Chapter 6

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How to use customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping (CJM) is now becoming established as a standard component of customer programmes, but:

• What is the best methodology – how do you create maps quickly?
• How do you use what is in effect a customer treasure map and ensure that you actually have some ‘Xs’ that indicate where the treasure is buried in experience terms?
• What is the role of software to capture, share and manipulate maps?

Put simply, customer journey mapping is a structured way to understand and capture your customer’s wants, needs and expectations at each stage of their experience with your company. Then to capture the individual interactions from the customer viewpoint from initial awareness to leave and perhaps return.

CJM is also a tool for visualising how customers interact with an organisation across multiple channels and touch-points at each stage of the customer life cycle (or part of it). It provides a factual basis for change, a map of the interactions that take place and the emotions created at each touch-point. The flipside of CJM is EJM (employee journey mapping) and we will look at the business and cultural value of developing an EJM for your business.

At the end of this chapter you will be able to: create a core ‘outside-in’ customer journey for your company; identify key interactions; begin to prioritise where and how to focus your resources on change; engage in creating an EJM.

Why is CJM important?

At its simplest a CJM is a mechanism to force the company to think like customers. It is a fact that while we are all customers in everyday life, when we walk into our day job we forget the customer and operate and think from the company perspective. For this reason the production of a CJM is an incredibly valuable way of bringing the customer back into the heart of the company’s thinking – that said the process of producing a true ‘outside-in’ customer journey map will reinforce how ‘inside-out thinking’ dominates. It is often very difficult to sustain that external customer perspective without external and skilled facilitation; however, one tip is to ban the word ‘we’ from all discussions in CJM workshops. Inserting the words ‘I the customer’ will force the team to express themselves from a customer point of view.

Why create a CJM?

As we have identified, a CJM is a key component in your customer experience plan. It provides a current state view of the journey and then becomes a tool to:

• help you to plot out the changes you need to make;
• identify dependencies upstream and downstream;
• record changes to your experience;
• identify different experiences for different customer segments;
• communicate about the customer with your colleagues across the company; and with the help of software to
• aggregate data and information currently dispersed across the company into one location.

The actual visual of the map is highly valuable as it provides a simple nomenclature that you can use to ensure that all customer conversations are based around a common understanding.

This is very often the first time that an end-to-end journey has been captured. Businesses break up the ownership of a customer experience based on where the customer is in that journey and who is ‘responsible’ for them at that point: for example, during the awareness stage the customer is a marketing lead; then during the acquire stage, sales take over; then during ‘welcome on board’, customer services step in. It is a game of pass the parcel and in many cases the experiences are very different and the expectation, created by one group with a specific individual business measure or target in place, is not how it is delivered at the next stage. The creation of an end-to-end CJM allows you to ensure that you are aware of links and dependencies between different interactions along the end-to-end journey – it is a backdrop against which to review planned actions.

For example, in many companies regardless of their business vertical, sales tell the potential customer one story to achieve their target but the reality is different (software, for instance, is quick and easy to deploy and use but it is actually a highly complex deployment).

This is usually explained by a lack of alignment in performance metrics and is a very significant cause of the gap between customer expectation and customer experience reality, and the resulting customer behaviours that adversely impact the business results.

What is the difference between a customer journey map and a process map?

As we have described a CJM is an ‘outside-in’ view and is captured purely from the perspective of a customer. This means that we capture interactions that a customer has directly with your company AND interactions which the company may either have no or only indirect control over or visibility of. For example, when thinking about buying a new car you may well read magazines, reviews and often talk to people who will provide their own recommendation. This is all captured in a customer journey map – as it is a map of what we actually do as customers it would not be captured in a process map, which typically describes just the part played by a company seeking to supply the product or service to us, or what a company does to its customers.

Process maps also fail to capture the emotional context of an interaction, how a customer is feeling at that point in time, and what they expect and need from that interaction for it to be successful in their mind. Given that the way we feel impacts on what we do and how we behave, to be able to capture this aspect of the experience is critical to understanding why your customers make the choices and behave as they do.

So the value can be obtained in a number of ways, but the very capturing of the end-to-end touch-points can quickly highlight gaps in the company’s coverage and experience.

