPONSE
Awareness
Exploration
Purchase
Use
Assistance
Evangelism
What is the
customer trying
to achieve?
When, where
and how does
the customer
experience your
organisation?
What’s positive
and what’s
negative?
CUSTOMER
THOUGHTS
What is the
customer
thinking about
as they have
this experience?
IMPROVEMENT
IDEAS
What can we do
to improve
things?
Source: MWD Advisors
Nevertheless, in our research we’ve found that the most successful mapping exercise revolve around maps that
bring together the following elements (as shown in figure 2):
! A persona. Before starting the mapping exercise, you should work to define a set of customer
personas that represent the key customer segments you’re interested in understanding. How old is the
person? What’s their name? What’s their job? Where do they live? What do they like and dislike? Each
map should then be tuned to the journey that this persona would likely take, and the feelings they’d
experience along the way.
! The customer journey stages that make sense for your business. For a high-level map, don’t go into
deep detail about the individual actions a persona would take; stick to high-level journey stages – but
tune them to your business and use language that makes sense to your colleagues.
! Customer goals. At each stage of the customer journey you’re mapping out, highlight what this
particular persona wants and needs to achieve.
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! Touchpoints and ‘moments of truth’. At each stage of the journey, what are the key ‘touchpoints’
where the customer experiences your brand directly? What channels do they use? Are there any
‘moments of truth’ where your organisation has the opportunity to delight the customer, or
alternatively influence them to abandon their journey?
! Thoughts and feelings. How does this persona experience your organisation at key touchpoints, and
how does this make them feel? Organisations use a variety of mechanisms to indicate this: some use
numerical ratings; others use happy, sad or neutral faces for example.
! Recommendations. What insights can you take from the map regarding how to improve customer
interactions? These might relate to providing better or more timely information; ensuring consistency
in interactions; sharing knowledge better between teams; and so on.
Maps and mapping bring value in two ways
When considering whether to conduct a customer journey mapping exercise, it’s important to realise that the
act of mapping customer journeys delivers value in at least two distinct ways.
The first type of value comes from the result of mapping: the customer journey maps you will create are
valuable tools that will help galvanise your organisation to see itself in a new light and build momentum for
projects that will make positive changes to operations in support of customer needs.
However the second type of value comes from the process of customer journey mapping, not the maps
themselves.
Customer journey mapping must not be carried out by small teams of business analysts in private. It should be
carried out through workshops that can be led by business analysts and subject-matter experts (SMEs), but
workshops should take input from real customers, and they should involve representatives of front-line teams
that interact with customers every day – you might need to invite customer service reps, sales reps, booking
agents, retail store associates, field engineers, and so on.
The reason? Every participant in a mapping workshop is going to be potentially affected by the changes that
are being explored. Their day-to-day jobs and the procedures they follow may alter substantially, and change is
hard: very few people truly thrive on change. People who feel they’re doing a great job fear change because
they fear it will make them less successful; people who feel they’re struggling fear change because they worry
they will fall further.
What we know helps conquer fear of change, though, is to make sure that people who are potentially affected
feel empowered by and involved in the change process. By embracing the voices, thoughts, hopes and fears of
teams picked from different parts of your organisation, customer journey mapping workshops can act as
rallying points for people who can become champions of the changes you will want to make.
Let’s look at three industries where customer journey mapping is particularly important right now.
The value of customer journey mapping in retail
For retailers, customer journey mapping is vital to make sense of customer behaviour trends – and prioritise
changes to operations which ensure that customer experiences are both seamless across channels, and which
make the most of opportunities to compete more effectively in a world of high customer expectations about
pricing, assortment availability, fulfilment, and responsiveness.
Retailers know that the impact of the internet continues to be deeply disruptive, more than 20 years after the
first e-commerce transactions took place. What started in manufacturing and wholesale distribution is now
rocking retail – driven particularly by the growth in use of smartphones and other mobile devices. If you’re in
retail, the chances are that you have a customer-centricity strategy that’s tied to the idea of omnichannel
retailing – the ability to create consistent experiences across customer journey stages, and across all channels.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
7
Figure 3
An example customer journey map for a retailer: BOPIS
Source: Software AG
One particular project that’s commonly pursued is focused on “buy online, pickup instore” (BOPIS); and
another, closely related, is “buy online, return instore” (BORIS). For some customers this capability offers
added convenience; and for retailers, of course, it can help avoid shipping charges and incentivise shoppers to
visit physical stores. Figure 3 shows an example customer journey map for a retailer focused on a BOPIS
proposition.
The high-level business case for implementing BOPIS and BORIS can seem very appealing – and indeed the
majority of large retailers (upwards of 80% in developed markets) have already implemented BOPIS and/or
BORIS to some extent. However it’s only by really exploring how such a capability adds value in the context of
a customer journey that a retailer can really understand how to deliver seamless service.
Do you allow customers to create ‘mixed carts’ that blend items for home delivery with items for store pick-up?
