Journey mapping is certainly a noble endeavor when it comes to evaluating the level of customer experience a particular brand offers.
But, especially for multi-faceted brands, this task takes on added weight when faced with hundreds of discrete customer journeys, each owned by different teams or departments, with every change subject to review by multiple stakeholders.
Focusing on a macro view of the entire journey, rather than focusing on individual interactions, is a step in the right direction according to Cindy Chastain, group head, customer experience & design, MasterCard.
Maybe more critical, however, is the creation of a CX innovation framework−a shared language and culture that defines product and service strategies with the help of prototyping and design.
Chastain discussed this topic during her session, “CX Design at Enterprise Scale,” at the recent Forrester CXSF 2016 Conference.
“Don’t just rely on VoC, but on quality data to discover unmet needs,” Chastain said. “Observe and dig deep. It’s really important to think about the quality of research. Gather qualitative research that captures observations and behaviors that point to unmet needs.”
Chastain cited an example of millennials and that group’s interest in guidance from financial brands.
“They (millennials) want advice on how they spend money,” she said. “Millennials hate credit cards and are terrified of getting a lot of debt. We did some research and discovered that they want to feel good about who they give their money to. They want help in understanding their spending. What they want is a big brother and a slap on the wrist if they are over-spending.”
Evolving the customer experience based on understanding emotional inflection points and moments of truth is crucial, Chastain said.
“We need to be thinking about how we can evolve our organizations,” Chastain said. “We are undergoing a major transformation. We’re a very different company than we were just five years ago.”
Chastain listed new digital products, including Groceries by MasterCard−which is a new app that enables consumers to order groceries directly from Samsung’s new Family Hub refrigerator. The first shopping app integrated into a refrigerator, Groceries by MasterCard connects consumers to leading grocers in the most convenient and efficient setting – their kitchen. Groceries redefines the family grocery shopping experience by allowing households to share, build, manage, and modify their grocery lists and shopping carts throughout the week.
“Digital is clearly driving our product strategy and marketing strategy, as well as the idea of putting the customer at the center of everything we do,” Chastain said. “With a business this complex, you can’t have a top-down CX strategy and roadmap to roll the ball up the CX hill.”
Where do you begin to figure out how to move the needle within a complex organization?
“What I found is a lot of the models out there don’t work for us,” Chastain said.
Moving the needle, Chastain said, requires cultural changes, along with changes in mindset and values.
“That will help bring new practices and new ways of working to everyone,” she said, and “empower everyone in the organization so that they can drive innovation. Clearly, journey mapping is an important place to start. It gives us focus for a scalable view of the CX. But, it’s not enough.”
Chastain said companies need to find their customers’ unique behaviors and learn what new technologies can transform this journey or product.
How do we leverage journey mapping?
“You have to do something that’s scalable and flexible,” she said. “Design thinking creates collaborative working scenarios. It introduces validation to prototyping early on. Create a scalable framework that leverages design and actually changes the way people work.”
What’s more, Chastain said, companies should focus on taking insights, creating new ideas from them, and attaching a value proposition to them.
“CX strategy is intended to clarify the value you’ll bring to this particular thing and what it will do for the business,” Chastain said. “This works across any business and you could go through this process in a week, three weeks, or three months, depending on the complexity of the thing you’re looking at.”