Customer expectations evolve over time. Today, they demand a greater level of personalization than ever before. Customers share information with the brands they trust and, in return, expect experiences to be connected between and across channels. Ultimately, customers expect companies to know them and to interact with them in ways that reflect an understanding of their needs, their behaviors, and their preferences. Making this work requires a connected Customer experience ecosystem that tracks experiences delivered and creates real-time insights to predict and guide each interaction.
That ecosystem is fueled by data. data is at the heart of designing and delivering a great customer experience—a personalized experience. And there’s one important tool (process) that helps you to better understand the experience today and then design for a better future: journey mapping. More on that in a moment, because this all leads us to a very important conversation that I just had with three amazing experts on these topics.
In the latest episode of Born Digital, I was joined by three panelists:
We explored strategies to bring customer data together and make it more consumable and usable, and then talked about how to use it to deliver the experience that your customers expect. We covered journey mapping, service blueprinting, centralizing your data, developing a data strategy, and so much more.
I’ll touch on a few things we talked about, but definitely check out the entire episode to hear the details, examples, challenges, and expert insights.
Back to journey mapping. A critical piece of the journey mapping process is to incorporate data into the maps in order to bring the maps to life. Even though you’ve got customers in the journey mapping workshop telling you what they’re doing, thinking, and feeling as they complete some interaction or transaction with your brand, you’re also going to want to bring other data points into the maps.
Some of the reasons to do that are to:
During our conversation, Marko shared three key types of data that should be incorporated into the maps, all of which must be contextually relevant to the customer and to the journey the customer is on.
It’s also important to add artifacts to the map. Artifacts can include videos, screenshots, documents, pictures, receipts, invoices, and call recordings, which all help to further bring the experience to life for those who need to understand it and redefine and design it.
