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Customer Experience LifecycleThis is not all about data. At the end of the day, customers will expect a great (unified) experience across multiple channels. While it takes data to know the customer and systems to remember them, only great experiences lead to amazing service.

If I call you, I reasonable expect you have a history of my transactions regardless of channel and how long I have been your customer. I also probable expect for you to remember other issues and challenges I’ve had and how they were resolved. A breakdown in that at any point creates painful experiences.

This speaks to having worked through the customer journey, what is working and what isn’t, and improving the experience for the customer. This journey should identify data that is useful to know and insights that can create for you in delivering stunning service.

While journey maps are about much more than data, it is important to look at what data you have, what data you could use and what insight that could create in improving the whole experience.

Pay particular attention to data (structure and unstructured) that you already have from customers via your call center, web site, social media comments and email responses. There is a richness here that can inform the customer journey and the data that can used to improve it.

Improving the experience for the customer by providing front line staff better insights is foundational to the digital executive obsessed with the customer.  Journey maps without great data and insight could just be someone’s opinion.

Staff who are closest to the customer usually have a handle on what data and insight would be most useful to the journey mapping process. Be sure to engage them regularly.

Journey maps can be tedious and budgets may be constrained to bring in external resources to help. Consider an investment in training at least one of your staff who be the subject matter expert and facilitate the process, even if it just part time.

Here are the key ideas:

  1. Start with one segment or persona and develop a simple journey map.
  2. Begin by identify data that you have or gaps that exist in providing great insight.
  3. Encourage a focus on insight and improving the journey.
  4. See this as a holistic process integral to your ecosystem.
  5. Involve staff closest to the customer.