Essential Requirements for Customer Journey Mapping Technology
Published: February 15, 2017 Number: 2017-05
Analyst(s): Jim Sinur
Summary
The customer experience will change the relationship that a constituent (customer, employee, partner, etc.) has with an organization and often affects organizational revenue streams. The foundation of that relationship will revolve around Customer Journey Maps, which are one of the easiest onramps to digital. This research note will focus on the essential requirements for Customer Journey Mapping technologies.
Topics:
- Digital Business, Digital Transformation, Digital Innovation, Digital Maturity, & Digital Leverage
Issue:
- What can business and technology professionals do to reach the digital objectives of better customer interactions, better services and products, and a better offer to demand balance?
- What is the importance of customer journeys in today’s hyper competitive world, where loyalty is a scarce commodity?
- What are the features of technology that support Customer Journey Mapping?
Introduction
The customer experience is the new competitive battlefield for organizations. Digital enables the opportunity to acquire new customers through better user experiences and new business models, products, and services. At the core of a great customer experience is the customer journey and how an organization’s process, systems, and people interact with its customers. Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is essential to all organizations, particularly digital-focused organizations.
Why Customer Journey Mapping Technology?
While organizations can use generalized tools, including pen and paper, to assist in creating Customer Journey Maps, it is Aragon’s belief that specialized CJM technologies can help organizations identify pain points in customer journeys faster through digitally supported journey maps. Ideally, it would be optimal for all Digital Business Platforms (DBPs) to have CJM functionality available, but few do so at this point in time.
These essential maps become the plan for effective digital implementation that supports collaboration to build consensus and commitment for the end game integrated journey. Technology can inform your map with data to shape opinions as well as the resulting target journeys and incremental transformation efforts (to read more, see Digital Success Leverages Customer Journey Maps, published on September 15, 2016).
What Features Does a Journey Mapping Technology Have?
Customer Journey Mapping should be ubiquitous and economical to support the large number of participants invited to participate in the journey mapping process. Organizations are likely to desire feedback from random prospects as well as loyal customers. Since these journey maps will be available far and wide, journey knowledge will be exposed to a larger pool of ideas and innovation sources. These ideas can be reviewed, tested, and implemented in faster cycles by leveraging larger, engaged audiences. This requires distinct functionality.
The functionality should be designed to support the usual progression of journey mapping that starts with a visual rendering of a map. Once this ‘jumpstart’ map is available, collaboration can begin to take place, which will allow a better, more developed version of the map to emerge. This map needs to then be validated with a wider audience and analyzed. Once a target map is created, then actionable steps are taken to implement the resulting journey either as a whole or in phases. This rollout must be managed in a professional manner with feedback taken at various points.
There are seven major categories of functionality that we have identified at this point in time. As this market matures and becomes integral with many digital efforts, there may be more areas of support emerging:
1. Journey Mapping Creation:
The notion of getting an entire team in the same room to create a journey map is not generally a viable idea today, so shared journeys across the organization and constituents are a must. Also, it is rare that organizations can start with a blank slate and walk away from existing journey maps and the processes that support them. Care must be taken in understanding the existing flows and what the customer really wants.
Quite often, organizations think they understand their clients’ happiness with existing flows because they design surveys that support their current approach. Often, flows are designed to stitch together the various job roles and are a patchwork quilt of compromise to meet an organizational unit’s goals as opposed to clients’ needs and desires. Clients are likely to point out opportunities for wringing some of the cost out of the present flows that will fund desirable new approaches and behaviors.
2. Journey Collaboration:
In order to generate a journey that clients and organizational units are happy with, a fair amount of collaboration must occur to gain commitment to the new journeys. Features that enable collaboration include screen sharing, mobile messaging, white boarding and annotating, Video and audio conferencing, and content management. Increasingly, Cloud-based Work Platforms are making this more of an integrated experience so that teams can work continually in a space or group
3. Journey Information Capture and Analysis:
It is important that a journey map is created with facts as well as opinions. This would include surveys and other data gathering methods like focus groups, as well as measuring existing processes and systems with the aim towards customer satisfaction above organizational efficiency. Potential changes can be suggested and simulated for a more fact based approach - instead of a customer experience being solely based on organizational unit compromise and measurements designed for cost savings. Good analysis captures all viewpoints and outcomes for consideration to change.
4. Journey Emotion Capture and Analysis:
It is crucial that a journey map captures emotions and feelings from all participants; it is important to capture the attention, attitude, goals, and the mood of each of the participants. This will entail gathering data from many types of process participants and aggregating them for further analysis. The soft side of the journey is just as important as the actual journey itself. This will give journey and process designers a better chance at creating an experience that differentiates an organization.
5. Journey and Analytical Visualization:
Along with the journey itself, which supports multiple levels of drill down, there must be representations of multiple and overlapping analysis. Along with the analysis, there must be a visual and perhaps animated representation of the various analysis methods. The ability to compare side-by-side solutions and analytical overlays to show impacts of future actions and efforts is a must.
6. Journey and Journey Tool Customization:
There should be a way to customize journeys by individual as well as groups. While the concept of a core journey is essential, the ability to handle variations is crucial. It may be geographic variations or market segments, but the reasons for variations are many. In addition, the tool itself should be able to be customized for new data attributes and user experience. Often, organizations want to gather data around factors that may not anticipated by the CJM vendor.
7. Journey Management and Sharing in the Cloud:
The cloud brings significant value for many kinds of shared modeling tasks, particularly CJM. Since CJM requires many participants collaborating in order to build a correct journey, the cloud model is ideal for the inclusion of many participants that may only participate in short and sharp periods of time.
Because cloud implementations support flexible scaling for supporting an unknown and emerging set of participants, this is ideal for CJM efforts. The need here is for mobile enablement anytime, anywhere, so a cloud platform fits well. CJM leverages the wisdom of crowds for better outcomes, so a cloud-flexible infrastructure is ideal.
Aragon Advisory
For Vendor Clients:
Organizations will be expecting Customer Journey Mapping technology, so getting ahead of the curve would be wise for either a build or buy scenario.
For End User Clients:
Journey mapping takes the long haul look at the customer experience and will yield the most benefit over time, if it becomes a habit. Start now for competitive advantage.
Bottom Line
Customer Journey Mapping is one of the easiest onramps to digital and is essential to complete before a major customer experience redesign. Minor customer experience changes just prolong the pain for the customer and should be avoided.
Additional Reading:
• Digital Success Leverages Customer Journey Maps
• The Digital Maturity Model for the Measurement of Digital Progress
• The Disruptive Rise of the Digital Business Platform