Do you enable items to be shipped from online fulfilment centres to stores to cover store stock shortages? Do
you have real-time views of inventory across stores and online? Can you help shoppers locate and select
products that are eligible for in-store pickup?
Shoppers expect clear and prompt communication about availability and delivery of orders, so your fulfilment
operations had better be integrated across channels.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
8
The value of customer journey mapping in banking
For banks, customer journey mapping is vital to make sense of how customers interact with them across
channels – and prioritise changes to operations which ensure that customer experiences are both seamless
across channels, and which help them fend off challenges from new ‘digital’ banks.
All banks in mature markets need to understand how to continue to shift their businesses away from being
purely transactional, to being increasingly relationship-based. Growth is right at the top of most banks’
strategic agendas; in the current environment it’s not possible for them to revisit the kinds of Return-on-Equity
(ROE) they enjoyed before the financial crisis of 2007-09 just by cutting costs. Particularly in mature markets
with low interest rates, growth will come from selling high-margin products and services that are renewable.
Figure 4
An example banking customer journey map: account opening
Source: Software AG
Renewable products and services only work if you build customer relationships that promote renewal; banks
are looking to deliver personalised engagement with customers that delivers consistently across all modern
service channels – in-branch, phone, online and mobile. As customers’ expectations become more
sophisticated and habits become more complicated to predict, building long-term relationships with them has
to come from real cross-channel integrated views of their behaviour over time. Figure 4 provides an example
customer journey map focused on current account opening.
The challenge for many established banks is that they have a heritage of approaching integration from a
primarily technical perspective – concentrating on reconciling transaction and account information across
channels, for example, rather than really working to integrate and co-ordinate business activities across
channels.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
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The value of customer journey mapping in communications and
media industries
For communications and media service providers (CSPs), customer journey mapping is vital because – as is the
case in the banking industry – customers are not short of choice in suppliers; products are easily matched by
competitors; customer loyalty is increasingly difficult to foster (and indeed customers shop around for the best
deal more readily than ever); and customers’ expectations of service availability and flexibility are increasing.
Figure 5
An example customer journey map for a CSP: triple-play service
Source: Software AG
New entrants in mobile telecoms (Mobile Virtual Network Operators or MVNOs), and Over-the-top (OTT)
service providers in media and communications have the advantage in terms of agility in the market and
frequently perform better in terms of customer satisfaction ratings than older, larger, ‘pre-digital’ incumbent
telcos and media players.
Even though the communications and media sector is known, generally speaking, for delivering sophisticated
loyalty and retention programmes and work hard to make prices competitive, established CSPs Average
Revenue Per User (ARPU) is tough to maintain – and customer churn is also hard to control. Adding new
services (streaming movie services, mobile TV content, in-car WiFi, and so on) is popular, but it increases
complexity: not only are customers interacting with CSPs through multiple channels at multiple customer
journey stages; they’re experiencing CSP products and services in multiple ways and combinations, too. Figure
5 shows a customer journey map focused on triple-play service purchase and provisioning.
Unless CSPs can get to grips with detailed customer journey maps, the complexity of the service delivery
landscape, in conjunction with the complexity of sales and marketing channels, means they will find it difficult
to really build lasting foundations for competitive success in their target market segments.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
10
One hand tied behind our backs
We’ve seen how customer journey mapping delivers business value and why it’s so important in the current
business environment. So what are organisations doing about it? For many, the answer is “not enough”.
Simple tools have advantages, but aren’t enough by themselves
The vast majority of customer journey mapping exercises carried out today create initial maps on whiteboards
and walls with sticky notes, and subsequently business analysts or consultants turn the maps into digital images
using generic diagramming tools like Microsoft Visio and PowerPoint.
Working through initial mapping exercises in a physical space, using walls, pens and sticky notes, is a great
idea. As we noted above, customer journey mapping workshops deliver better outcomes if they’re open and
collaborative, involving diverse groups of stakeholders of various kinds. Working with physical tools and
materials helps get people deeply involved in the mapping process; discussing and debating the details of
each others’ ideas, adding detail to others’ inputs and so on all helps to ensure all voices are heard and the
brainpower in the room is best captured and utilised.
However it’s the transfer of these physical maps into digital images using simple diagramming tools that leads
to missed opportunities – because the creation of static images fails to support the true value of customer
journey mapping in three key ways:
! True collaboration. Once the physical artefacts of a mapping exercise are transferred into a ‘flat’,
static image, it’s not always easy to get the most out of later conversations or collaborations between
individuals. Static images might be easy to publish on an intranet site or upload to a shared folder, but
they don’t lend themselves easily to commenting, debate or change.
! Turning recommendations into actions through analysis. Customer journey maps by themselves are
valuable, but just as customer journeys are only really supported by the staff and systems that work
‘behind’ customer touchpoints, customer journey maps only really yield their most important insights
when you can link the elements within them (such as touchpoints) to other maps and models that
express your organisation’s business capabilities and processes. Only then can you really analyse the
implications of customer journeys as they are mapped – for example understanding the risks
associated with supporting (or not supporting) particular customer needs, understanding systems and
organisation changes – and help the broader organisation move forward in a systematic and informed
way.