One of the main reasons why companies do not actually produce true customer journey maps is because they believe that they already have a CJM only to discover that what they actually have are ‘process maps’ that describe from an inside-out perspective what they do to/for customers.

Get yourself a sponsor or don’t start the CJM

The leaders responsible both at an executive and delivery level need to understand why they are asking the business or sponsoring a team to produce a customer journey map. It is imperative that they have a view on what they are going to do with it once it has been produced, and they need to be convinced that improving the customer experience leads to improvements in the business performance.

Experience has taught that without the buy-in and endorsement of the most senior executives, the likelihood of a programme being successful is considerably reduced if not neutralised. The impetus must come from the top of the organisation and then be sustained and monitored over time. Often the early impetus is there, but then as other priorities crowd in on time, the programme begins to stall through lack of focus. Often this happens at the stage where cost has been incurred but the benefits are yet to flow through – which gives an ideal window to postpone or stop the work at a critical point.

Remember, too many companies produce a customer journey map and stop there, believing the work is complete, but the reality is that first current state CJM is just an enabler of future activity

The message to well-meaning individuals in organisations is that they should accept the reality that their passion may not be rewarded unless the top team totally buy in to the philosophy. However, one learning which can help to get that leadership commitment is to focus hard on the fact that by addressing needs more effectively the experience is delivered more efficiently, reducing waste and delivering immediate opportunities for cost savings that do not damage the customer equity.

Setting an objective

Critical to the success of the CJM work is setting an objective from the outset. It is not acceptable to create a CJM just for the sake of creating it. The objective needs to be related directly to an in-year business issue. This provides immediate context and purpose for the creation of the map and provides the sponsor and delivery team with focus from day one. This is often described as the ‘burning platform’ that sparks the company into action.

This is why the pre-work outlined in the previous chapters is important in providing the insights to highlight early opportunities that the CJM work will enable.

Remember, do not start a customer journey map without understanding what business issue it is intended to focus on as an early deliverable

The initial objective needs to be deliverable within two to three months of commissioning the work, as maintaining momentum is vital for success. This is driven by the ability to show some early attributable business wins directly created by the CJM work – this may, for example, be: at a high level helping to deliver on the annual target for increased customer retention; at a more micro level it may be targeted to address failings in the current on-boarding of new customers that is causing concern both in qualitative and quantitative scorecards terms. This will also help where the team need to highlight a particular customer segment journey.

Who should create the CJM – picking the team

The production of a CJM is often the first ‘set-piece’ in a customer programme inside a company – as such it is a significant vehicle to promote and engage the different departments. When you are putting together a team to produce a CJM you are ideally looking for:

• 12–15 people drawn from across the business both vertically and horizontally – include a variety of levels and functions
  • we are looking to bring together different perspectives and to begin to showcase how both front and back office can contribute;
  • look to include finance, legal, compliance (where appropriate), sales, service, operations, IT, HR and marketing as a minimum.
• Influencers
  • we want these individuals to go back into the office and talk positively about their experience and to be creating engagement within their peer group.
• Motivated, engaged and vocal colleagues
  • customer experience work needs to be both energetic and engaging and the participants are key – so set up for success.
• A blend of youth and experience
  • we need a variety of customer viewpoints and voices in the room;
  • you are not looking for senior executives or board members at this stage beyond sponsoring input;
  • senior executives rarely have the day-to-day knowledge and their presence can be inhibiting for other team members. You can have them open and close the event but make sure they make clear why they are not attending in person. It is not because it is not a priority but because they could adversely impact on the team dynamic and inhibit some thinking as a result of their standing in the company hierarchy.

Being seen as a part of this team should be part of recognition wherever possible to create a positive feeling around attendance.

Remember part of the opportunity provided by a CJM creation workshop is to demonstrate to those who believe they are disconnected from the experience how they are actually pivotal

Getting started with your basic CJM

A CJM is basically composed of a customer life cycle divided into stages – that is, the ‘backbone’ of the journey and at each stage a series of interactions (often called touch-points) that the customer has.

When you first start to create a map it is good to begin at a very basic level and then refine the stages and descriptions as more detail is added.

Let’s take a simple customer journey that we can all relate to and illustrate the steps to the creation of a more detailed CJM.

Creating a restaurant visit CJM

Level 1 – The ‘heartbeat map’

This is so called because of the outline of the map that you will create. This is a technique I first saw being used by one of the more enlightened insurance businesses some 10 or more years ago.

