During his session, “Mapping Manulife’s Direct-to-Consumer Path to Purchase,” at last week’s Confirmit Community Conference held in Orlando, Florida, Delvinia President, Steve Mast, told attendees that customer journey mapping is becoming a critical tool that can transform organizations, to make them think forward.
“It’s a catalyst for change,” Mast said. “If you can start mapping out what the future will look like, imagine the change you can create.”
Mast discussed the benefits of customer journey mapping with today’s digitally empowered customer at the points that are most critical to them. Delvinia helped Manulife Financial use customer journey mapping within its direct-to-consumer business to identify opportunities to innovate and improve the customer experience.
Through the customer journey mapping process, coupled with persona work, Manulife gained a better understanding of who its customers are and how they were interacting with the brand. This enabled Manulife to empathize with its customers and identify areas to improve service, which led to the introduction of a mobile website, the award-winning CoverMe Packing App, and a way for the brand to differentiate itself in the marketplace.
The importance of knowing who your customers are and how they buy, seamlessly moving in and out of offline and online worlds, has never been more essential for brands, Mast explained.
Mast said that 50% of people access five different online sources before purchasing, and five more offline.
“Only one of those touch points they access are brand-related,” he said. “We’re really trying to improve processes, people, and technologies. We’re really trying to look at all those customer touch points, find the barriers and pain points so we can improve them or remove them, and improve the customer journey. A lot of people are scared (of customer journey mapping) because of the investment of time, money, and resources.”
Delvinia has worked with Manulife since 2005. Manulife wasn’t sure how to connect all of its marketing touch points.
“They really weren’t sure where to maximize their marketing budgets,” Mast explained. “Today’s path-to-purchase is a complex, dynamic, and digital journey.”
Why map the customer journey?
- To gain deep insight into what your customers are doing.
- Document all existing touch points
- Help reinvent the customer experience
With Manulife, Mast said there was some evidence of brand confusion and company officials were unsure how customers moved between marketing channels. Online sales were holding, but there was a growing demand for a mobile component.
Mast said the goal for Manulife was: “To understand and map the path-to-purchase as a means to improve the buying process for CoverMe insurance products and to better leverage digital experiences at each stage.”
The approach comprised an online survey of customers and non-customers via AskingCanadians.com followed by mapping the “gates” to purchase, 20 in-depth 1-on-1 interviews, and two months of social monitoring.
Leveraging existing data and persona work is critical, Mast said.
“I think personas are tied together with journey mapping,” he explained. “Put a face to it, tell a story.”
As a result, this created a detailed visualization of the path-to-purchase, Mast said. A full-day stakeholder workshop was held and stakeholders then package and act on the recommendations.
Mast offered three “buckets” of recommendations:
Acquire: Increase brand visibility in physical and mobile spaces
Convert: Improve conversion by better aligning Coverme.com with consumers’ purchase journey
Intelligence: Improve the customer intelligence to refine marketing spend
Simplifying the online experience increased business from 9% to 30%.
“Keep the brand top of mind,” Mast said. He noted a staggering 44% app usage rate for Manulife.
While a detailed data visualization of the customer journey is the deliverable, mast said that adding a layer of storytelling helps to bring the journey to life.
“It’s not uncommon for us to develop customer personas for the more popular user segments using information we’ve collected from customer data, surveys, and interviews,” he said. “That persona gets augmented with a face, name and personal information and then we craft a narrative (based on data) that sees that persona travel through the customer journey we have mapped.”
Customer journey mapping tells companies what customers are doing and how they’re doing it, Mast said.
“With a customer experience map in hand, you will learn not only how your customers are moving through this new path to purchase, but why they make the choices they do and how they feel about the experiences you deliver,” Mast explained. “The process also identifies pain points in the customer journey and uncovers how you can leverage new, emerging digital technologies to address those issues and optimize the customer experience for the future.”