! Managing knowledge over time. After a set of mapping workshops is complete, it’s important to be
able to take the resulting maps and manage them as ‘living documents’ in a way that truly reflects their
strategic value to the organisation. As maps get shared and discussed, changes and enhancements will
need to be made; it’s important that after the fact, teams can tell who changed what, when.
! Using maps as a source for deeper work. Once customer journey maps are agreed, it’s a wasted
opportunity to use them simply as reference material. Maps should be able to be easily used as source
material for downstream projects that aim to redesign or better-integrate internal organisational
systems and processes to support customer needs.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
11
We can do better: learning from others
We’ve talked here about how customer journey mapping creates and formalises an ‘outside-in’ perspective of
the systems, processes and capabilities in your organisation and how they truly support (or not) customer
needs: but we have so far not talked much about initiatives that support an ‘inside-out’ perspective.
An ‘inside-out’ perspective on a business and how it operates isn’t sufficient to drive a serious customer
experience initiative, but it is very valuable in the context of driving internal improvements – particularly when
allied to an ‘outside-in’ perspective. What’s more, it’s vital to understand the work of teams delivering these
initiatives because their experiences, skills and tools may hold the key to you really capitalising on the potential
of customer journey mapping to transform your business.
You probably have a team (and maybe have multiple teams) in your organisation that’s already mature in a
practice of inside-out business process improvement. Your organisation might call this Process Excellence (PE);
Business Process Management (BPM); Lean Six Sigma (LSS), or something similar. Teams of analysts working on
these projects have typically already ‘cracked the code’ of using tools and techniques that maximise the value
of maps and models in the context of business change projects.
Most business process improvement teams already use established Business Process Analysis (BPA) and
Enterprise Architecture (EA) tools and techniques that support:
! True collaboration. Maps and models aren’t captured as static images; they’re graphical, but they’re
graphical representations of sophisticated digital knowledge-bases about business processes,
activities, resources, costs, risks, strategies, and more. Tools typically enable open collaboration and
discussion around these models in various ways.
! Turning recommendations into actions through analysis. The sophistication behind the modelling
capabilities that are often found in the tools used by these teams make it possible to explore
connections between different concepts (activities, costs, resources, risks, etc), and explore and analyse
the implications of connections (for example: “What happens if we change this process or reallocate
this activity; what will be affected?”).
! Managing knowledge over time. Maps and models can be readily changed and multiple versions can
be stored and managed in parallel. Changes between versions of models can themselves be analysed
and audited.
! Linking into other maps and models. Maps can be used as the source for more detailed models,
enabling customer journey concepts and activities to be used as jumping-off points for deeper
explorations of how internal business systems, processes, resources and capabilities need to be
updated, changed, integrated, automated or redesigned to better support customer needs.
We already know how to improve on the tools and techniques typically used in customer journey mapping
exercises today; we just need to know where to look.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
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Connecting the dots: your next steps
So where next? If you only get as far as understanding problems and opportunities, you’ve really delivered
nothing. How can you link your outside-in insights to inside-out actions?
Figure 3 lays out a ‘capability map’ that shows how you need to develop key internal systems and capabilities
(shown in the lower layers) to support optimal customer interactions. In figure 3, customer journey mapping is a
key foundation stone for the uppermost layer of capability (Shaping the experience).
Figure 3
Capabilities to drive customer experience excellence
Depth of customer experience strategy
Making most
appropriate
offers
Maximising
lifetime
value
No
surprises
Delivering
on moments
of truth
Shaping core products,
services and processes around
customer preferences through
collaboration
Shaping
Delivering the most
appropriate customer
experience – requires
empowered people with the
right information, policies
Acting
Making customer knowledge
available to the right channels
so that it can be acted on
Surfacing
Knowing
Having an integrated view of
customers, their preferences
and their behaviour
Most people
work mostly
on this
Marketing
Sales
Operations
Service
Scope of customer experience strategy
Source: MWD Advisors
The fundamental foundation capability shown in figure 3 is Knowing your customer. But knowing your
customer – something you can work towards through smarter data integration and Master Data Management
initiatives – is not enough. You have to Surface that knowledge consistently and in a timely, consumable way to
all the customer interaction channels you employ across marketing, sales, operations and service. From a
technology point of view, this is about delivering foundational knowledge the context of key business
applications – something you can achieve with high-quality application integration technologies.
We’re not done there, either. Next you need to empower those working with customers to Act appropriately,
informed by the right information and policies – and you need to do that in a way that enables teams to coordinate work and share knowledge effectively through each customer journey. Business Process Management
technology can help here.
So – once you’re on the way with customer journey mapping – make sure you work to collaborate with
colleagues who can help you put these supporting capabilities in place, to prioritise improvement projects and
turbocharge your customer experience programme.
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Giving customer journeys the respect they deserve
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This paper was commissioned by Software AG, and independently researched and written by MWD Advisors.
© MWD Advisors 2016
www.mwdadvisors.com