We Set Out to Change an Outcome

Greg Barnett, GM - Customer Insights

Did you know that, more often than not, customer journey maps become meeting room wall paper within weeks of completion and cease to be noticed by the teams who commissioned them? We’ve seen over many years working with our customers how they frequently end up as a vanity metric.  Journey maps are great for creating shared understanding but lack the detail and measurability to really drive change.

For customers and organisations alike, reaching a goal can feel like a bit of a maze. As customers, we often get forced down all sorts of branching paths by organisations we deal with. As organisations, it can seem just as troubling, trying to find ways to help customers. One of our frustrations working with customer journey mapping over the years was that progress often slowed or even stopped once the maps were finished and shared with a team. Given the vortex of business-as-usual they just weren’t actionable enough to maintain team momentum aligned to business objectives.

On the back of a passionate desire to develop an approach that helps customer experience professionals drive their NPS (Net Promoter Score®) missions, we set out to change this outcome.

Having a long history in modelling and system visualisation we sought a way to leverage our deep knowledge of NPS. Working with Dr Daniel Powell, a seasoned modeller and system engineer for the Australian defence industry, we experimented to build a solution that can leverage the data used in customer journey mapping; but, expand it into a measurable, actionable approach. To this end we developed Customer Journey Modelling, an approach that maps a journey in great detail and then quantifies all the steps in terms of likelihood to occur and resultant NPS impact.  This technique allows us to run ‘what-if’ scenarios to optimise customer engagement and satisfaction.

We’re incredibly excited about the potential for this new, innovative modelling technique and feel it brings great benefit to organisations by shining a light on key customer experience factors. More importantly, it allows us to model and predict outcomes from changes based on objective data to determine which is the most influential on the customer experience relative to the time, effort and resources required.

For our customers, the goal is to help them be the business of choice for people who want great products and service. We believe this can only be achieved through offering the best customer experience, over and above their competitors. By conducting our own research, analysing the available data, carrying out competitor benchmarking and articulating this into a Customer Journey Model we can provide insight that helps organisations achieve their intended goal, to deliver the quality that people expect.

Having been on our own transformational journey over the past five years, we understand the uncertainty and opportunities that the new digital paradigm can bring. Our response always is to challenge our own and our customer’s mindset, avoid default thinking and find new ways to create value. Customer Journey Modelling continues to evolve as we learn more from our customers and we’d very much welcome your feedback.

To understand the process for Customer Journey Modelling and how it provides insight in a real-world environment, download the infographic.

For a "hands-on" demonstration of the Customer Journey Modelling approach, I'll be more than happy to help - just let me know.