In today's fast-paced and hypercompetitive business landscape, staying relevant and successful requires more than just offering high-quality services. Customer expectations evolve continuously, and businesses must adapt customer-centric ways of working to meet these needs and stay relevant.
By adopting Customer Journey Operations, companies are able to thrive by placing their customers at the centre of their operations.
Customer Journey Operations entail structuring an organization around customer journeys, focusing on delivering exceptional customer experiences, and maximizing value throughout each interaction. By embracing Customer Journey Operations, businesses can establish a comprehensive understanding of their customers, anticipate their needs, and tailor their products, services, and processes accordingly. The result is a streamlined and purposeful operation that not only satisfies customer demands but also builds lasting loyalty and drives sustainable growth.
Learn more: Guide to Customer Journey-Led Business Development
Adopting Customer Journey Operations requires cultivating a customer-centric mindset across all levels of the organization. Business leaders must foster a culture that emphasizes empathy, active listening, and a genuine desire to understand customer pain points and aspirations. By encouraging teams to view the world through the eyes of the customer, decision-makers can lay the foundation for a transformative shift toward customer-centricity.
You should always start small and then scale up the operations as you learn from experience.
We at Hellon, divide Customer Journey Operations into three areas:
Three areas of Customer Journey Operations
Journey Mapping in the context of Journey Operations should always focus on the strategically most important customer journeys for your organisation. First, you should identify the life-cycle journey of the most important customer segments for your business. The life-cycle journey looks at the customer experience end-to-end and gives you the full picture.
Secondly, you should identify the strategically most important phases on the life-cycle journey where your organisation needs to excel in order to meet the customer needs. These are your strategic journeys that should be a priority in your decision-making. The strategic journeys can change as your strategy changes. When you need to zoom in further, you can identify touchpoint journeys that describe the detailed level of customer experience of a specific touchpoint.
Different levels of Customer Journey Mapping
Each customer journey should have a set of metrics that indicate the performance and ‘health’ of a specific journey in question. The selected metrics depend on the level of the customer journey. The journeys higher up on the journey ecosystem are measured with more lagging indicators whereas the more tactical journeys (touchpoint journeys) are measured with more leading indicators. The metrics should always comprise CX, EX, business, and operational metrics.
Customer journey management in the context of a journey ecosystem is to make informed decisions and prioritisation where the organisation’s limited resources should be put. Journey Management tools enable the decision-makers to see the full picture and make more informed decisions on priorities.
As we have different levels of customer journeys, these are also managed on different levels of the organisation. The life-cycle journey gives a high-level overview and shows how the organisation is delivering value end-to-end. This level is of interest to top management and a Customer Journey Steering Group where the decisions on strategic focus are made.
Each strategic journey should have a journey team built around it. The team consists of a journey lead and a virtual team that connects employees who work to create customer value for the same customers. The journey lead should always be a business owner as it makes it more likely to see concrete development.
Customer Journey Management levels
1: Identify and map 1-3 strategic customer journeys. Identify 1-3 strategically important customer journeys for your business and map the current state customer experience. Identify critical pain points and new opportunities to create customer value, and design future state customer journeys based on your strategy and CX vision.
2: Define journey owners and teams for the strategic customer journeys. Identify a business owner and a few critical experts for each strategic customer journey to form a virtual team whose job is to plan and execute actions to lead the customer journey from the current state toward the future state. By promoting cross-functional collaboration and establishing shared goals, businesses can eliminate internal barriers and ensure a consistent and holistic approach to customer interactions.
3: Ensure top management support for the strategic customer journeys. Make sure your top management supports the strategic journey initiatives and enables prioritisation towards the future state customer experience. It is important to gain quick wins when introducing a journey mindset within the organisation to build momentum and excitement around the approach. This way you can organically build internal buy-in.
4:Create internal vocabulary and playbook around customer journeys. To ensure a united way of working around customer journeys, the organisation needs a shared vocabulary and playbook to work with journeys. This should include a set of terminology and simple templates that anyone in the organisation can use.
5: Start building a customer journey ecosystem and management model around the customer journeys. As you gain your first experiences from working with the strategic journeys, you can start slowly outline your further journey ecosystem and decide with the Customer Journey Steering Group on the journey mapping priorities. At this point, you should also discuss the potential need for a Customer Journey Management tool that enables more efficient management of the journeys.
Customer Journey Operations offers a transformative approach to business management that prioritizes the needs and experiences of customers. By embracing this customer-centric approach, businesses can unlock a multitude of benefits, including improved customer satisfaction, increased loyalty, and sustainable growth. Implementing Customer Journey Operations requires a strategic and holistic approach, encompassing mindset shifts, data-driven analysis, collaboration, and continuous improvement. By adopting this new approach to management, decision-makers can pave the way toward a more customer-centric future, propelling their companies to new heights of success in today's dynamic marketplace.
We appreciate that adopting a new operational model can feel overwhelming and you might wonder where to even start. That’s why we are here to help you navigate the change step by step.
Our team has years of experience with organisational change and transformations toward customer-centric cultures. Get in touch today to learn more about how we can help you to start the change and start earning customer loyalty and business growth.