After working in Sweden for 5-6 years I took the train from Gothenburg to Stockholm for the first time to attend a workshop on Customer Experience and Customer Journey Mapping. Since commuting across the country was a new experience for me, I chose to be 30min early for the train only to find the doors of the coach locked. Standing outside freezing, I took the time to find my ticket. I had received an SMS with my details a few days earlier, but to my surprise it said: “This is not your ticket”. So my customer experience with SJ prior to arriving at the Customer Experience and Customer Journey Mapping workshop wasn’t really a superb one.
While puffing and rumbling through the Swedish countryside, I had some time to prepare for the days to come. As a Product Owner it is of course imperative for me to understand everything about our product to deliver impeccable features and functionality to our customer. However in a complex market the complete customer journey has become more important the recent years and my expectations for the next two days was to gain insights of processes and tools on how to improve my work on Customer Experience and the full Customer Journey when purchasing our services.
The workshop kicked off with an introduction of the participants and their roles, following a thorough explanation of what Customer Experience and Customer Journey Mapping is. The workshop was divided into six parts, all aiming to make content customers and employees: Strategy, Insights, Design, Measurement, Management and Culture.
The way to interact with customers and the focus on customer experience has significantly changed during the last 100 years. Back in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson was president, and USA went through the Progressive Era the focus was mostly on the product itself. However in the 1950’s the focus moved more towards the american dream and a very strong brand focus and transitioning into stronger customer relations through the 1970’s and 1980’s.
The focus on Customer Experience as we know is today started for real around the millennium, where new technology became available to both understand and interact with the customer. Also the consumers matured and expected more than just a product, introducing terminology like retailtainment and entertainmerce.
At its core, Customer Journey Mapping is a methodology that enable insight and understanding of customer’s with the aim of developing products or services that support innovation and business development through earning the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers. In a nutshell, I would call it a form of result oriented customer service.
The workshop was tailored to serve a wide range of people, specifically people responsible for customer experience, others were business managers, business developers, support and customer service managers, marketing managers and marketers, strategists, and product owners. Learning about Customer Experience together availed is the opportunity to create connections and offer each other insights relating to our various fields.
Customer Experience Management is a strategy, methodology and process to manage a customers exposure, interaction and transaction with a corporation, a product/service and a brand. The discipline that is about developing service and business models that prioritize the customer in all of the company’s business processes, thus creating favorable conditions for growth. One of the fundamental aspects of CX is taking time to understanding the customer’s experience and contact points with your company. It involves careful documentation and recording of all forms of contact between a customer and the company to the extent that at a glance the customer’s journey can be visualized and understood easily; A Customer Journey Map if you will, which is a documentation/mapping of all the customer’s contacts with you as a company.
During the course of the two-day workshop on learning about Customer Experience, we created a Customer Journey Map for a fictitious company and integrated the results into our respective businesses. We started off by understanding Customer Experience as a business discipline and it’s concepts, what makes up a customer experience and how to understand it. We then proceeded to Customer Journey Mapping, creates models with the aid of working methods, practical steps and guidance. A large part of the workshop was focused on “learning by doing”.
We moved onto Persona and Empathy mapping, gathering customer insights, customer needs and behavior, contact points and channels. This part was more about how to appropriately gauge a customer’s response and feelings when they make contact with our business. We were also taught how to effectively record these to facilitate these to facilitate business growth modeling. Happy customer = better business!
Our knowledge on the workshop was then put to the test by presenting us with practical exercises on creating Customer Journey Map and how to measure the progress of our services linked to Customer Journey Mapping.
The final part of the learning curve was the most delicate: Business development and business management with CX and how you can introduce change to our business specifically. We were made to understand that without actual measurable growth, the aim of the workshop would not be met. So in essence, all CX and Customer Journey Mapping should lead to measurable growth.
Attending the two day workshop armed me with a lot of new skills in dealing with customers and I learnt basic understanding of Customers and experience as a business discipline. What I consider to be the most vital lesson learnt is understanding how an empathetic approach to customers can create an atmosphere that encourages sustainability and profitability in business for your company.
With all these exciting business models, I’m quite ready and anticipate implementing Customer Experience work plan!
Thank you to Camilla Lif and Johan Sjöström for a great workshop. If you enjoyed reading about the Customer Journey or have any questions or great ideas, feel free to reach out at bjorn.nostdahl@gunnebo.com 🙂