All you need are four flip chart pages stuck to a wall side by side and a handful of sticky notes.

The challenge is to identify no more than four stages of the journey and name them using verbs to describe the stage. To do this you simply picture exactly what you would be doing as a customer and to assist the thinking you should create a scenario.

In this case the scenario is ‘I am going to take my family out for a birthday celebration dinner’. Then write each stage out on a sticky note and place it at the top of each of the flip chart sheets in sequence.

Backbone life cycle stages: plan the meal; arrive at the restaurant; dine; pay and leave.

Having established the ‘backbone’ the next challenge is to identify up to four interactions per stage – the challenge of just four means that we will aggregate and avoid getting too detailed too quickly. Each interaction is described using a verb as they are actions and is written out on a sticky note and added under the appropriate life cycle stage, e.g. ‘order food’.

Having completed this you should then draw a centre line from left to right horizontally across the flip chart pages – this represents the average expectation line. On the left side of the flip chart draw a vertical axis and label the top half ‘Great’ and the bottom half ‘Poor’. This vertical axis is measuring the customer expectation of the individual interactions.

Now we move all of the interaction sticky notes on to the centre line and in turn beginning with the left-hand side review each one by answering the question ‘do I expect this interaction to be average, great or poor, or somewhere in between?’ Move the sticky note to a position on which the team are agreed. Having completed this for each interaction, connect them using a marker pen.

As you can see you have created a basic CJM which has already started to highlight that not each interaction we have has the same potential value or impact on the customer.

In this exercise you now ask one of the team to walk through an actual experience that they have had of this particular journey. If this was your business you can call on individual experiences and knowledge and other customer data, e.g. complaints, service levels, customer feedback. Using an X for each interaction you plot the actual experience and again connect the ‘Xs’. What you will see are differences or gaps that can be both positive and negative between the expectation and the actual experience. Where they are below the expectation there is a problem, and where you are exceeding the expectation the question is whether that is positive or potentially an overinvestment in an area that the customer does not value that highly.

Finally you ask the team to highlight which of the interactions they believe have the potential to significantly influence the likelihood that the customer will return and or recommend the restaurant to friends.

Where there is a negative gap between the expectation and the actual experience and it is a key moment for the customer you have identified a key area to focus on improvement.

You can use this simple technique to look at business issues from a customer perspective and to begin to work out where to prioritise actions and effort.

Remember in CJM sessions insist on applying the test ‘I the customer’ and bar the word ‘we’ to help to think ‘outside-in’

Level 2 – Journey maps

Having created a simple map and understood the challenge of thinking like a customer you are ready to progress to the next level of detail with your map.

Running a Level 2 CJM workshop

You need to allow at least one and ideally two days to create the first version of your core customer journey map. This requires organisation and cooperation to release the participants and is a useful early test of business commitment.

In preparation you need:

• ideally an external venue to take the team out of work mode thinking;
• dress down/casual – again to get the team into the mindset of a customer;
• a large space with clear walls that can be used to capture the journey;
• brown paper or flip chart paper to capture the outputs;
• sticky notes to capture individual interactions which can be moved around the journey if required and to signal different owners;
• a supply of marker pens;
• an enthusiastic and knowledgeable team!

As you worked through the Level 1 heartbeat map you will have identified a more detailed level of interaction even if it was not captured. With a Level 2 map we begin to expand the range of the journey map backbone stages and we will become more granular in the capturing of interactions – but following the same principles of ‘outside-in’ and using verbs to capture the interactions.

To help you, the following outlines a standard backbone that covers the end-to-end life cycle of a customer journey. This serves as the template for you to edit and adjust but will provide at least 80 per cent of the stages you will require. This template has been tested across industries, sectors and customer groups and has been validated as correct over many applications.

Test this standard backbone against your customer journey and where appropriate change the language but not the meaning of the stage, you also need to test to see if there are specific stages based on your company/sector that require their own stage. For example, in the insurance sector you would add a stage for ‘Claim’, in aviation you would add ‘Flight’, in credit cards you would add ‘Collections’, or in a software business you may have ‘Technical Support’.

