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Today’s post is a modified version of a post I originally published on Touchpoint Dashboard’s blog on June 11, 2015.

Remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercials from the ’80s? The ones where two people – one eating chocolate, the other holding a jar of peanut butter – collide and exclaim: “Hey! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” and “Hey! You got your peanut butter on my chocolate!”

At the time, I suppose they were two things that we traditionally didn’t believe went together (yea, right!) – a bit like how many think about metrics and journey maps.

As long as we’re talking about traditional thinking, when we talk about the traditional approach to mapping, images of butcher paper and Post-It Notes come to mind. This approach to mapping is still widely used today, but it has some flaws, not the least of which is that it’s difficult to analyze and prioritize touchpoints and improvement opportunities. Why? Because there’s no way to easily and efficiently assign data to each touchpoint, a precursor – and a requirement – to said analysis and prioritization, and you can’t easily crosstab and modify views to do the analysis.

In a previous post, I mentioned that mapping tools had to evolve because people failed to see the value in mapping with the then-current approaches; in addition, maps were not proving to be that catalyst for change that they are designed to be. In order to be that catalyst, maps have to be actionable. And the only way they can be actionable is if you have some data to support or to drive that action. Executives love data and metrics, right? Data-driven decisions are all the rage, and rightly so.

Where do the data and metrics come from? And what kind of data?

There are two types of data that will be critical to include in your maps:

1. Customer data: this is your voice of the customer (VoC) data and metrics, including satisfaction, importance, NPS, customer effort score, and verbatims/comments about the experience.
2. Business data: for a lack of a better way to label it, this data is all about the business impact; it’s revenue, profitability, retention, cost to fix, time to fix, effort to fix, impact to fix type of data.

When you assign these types of data to each touchpoint (for which you have it and where it makes sense), you are setting yourself up to make data-based decisions around prioritizing improvements. You’ll be able to determine if you’re making improvements that are most important to your customers, while also understanding the cost or the effort to do so.

You’ll also be able to build your business case for these improvements. You’ll easily be able to answer questions such as: “If we fix this, how will it impact our customers?” and “If we fix this, what is the business impact?” and “Why should we fix this?”

Just like the Reese’s commercial ends with, “Two great tastes that taste great together,” metrics and maps are two great tools that work great together. Once you put them together, you’ll wonder how you were ever able to do your job without them.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. -Vincent Van Gogh

Related posts:

Optimize Your Customer Journey Generating Insights for Better Product Development – Part 2 Achieving A Single Customer View Through Cross-Channel Data Integration How to Keep CX Positive Amidst COVID-19