Find those ‘moment’s of truth’ – one journey at a time
A recent research report conducted by Forrester highlighted that 63% of marketers currently use journey mapping.
It is imperative to identify the high-value customer journeys that will contribute towards optimising the delivery of the desired customer experience.
Within these high-value customer journeys, looking for the ‘moments of truth’ are key. I love this phrase - ‘moments of truth’. Moments of truth occur when the map reveals a gap between a desired customer experience and what actually happens. These are the areas that have the biggest potential to influence the customer experience positively or negatively. It’s these moments of truth you want to spend your time and effort improving.
It is so important to do this from your customers’ perspective rather than guessing about your customers’ experience, take time to do your own research or access insights from valuable information you already have internally. This could include information from your call centres, surveys, customer complaints and measurements your company uses to gauge the voice of the customer. You need to collect information from all interactions that customers have with your business. These are important to your journey mapping inputs. It must also include not only what the customer is doing but also what she is thinking and feeling.
Aside from having already created your customer persona’s and articulated clearly your journey maps purpose, what are the key ingredients of a customer journey map? What are the key tasks you need to perform in order to create a successful map?
At OYA, we believe that to get your customer experience firing you need journey mapping. It is an effective way to understand and diagnose experience issues. By mapping the customer journey you can reframe and reimagine experiences to influence attitudes.
Using the voice of customer, include the following in your journey map:
1. Stages – define the stages of the customers journey.
2. Needs and interactions – identify what interactions customers have with your company and what customers need out of each interaction.
3. Key expectations-outline what the customer expects to accomplish at each stage.
4. Moments of truth – identify what the make or break moments your customers have throughout their journey.
5. Listening posts – indicate where are capturing customer feedback and align with those moments of truth.
6. Customer quotes-what is your customer saying that represents their thoughts and feelings.
7. Sentiment-at each stage of the journey your map should reflect customer sentiment.
Customer journey maps are a catalyst for change. Based on the insights in the map, potential opportunities for improvement should be identified.
A high value customer journey map is a living record fed by information gathered from the shifting expectations, wants and needs of customers. Revisiting the journey map may require 6 months, 18 months or 24 months depending on the pace of change on the products or service.
In the case of the pandemic, we have witnessed that customer purchase decisions and purchase behaviour shifted on a week to week basis due to the disruption and anticipation of changes In Public Health Policy.
Say HELLO via email, if you’d like to know more about customer research and journey mapping.
Pam Becker - OYA Founder