Remember, to qualify as an additional stage in a customer journey it must be a significant part of the customer experience unique to your company/sector. You should not exceed 12 stages in a journey backbone

In the example we are using of the restaurant visit, the enhanced backbone would look like this:

Having established the ‘backbone’ of the journey the next task is to take each stage and step though a simple set of tasks.

Stage by stage in sequence, establish the needs of the customer at each stage in the journey.

Beginning with the simple prefix ‘I need . . . ’ we capture the needs of the customer at each stage of the journey – these are a mixture of both tangible and emotional needs, so for example at the point of purchase, the customer may ‘need to be reassured that they have made the right choice’, while at a more functional level they may ‘need to find the nearest restaurant’. The more needs gathered the better as these will help when the experience is reviewed and a more granular approach to a particular interaction is carried out. They are captured as short narrative sentences in the first person, such as ‘I need to ask friends what they think’.

Capturing customer needs

So in the case of our restaurant visit we may capture the following as examples of needs in the ‘arrive’ stage:

• I need to be recognised.
• I need to feel welcomed (warmly).
• I need to know that the cake we ordered is here (discreetly).
• I need the table to be ready.
• I need the table I asked for.

Enhanced interactions

Next, stage by stage in sequence define the high-level interactions that a customer will have.

An interaction captures the customer connecting with someone or something as they carry out an activity. The activity may or may not be with the company as this map captures the experience from the customer perspective. So, for example, ‘talk to friends’ or ‘read magazine’ are often interactions when seeking advice – these will be captured but this is not controlled by the company. As such they would never appear in an internal process map but they are important aspects of the customer journey. Exploring the above example further, the company is able to look at this journey and if during the aware stage it becomes clear that presence in key influencing magazine titles is critical to getting into a potential customer’s ‘consideration set’ then the questions that follow are: ‘do we have a presence?’ ‘if not, why not?’ and ‘if yes, is it good enough?’

The wording of an interaction is important – it should be brief and wherever possible contain a verb as it is capturing an action, such as ‘negotiate contract’, ‘receive documents’, ‘research on internet’. This third example also picks up the channel that a customer is using and each channel used by a customer should be specified where appropriate: for example, ‘call restaurant for booking’. The acid test is can you insert the description ‘I’ in front of your description?

The level of granularity of the initial map is also important and ‘high level’ is the first stage to achieve – for example in an automotive map example the details behind ‘take a test drive’ can be expanded significantly at a later stage if that is determined as a critical interaction from the customer value perspective, but that is sufficient detail for a high-level core map.

The approach is to take each stage of the journey and walk that experience from a customer perspective and write on sticky notes the interactions that happen – at this point, sequencing is helpful but not critical and the best approach is to brainstorm the experience and capture all the ideas that are are then aggregated and filtered. Each stage has the interactions laid out below it and once completed the team review the sequence and reorder the interactions into a logical sequence.

Alternative grid layout by channel

Source: Courtesy of SuiteCX

Remember when you first generate the core map you do not need to consider the timeframe for the individual interactions – in reality some interactions may follow each other in minutes, others may be months or more apart

Once all of the stages are complete you will have the core of a Level 2 map. This will already begin to reveal facts about the current experience. For example, how many company-owned interactions happen at each stage, which shows where most of the effort is today in terms of the experience you deliver. If the majority of the interactions are in the early stages of the journey then it is clear that most activity is around acquiring customers.

The next step is to revisit each of the interactions and ask:

• Do we have or own this interaction (e.g. if the interaction is ‘read magazine’ during the ‘aware’ stage do you have a presence)?
• Who inside the company is responsible for that interaction (noting that some interactions are owned by the customer, e.g. talk to friends)?
• Where there are multiple teams involved you must decide who has lead responsibility?

As you make the decisions, create a list of each department and assign it an icon for use later – this can be as simple as the m for marketing. Once you have assigned all the interactions across the map you will be able to create a simple icon-coded version and supporting ‘legend’ that details the department by icon. Once you have an icon-coded version you will be able to see at a glance where the ownership of the experience lies at different points in the journey. Where there are multiple icons in the same stage you have an opportunity for breakdowns, handoffs or duplication in the customer experience as it is highly likely that the customer is being handed off to other departments: for example, during ‘on board’ the handovers may be between marketing, sales, customer services, operations, finance and legal!

