Re-imagining Your Customer Journey: Avoiding Pitfalls that Derail Efficiency
Ije Jemie Nwabueze Lean Six Sigma, CTI, ORSC, PMI-ACP, CBAP
Chief Strategy Officer @ Dreamcatchers Performance
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In the fast-paced world of business, efficiency is paramount. As you scale your business, the cracks in your operations often become more apparent, potentially derailing the very progress you seek to achieve. Transforming your customer journey is a critical step for driving efficiencies day-to-day, so that every interaction runs smoothly and leaves a positive, lasting impression. In today’s thought leadership, we’ll explore strategies for re-imagining the experience for both internal and external customers, focusing on avoiding common pitfalls that hinder efficiency.
Map the End-to-End Customer Journey
The foundation of a re-imagined customer journey begins with a comprehensive map of every touchpoint, from the moment a customer first inquires about your product or service to when you deliver the solution or close out the relationship. The intention is not to list steps or recap your job manuals but rather to capture the current and true state of each interaction with the customer, as well as what happens behind the scenes.
Conduct a thorough audit of your current workflows. Identify downtimes, repetitive tasks, and points of frequent error. Detail roles, responsibilities, standard operating procedures, risks, recurring issues and required competencies. This will give you a 40,000 feet view of the critical workflows, structures and resources that serve as a blueprint for your business.
Get Clear on What ‘Good’ Looks Like
Encourage decision-makers to step into the customer’s shoes genuinely. Rather than just mapping out what workflows look like, assess what it feels like at each touchpoint. This involves considering emotional responses and overall satisfaction, not just transactional efficiency.
Your intention is to collectively define what the desired outcome is for each part of the customer’s experience.?
What should ‘good’ look like at this point in their journey? What could ‘good’ feel like here? Emphasis is on the 'felt experience' at each stage of the customer journey. Shifting your focus from a purely visual to a sensory perspective opens up new possibilities for defining success when it comes to improving customer satisfaction.
Develop strategies to address these issues, ensuring that your workflows are as streamlined as possible before implementing technological solutions.
Leverage Drop-off Points as Opportunities
It is important to acknowledge where your customer’s 'felt experience' diminishes. These are critical junctures where inefficiencies are most likely to occur, causing frustration for both customers and employees.?
Engage your teams in this deep dive exercise, particularly those working on the frontline, interacting directly with customers. These individuals can provide valuable insights into where the customer experience drops off.
Gather detailed feedback from your employees about where they see the felt experience taking a nosedive through surveys, interviews, or informal discussions. By asking your employees, "What should it feel like for the customer at this stage?" you can identify and prioritize the areas that need improvement.
As you brainstorm possible solutions, remember to log key assumptions, potential risks and issues, dependencies, and the rationale behind the final decision, as well as who authorized the decision and when. This critical information will serve as reference points for your team as you iterate on ways to address bottlenecks and enhance overall customer experience.
Honor the Internal-External Experience Link
There is a strong correlation between the internal experience of employees and the external experience of customers.
Often, the same pain points experienced by employees are felt by customers, whether it is confusion, long wait times, or a lack of clear communication.
When employees feel frustrated, confused, or neglected, these sentiments can influence how they engage with the customer. Therefore, improving employee experience is an indirect yet powerful way to enhance customer satisfaction.
Prioritize Results Over Optics
A common pitfall in re-imagining the customer journey is focusing too much on optics rather than actual results. Think back to the last time you were dissatisfied with a product or service you bought. What steps did you take to communicate your bad experience? How satisfied were you with the final outcome?
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Research shows that while companies often gather customer feedback as a standard part of key workflows, very little is actually done with that information.
The key takeaway here is that when you prioritize optics over results, customer dissatisfaction spreads. While visualizing what ‘good’ looks like is important, understanding what ‘good’ feels like is crucial.
But all of this is meaningless if you fail to take consistent forward action to incorporate the feedback into the structures, workflows and dynamics that are core to your business.?
Create a Learning Culture to Drive Innovation
Aligning incentives with improvements helps you create a culture of continuous learning and transformation.
Run hackathons, knowledge build/transfer workshops and other collaborative efforts to inspire ideas and consistent forward action.
Focus on identifying and eliminating waste, reducing redundant tasks, and addressing human errors and delays, as well as redesigning key workflows, teams, and training to clear roadblocks to business-critical goals.?
In addition to monitoring customer surveys and complaints, regularly review and optimize the internal processes that affect your employees. Look for points where they experience confusion, delays, or inefficiencies, and address these proactively. Improving the workflow for employees will often streamline the customer journey as well.?
Once you have data that proves a workflow is fully optimized, drive even more efficiencies day-to-day by bolting on a technology solution such as digital tools and automation. While technology alone cannot fix underlying process issues, it can multiply the impact of workflows that are well-designed and properly managed.
Translate all of your efforts into a sustainable high performance strategy by agreeing frameworks for escalation and fix prioritization so that you can resolve issues as they arise.?
A Possible Takeaway
Re-imagining the customer journey with a focus on the felt experience and efficiency requires a holistic approach.
Businesses can avoid the pitfalls that derail efficiency by taking the following actions on an ongoing basis:
This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also drives sustainable growth.
Have you faced challenges in improving customer experience? Share your experiences and insights in the comments below.
About the Author
Ije Jemie Nwabueze Lean Six Sigma, CTI, ORSC, PMI-ACP, CBAP (pronounced 'E-J') is CEO and Founder of NextLevel Strategies , a business transformation consultancy, Team Coaching Head for Dreamcatchers Performance , a mental fitness executive coaching company, and Host of Real Talk: Conversations on Mental Fitness , a podcast for high performing leaders.
As a Lean Six Sigma strategy execution expert with 16+ years of experience at mid-market and Fortune 500 companies in 3 global markets, Ije has served as a trusted advisor to C-suite executives, managed complex transformational change and built high performing teams from the ground up.
Ije is also an executive and team coach for transformational leaders looking to re-imagine what is possible when navigating big transitions in their personal life, career or business.
If you would benefit from a fresh perspective on navigating urgent needs, book a no-obligation discovery call .