Omni-Channel Customer Engagement Article

While many companies today chase the ability to manage the customer experience (hence the idea of “customer experience management”), many companies are looking in the wrong places. Yes, it’s critical that customers have an array of options available to them in different channels. Yes, it’s critical that these channels be integrated in a way that customers can switch between them for a single transaction. To really get the customer experience right, however, companies first need to discover it, analyze it, test it and then improve it. This means that a map of the customer journey needs to be created.

Jeannie Walters, consultant and founder of 360Connext, says the journey needs to be examined down to the tiniest detail, so she uses the term “customer micromapping.” Tiny tasks the customer needs to perform to interact with a company in a digital or telephone channel may not seem like much, but skipping over them and assuming they are of no importance can be a large mistake.

“I’ve seen local businesses provide lackluster mobile experiences for customers, not considering what they might really do on mobile,” wrote Walters. “I’ve seen impossible login scenarios for those on Apple (News - Alert) products because nobody on the product release team used anything but a PC. These small moments are more than glitches.”

These “small moments” provide either an opportunity for customer delight or customer frustration, depending on how they are designed. Walters also notes that if you test the customer journey channel by channel, you may also miss many customer frustration points, since customers frequently jump channels.

“Jumping back and forth between an Android (News - Alert) mobile phone and a Mac laptop and the PC in the office should offer the same experience,” she wrote. “But if mapping is handled as an exercise in channels, the experiences will continue to be disjointed, inconsistent and frustrating!”

No matter how well you design your customer journey micromapping process, there will also be moments that will escape your notice. But if you can spot a majority of them, you can help cut any potential for customer frustration by half, or more, and increase the chances for customer delight. (Customers WILL notice when your processes don’t produce the same frustrations for them that your competitors’ processes do!) The process should be ongoing, so you can continually refine your customer support functions. Walter recommends having employees “play customers” and listen carefully to real customers.

“Having personas, understanding your customers, and staying close to the feedback they provide you all help you determine which scenarios are the most important to explore and test,” she wrote.