The document discusses journey mapping and activation challenges. It provides an overview of how one company, The Institutes, used journey mapping to better understand their customers. They assembled a cross-functional team, conducted research, and created persona and journey maps. Both quick hits and longer-term initiatives were identified from insights. The company is now using journey maps across marketing, product design, and other areas. Finally, six enablers for activating journey maps are provided: executive support, governance systems, journey data/analytics, continuous measurement, accelerating value, and ongoing improvement.
Ensure your maps are focused, informed and defensible
Drive to enable specific actions and activities that drive visible results
Document the impact of these efforts, and link to business value
Knowing the challenges others face makes it easier to avoid them.
Start with building the right maps to begin with (Opportunistic to Intentional)
Doing so in a way that journey mapping is no longer a one-off effort, but becomes business as usual â prioritizing business problems/opportunities and using journey mapping as a tool to solve known problems versus a tool to identify problems.
Helping the organization move from using maps to identify problems to prioritizing solutions
An improving the potential impact these journey maps can have on organizational success by assessing the real value of improvements to the experience by incorporating ties to customer, operational, and financial business metrics.
That allows you to move from just making people aware of the customer journey through socialization of journey maps, to driving accountability for action â across the organization â with solutions that solve real, known customer problems and have defined business impact.
This demands that journey mapping be used to move the organization out of operating in functional silos and move toward solving the problems through collaboration on solving the biggest organizational challenges that impact customers - working together to develop seamless cross-journey, cross-business experiences.
And that these maps move from static to living (as youâve described) Â
Many journey mapping initiatives are âone offs.â The challenge is moving from journey mapping as a âpoint solutionâ to an embedded approach to solving customer issues and improving business performance that becomes âbusiness as usualââŠ
Every journey mapping effort finds many problems to solve. But challenges can occur when these problems donât turn into solutions â and those solutions arenât meaningfully prioritized in ways that drives near-term âquick winsâ as well as longer-term solutions
Good journey mapping efforts are guided by cross-functional teams. But itâs a challenge to actually use the maps to inform and drive cross-org efforts, engaging stakeholder groups with the map providing a common understanding
âSocializationâ includes â but often stops at â sharing maps across the org. The challenge is getting the broader organization to both truly understand and ACT on what youâve learned. Moving toward driving accountability within the organization for solving the specific problems identified
No one wants to undertake an effort that doesnât show results. The Challenge is how you ensure those results link to measurable, visible value in ways that support business goals and objectives.
If youâre not solving a known business problem/opportunity, itâs really difficult to tie business metrics back to the map and the value (or impact) that certain improvements can achieve. Â Tying the problem/opportunity to known business, financial or operational metrics is key to demonstrating value and getting the organization to support a focus on improving the experience.
Today, most maps are static. Often, theyâre built once, used and abandoned. The challenge is making maps âliveâ â so they change as customers and interactions do, continually informing teams in the dynamic, customer-centric world we live in
104+ years of experience
More than 25 professional designations
100+ courses offered
>13,000 credentials conferred every year
Largest insurance publisher in the U.S.
250,000+ students have earned designations
âDevelop and deliver a consistent and cohesive experience across digital, web and content, anticipating content and educational needs
through a better understanding of buyer and customer behavioral patterns.â
1. Deliver cohesive brand messaging and customer-centric content
2. Improve the omni-channel customer experience, regardless of entry point
3. Leverage digital to drive customer experience transformation
4. Understand where to focus investments for marketing and sales initiatives
5. Champion a customer-centric corporate culture, across the enterprise
âWhat We Thought We knewâ As with most orgs, we had many ideas about our customers, and the ways they interacted with, and thought about, The Institutes.
Online focus groups helped us identify customer expectations and experiences across their journey with us.
Online surveys quantified customersâ expectations and perceptions of their experience (and gaps) across their journey
75 unique ideas
With importance, sequence and effort driven by applied prioritization criteria to select the work to execute
Re-invention of customer experiences through a digital experience
Clear focus on customer lifetime value - ensuring systems integration, implementation and operationalization planÂ
Ongoing transformation of the Customer-centric corporate culture
Teams are using journey maps and research across the organization, to make better-informed business decisions
Weâre creating marketing programs based on the maps, communicating across the end-to-end journey for our customers
Weâre actively designing new products, services and experiences based on insights into customer wants and needs