The finished product records the key stages of the journey in sequence and the key interactions that a customer could undertake as a part of that journey. At this stage the only reference to time is in the natural sequencing of the different stages. There are then different ways to present this visually to the company. It is a good idea to find out how the key members of your audience think – so a grid pattern appeals to logical thinkers, engineers, finance and technical people but the marketing and service teams may need a more visually appealing presentation.

This is an example that shows a different visual journey format.

An alternative visual representation of a CJM

Source: Courtesy of SuiteCX

More visual representations may appeal to more visual learners and you can use shaded icons to highlight particular components of the experience.

Example of icons

Source: Courtesy of SuiteCX

Remember the structure of a CJM helps the company to understand the customer journey and what is important to customers on their journey

Now we have a core CJM and we can begin to carry out some first line diagnostics on that map.

Take the detailed needs that the team identified for each stage of the journey and consider whether the experience as mapped that your company delivers through the detailed interactions actually delivers against those customer needs: if not, identify and record gaps in the experience. This is a quick test and is designed to identify if there are significant gaps in the ‘as is’ experience.

For example, if customers need to be able to order online and the experience you deliver misses this interaction then you have an issue and an opportunity that is impacting on the business commercially.

Remember a key output of the initial CJM evaluation is a description of current state and some early opportunities for change

Stage-by-stage capture known issues/-opportunities and then prioritise

Next the team goes back over each stage and identifies known and new opportunities and issues from the customer’s perspective and these are recorded – these challenges will help to provide input into the prioritisation of next stage activity in terms of improvements and experience design changes. This is the first time that the team is allowed to use information from the company perspective, in this case to highlight known issues and opportunities in the existing experience. These should be captured in simple descriptive/narrative format.

Prioritising your interventions

There are a few ways that you can now look to prioritise your lists of opportunities and issues. At a very simple level where opportunities and issues align you have a simple potential priority.

Having collated the opportunities and issues, you can, as outlined in Chapter 5, then plot these on to an ‘ease and feasibility’ four-box matrix – one for the opportunities and one for the issues. For simplicity of capturing the positioning of each opportunity/issue on the matrix assign each one a number. The team then comes to a consensus agreement on the position against the two axes using a simple high/low scale which can be graduated 1–10 for the impact, and a similar scale for the feasibility where you are assessing the ease of implementing a change to realise the opportunity or resolve the issue. The result will be a simple scoring and ranking of the list of opportunities with those in the top right-hand box being the early wins for the team to focus and act on.

Remember opportunities or issues do not only need to be at an individual interaction level – they can be at a group of interactions level or a life cycle stage, e.g. on-boarding

An alternative way to prioritise is to understand firstly those interactions that are touched by most customers – not every interaction will be relevant to every customer segment. This involves agreeing your key customer segments, understanding the persona that you developed (the pen picture of your customer) and the needs of those customer segments, and then walking the map from right to left highlighting those touch-points that they interact with. Having highlighted the common interactions, check to see where the opportunities and issues align against those interactions. The point of convergence will give you a potentially high-impact intervention opportunity when measured in terms of numbers of customers.

My preference is to use the ease and feasibility matrix as the start-off prioritisation – this keeps the process simple and does not involve the need, for example, to create multiple personas or to generate detailed interaction variations that occur based on the customer segment at this early stage.

The challenge at this point is to get into action quickly and effectively, not to engage in too much detailed background work that will slow down deployment and lower confidence levels internally that you will deliver positive change.

Creating variants on the base map

Companies do have different segments of customers and they may vary the experience based on the particular segment. For example, a restaurant may have loyal, repeat customers, VIPs, business customers or other distinct groups. Each of these segments may have some experiential variations. These may be the same interaction delivered differently, for example greeting on arrival, or may be additional interactions, such as valet parking.

To map these variations the team with the knowledge of the customer segment takes the baseline map and validates the experience for that particular segment, making changes, adding, deleting and in time documenting the experience for that specific customer. In most cases there will be a high degree of overlap between the base interactions with nuances of experience details being the main differentiator.

Remember there will be cases where the customers have the same interaction point but their specific experience of that interaction may vary – e.g. the variation between economy and business travellers at airline check-in, security, lounge, boarding the plane, travel, collecting luggage

Developing the segment-specific CJM at the next stage means you can capture variations in the ‘how’. It is important to keep in mind that having too many experience variables can create confusion for both customer and company and is often an unnecessary cost for the company.

