I’m excited to be a keynote speaker at CCW Nashville in January. As part of our partnership, I am sharing some of the content created by my fellow event speakers and offered on the CCW website.
In today’s post, I’m sharing a few tidbits that Lemon Poindexter, Customer Relations Manager at Nashville Electric Service (NES), wrote about in a report titled Understand Customer Mindset with Journey Mapping.
Business Goals
NES identified that the most important goal of journey mapping is to bring the organization together for the good of the customer and the customer experience. In order to do this, they include the entire organization in creating their journey maps.
Note: While I love this goal, unfortunately the way journey mapping is described in the report makes it sound more like process mapping and/or assumptive mapping, so read with caution. They are “co-creating” customer experiences with their agents, not with customers. Ideally, you will have customers in the room, mapping with you. In our world, that is the definition of co-creation: with customers.
Having said that, one of the positives is that they do read customer reviews as a part of their mapping exercises. In addition to bringing the voice of the customer into the maps, it has shifted the thinking and the conversation internally from “them” to “us,” ensuring that all employees feel responsible for the customer feedback and experience (good or bad), i.e., no cross-functional finger pointing.
Walking in Your Customer’s Shoes
Lemon shares the story of one memorable customer who had poor eyesight and had forgotten to bring her glasses to the NES location to pay her bill. She couldn’t read the signs or the kiosk screen in the lobby. Her feedback and experience resulted in the NES team touring the lobby without their glasses, thus empathizing with the customer by walking in her shoes. The result: a complete lobby remodel, including larger signage.
Note: While we don’t advocate redesigning an experience based on feedback from one customer, NES was in the process of compiling personas, and there were/are likely other customers with similar issues
Know the Tool. Embrace the Process.
I’ve said and written it many times before: journey mapping is a powerful tool and process. Know the tool; embrace the process. Map with customers and with key stakeholders in the room. Bring feedback and data into your maps. Understand your customers: who they are, their pain points, their problems to solve. Understand their heads and their hearts. Then create service blueprints to understand how the business supports and facilitates the customer experience. Ideate and design the future state experience with customers.
Download the CCW report. Join me at CCW Nashville. Use my code (20CCWN_FRANZ) for a 20% discount. Get a signed copy of my book at the event! And check out these other great speakers:
- Jerry Greenfield, Co-Founder, Ben & Jerry’s
- Susanna Hadley, Sr. Program Manager, Customer Experience Strategy, T-Mobile
- Brian Gillespie, VP, Forecasting & Financial Excellence, Customer Experience, Comcast
- Deana Perrin, Senior Director, Global Head of Strategic Initiatives, Groupon
- Todd Straka, Lead Customer Experience Designer, Finish Line
- Brian Clancy, Learning & Performance Improvement, Contact Center Operations, AARP
Annette Franz is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader, coach, speaker, and author. Her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business), is available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter for updates, insights, and other great content that you can use to up your CX game.