Getting granular – take a section of the map and explode the detail

Having established an area of focus the next step is to create a more detailed and granular map of that sub-section.

The approach to creating the more detailed sub map is the same as for the core map but you are able to get into more detail. For example with the restaurant you may choose the ‘at table’ component and start to get into the detail such as seated at the table, waiter introduces themselves, specials are explained, wine order is taken, starter is delivered and so on.

Creating mini maps – capturing the planned and unplanned interactions

Once you have your more granular stage level of detail you

can create mini maps that take into account the duration of an experience. This recognises that not all interactions or touch-points happen at the same time – while several interactions can happen within minutes of each other some may be separated by several days or even weeks. You need to capture both planned and unplanned interactions with unplanned activity being customer driven, and often the result of an experience failing, plus the actual sequence of the interactions.

So in the restaurant visit, an example of an unplanned activity might be to ask where drinks are, chase up food order or complain about food.

Although an individual can do this, it is recommended that you set up a workshop with a wider team – using this as another engagement opportunity; it can be completed in less than half a day.

The set up for the workshop requires:

• the list of interactions written out on sticky notes;
• flip-chart paper on a wall;
• spare sticky notes for new interactions to be captured;
• the team needs to agree the scope of the mini map – for example, the ‘in-restaurant experience’ and the appropriate timeline, minutes, hours, days, weeks or months. Create the timeline increments on the horizontal axis, which in our restaurant example would be 15-minute slots over a two-hour period (the average time spent in a restaurant);
• take each of the sticky notes and place it into the correct sequence in the correct timeslot – you are mapping the customer reality at this point and it is important to be honest about this. In the case of the restaurant, what is the real wait time between arriving and placing an order? Once all of the interactions have been placed on the map the team should check that there are no interactions missing – and where they are, add them in;
• look at the ‘white space’ (that is the gaps between experiences over time) and ask yourself, is this ok? Or do we need to intervene in experience terms? So, for example, if the wait time for food exceeds 15 minutes, do we need to give the customer an update?

Think about how it feels if you are expecting something to happen and it doesn’t. You could be waiting for a train or be a passenger when a flight is delayed on the runway. Receiving no information on the reason for the delay and the likely duration raises stress levels after only a few minutes – the benefit from updates even with limited information is it reduces the need for your imagination to fill the gap and to raise your stress levels. So do think about the impact of white space – is it fine to leave a customer applying for a loan several days without updating on the status?

Now take each interaction in turn and ask the question: ‘is this a planned interaction or an unplanned interaction?’ For example, checking where my order is would be an unplanned interaction initiated by a customer concerned about wait time.

You now have a view of the interactions over time, the duration, planned and unplanned contact and can easily identify any dependencies across the timeline.

For instance, as we noted in the restaurant example, delivering food in a timely manner is connected to taking of the original order – do we wait for the customer to complain or deliberately design in an intervention in the case of delay?

Remember that experiences can be over in minutes or extend over weeks before they are concluded

All of these stages provide the baseline map that can then be used to redesign existing experience, or design a new experience that better delivers the customer experience.

Should we buy software – what do we need software to do?

As you will have now seen there are layers to the creation of customer journey maps – each stage takes the map to the next level of detail. Each version of the map can be created in basic tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Excel.

In the short term a couple of key advantages to using an established but simple software tool are that it acts as a reminder of the process, the data you can and could capture and it professionalises your outputs.

Additionally, if you want to create different versions of maps, including variations off the same base for different customer segments and eventually progress to using the maps to aid redesign and change management then software is a sensible option.

As you progress with your customer activity the software option allows you to gradually build out in a very structured and common format, eventually gathering and collating the customer experience data and information from their dispersed locations across the company.

For companies that operate in regulated space, from utilities to financial services, the ability to demonstrate your approach to customer experience strategies is significantly enhanced by this consolidated approach.

Remember you can present the customer journey in a variety of different formats to tell the story – think about what will work best for your audience

When considering the software solution you do need to avoid the mistakes of the CRM system purchases where the buyer was often seduced by the art of the possible in terms of the capabilities that are embedded.

My analogy on buying this type of software is to take the ‘Excel test’ where most of the users of that tool probably use less than 10 per cent of its true capability. Be an informed buyer: understand what you are actually going to use your software to do and where that capability extends the current capability inside your company.

For example, the customer experience software will have project planning tools embedded but you will already have an internal tool and approach for that. What you are buying is more about the structures, the thinking and logic that ensures that you have a prompt to remind you what you need, and that you are able to capture what you need then to be able to access, use and generate useful outputs and visuals. I see the software as a way of collecting and ordering the key pieces of information and data – it is in reality a repository for your information, it is not the business solution. Here are some ideas as inputs into your software decision:

• It should enable you to share and collaborate across the departments and geographies.
• It should be flexible enough to offer a range of visual treatments.
• It needs to be easy and quick to use with an intuitive user interface.
• It needs to have sufficient depth to capture further details at an interaction level – e.g. training guides, measures, ownership, emotions, etc.
• It needs to interface with your current IT and add value to the infrastructure.
• It needs to be affordable and scalable – able to grow as your competence and need grow.
• It needs to have been developed by customer experience professionals who understand how you will use it.

Remember all of the systems have an enterprise capability, but you are likely to only use a small percentage of the overall capability. Priority needs to be focused on usability and fit for purpose rather than a long list of what it could do if ever required

In terms of which system to choose, the recommendation is to focus on those that have been built by actual practitioners where the tools have been built to meet the known need. Most of the large software vendors now claim to have CJM and customer experience systems, but in my view they are more about the features, benefits and functionality than the practicality of use.

Employee journey mapping

The other side of the customer coin is the employee and this component remains critical to success. What is the role of individuals in creating a culture that gives employees every opportunity to engage with the customer and to ensure that the customer agenda is integrated into the day-to-day rhythm of company life in a seamless way? Ask yourself these questions:

• How well do you connect all of your employees to the end customer?
• Do you have an employee proposition?
• Does your culture encourage customer focus?

Unlike customer journey mapping (CJM) that has become widely adopted as an approach and tool when working on customer experience, the employee journey map (EJM) has not been widely adopted and is in its infancy as an approach. Yet in my view the employee journey is just the other side of the customer journey.

If staff are not engaged then the customer experience is likely at best to be sub-optimised.

The simple approach of creating an EJM and then driving improvements is a great way to engage the wider company and to support the cultural shift that may be required in order to allow the company to engage more effectively with the customer and the customer experience.

It is for this reason that the EJM is a tool that you can use to underpin your customer experience work and to ensure that you have the best possible conditions for customer experience improvements to deliver real differences.

The process of creating an EJM mirrors CJM – but of course in this case the customer is the employee.

What is the purpose of employee journey mapping?

At the macro level the EJM looks at the relationship between a company and its staff – it is used to highlight the sweet spots in the employee journey where employee engagement levels can be raised to drive real customer value. It is also about understanding how improved employee engagement with both the customer and the company will lead to greater advocacy of both the company as a place to work and its products or services. This can be translated into the word ‘pride’ both in the company and its products or services.

The primary purpose in creating an EJM in this customer experience context is to establish those sweet spots where injecting a strong customer component to the employee interactions can be directly connected to improvements in the customer experience and customer outcomes.

For example, does your induction process focus on the importance of the customer to everyone in the company, or does it prioritise on health and safety, and administrative rules?

The secondary but important business benefit is that you will have created an end-to-end view of the employee life cycle, and other areas of general improvement will emerge that will contribute further to improved employee engagement.

If we created a simple model of how this then translates into an improved bottom line, it looks like this:

Employee engagement = better customer experience delivery = customer advocacy = job satisfaction/pride = lower staff churn = employee advocacy of company and service/product = business growth = business bottom line improves

The commercial reader will ask how much do I need to invest to get the return? The answer, rather like the wider customer experience, is often very little – you are simply adjusting existing approaches, processes, content and more.

As you develop an EJM and you look at the opportunities for change that are highlighted you will look at three dimensions:

• the formal journey: induction, personal development plans, performance management, training;
• the informal journey: team meetings, away days, one to ones;
• environmental aspects: office, IT, corporate culture.

The first two are captured in a single EJM, while the environmental dimension is an overlay that gives context to the map.

Getting started – do you have an employee proposition?

• The first question is do you have an employee proposition? Check with human resources as your first option!
• Most companies have a customer value proposition, but quite a lot do not have a clearly articulated employee proposition against which they can hold themselves and their employees to account. The employee proposition can give real insight into what working for a company should be like and how that aligns with the customer promise or proposition. It should act as a signal to those considering joining the company and provide a reason for those already on-board to stay.
• Your customer proposition should in effect be a two-way contract that highlights what you will do for the employee and in return what the employee will do for the company – you call it a pact or a contract. Take the brilliant example below that comes from a Virgin company some years ago that very effectively sums up the culture.

‘It’s not easy to sum up our culture in just a few words. For starters, we’re such a fast-moving, complex business that change is a constant feature of our operation. Every one of our people has to have the intelligence to think on their feet and respond to any new developments that come their way. All the while, of course, they’ll be working hard to deliver the unique brand of service for which we are renowned.

This, in turn, creates a lively, collaborative environment where everyone knows what’s expected of him or her and works together to achieve it. In fact, we pride ourselves on being as honest and unpretentious as we are inspired and professional. Everyone has a chance to voice their opinions and no one’s too proud to ask questions, which only serves to increase the inclusive nature of our culture.

Similarly, we embrace innovation, wherever it comes from. So if someone – be they employee or customer – has a brainwave, we’ll listen. And if we like it, we’ll do it. It’s another way in which our people are the driving force behind our success.

Of course, it takes a certain sort of person to flourish in such a fast-paced, free-thinking environment. Talented, self-motivated, enthusiastic, you’ll have to share in our passion for providing only the very best. Put people like this together, and you create a winning performance culture that thrives on inspirational leadership, positive attitudes and commercial flair.’

If you don’t have an employee proposition create one – you can use the following prompts to help.

• An employee proposition is a ‘promise’ from an organisation to existing and potential employees that:
  • is consistent with the organisation’s brand;
  • is distinct from the employee propositions of competitor organisations;
  • is credible in that it echoes the actual experience of current employees;
  • is relevant and valuable to both existing and potential employees;
  • is honest and not a stereotypical or clichéd statement.

The employee proposition provides a reference point for future changes to the employee experience.

Can I do employee journey mapping without an employee proposition?

Of course the answer is yes, in the same way that you can do CJM work without describing the experience you want to deliver – but it makes it harder to test your planned solutions. Additionally it makes sense to take the opportunity to at least start to create an employee proposition, as this is another piece of the customer experience jigsaw that you can create.

Who should lead on employee journey mapping?

The customer experience team can lead on the methodology and approach, but as this is about the internal employee experience you should embrace a wide range of functions and levels. Once again engaging a wide cross-section and significant numbers of your colleagues will drive the success.

• Find a sponsor – from a senior executive level you will usually find that the human resources director will take a lead.
• Provide the sponsor with a short brief and a précis communication of the reason for the work. As an example you could say:

‘As HR sponsors and leaders we are focused on increasing employee engagement as a lever to increase employee advocacy. In order to understand what matters most to our employees we need to be clear on the key things that will have the biggest impact to drive up engagement. Currently we have shopping lists of issues and initiatives with little direct understanding of the impact they drive. Learning from work done in mapping our customer journeys where we have identified our customer priorities we now need a complementary approach to mapping our employee journey to ensure we apply the same rigour to our own employees as we are to our customers.’

• Capture through an audit the existing in-flight or planned activities, projects and programmes that are focused on employee engagement.

The principles to adopt and business benefits

The principles of an EJM provide the touchstones for the team as they engage with the work.

The following set out some of the principles an EJM can include:

• create a visual and itemised end-to-end employee journey capturing stages of the journey and specific interactions between the company and employees;
• understand the real drivers of engagement and to do it in a way that takes you a long way from the traditional but often hackneyed and not actionable annual survey;
• provide employee voice to offer an outside-in view of the experience, including how it feels to be an employee;
• agree to follow up and make changes to the employee experience by operationalising recommendations;

The following set out some of the benefits an EJM can provide:

• identifying current performance shortfalls;
• prioritising change where it really matters for employees;
• challenging existing activities to improve return on investments;
• creating a common language and framework to manage the future employee experience.

If you use the principles or develop your own and achieve the benefits, you will improve employee engagement, improve advocacy of the company as an employer, and improve employee advocacy of your products and or services.