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Customer Experience

Going Beyond Customer Satisfaction – Creating the Ultimate Future Journey Map

By OSG Team on November 4, 2018

Organizations have been working towards customer centricity for a while now, to create great experiences for their customers and in turn grow in revenue and reputation. Customer experience (CX) and satisfaction however, is a constantly evolving entity. Therefore, CX driven organizations may fail to innovate sometimes because there is a lack of discipline in the process and focus – both of which are essential for consistent ideation.

 

In addition, a lot of CX focused organizations conceptualizing customer journey mapping tend to concentrate on existing customer journeys. They spend effort and capital identifying and fixing problems in the current purchase/task driven processes rather than creating new experiences for customers altogether. By creating new customer experiences, you can unlock novel areas for customer value, create new offerings and envision future customer journeys in the process.

According to a leading CX Index report, the overall quality of experiences that organizations deliver to customers has significantly improved. As a matter of fact, each of the nine industries that the study targeted showed gains since 2007, when the research began. While this is a boom for customers who no longer need to deal with negative experiences, the pressure on organizations to deliver exceptional experiences has rocketed. There is immense competition to seek differentiation through experiences. The future mapping of customer journeys can be your potential differentiator over competition.

Mapping a Future-Looking Customer Journey

Creating new experiences can seem like a spontaneous or stimulating process, but the key to creating a robust future journey map is meticulous planning. Listed below are some steps to give direction to your strategy:

  • Define scope and recruit participants

Firstly, define what your end business goal is and identify your target customers and journey. Build a team of strategists, analysts, customers and other innovators who can help you think differently and bring various perspectives to the table.

  • Review existing journey and scope for ideation

Identify the gaps in your existing customer journey to categorize where you can provide differentiation and quality experiences for your customers. Work on an ideation framework that will benefit your customers. At this stage, trial participants should be familiarized with the framework to determine whether the journey map works or needs to be altered. Always welcome questions and critique, as it will add depth and dimension to your roadmap.
Identify top ideas

At this stage, multiple top criteria should be evaluated after consulting with your participants. To get a true sense of what works and doesn’t work for your customers, a powerful behavioral analytics platform will be a definite advantage. The platform you choose should be able to effectively compare different attributes/criteria and determine which ones work as part of the future journey map. By employing a behavioral analytics engine, you can gain tangible proof on your customers’ expectations and work towards bridging any gap they encounter.

Map the journey and build a roadmap for uptake
Here, you can define an engaging future-state plan and secure buy-in. After validating the plan with your trial customers, a gap analysis can be done to identify projects, resources, costs etc. A long-term roadmap can be created on how to reach your business goals systematically. Once the roadmap is built, inform your key stakeholders and begin the process of the future-looking journey map for your customers.

How can OSG contribute on this journey?
At OSG, we are focused on creating experiences that help you understand your customers’ expectations better. Our AI-based, big data analytics platform can be a trusted partner on your journey towards customer-centricity. With its inbuilt behavioral analytics engine, Dynamo employs a unique trade-off methodology to let users prioritize which attributes/ideas are most crucial in your future-looking customer journey mapping. By leveraging the actionable insights that Dynamo provides, you can create a robust future-looking journey map for your customers that anticipates their needs.

Employ OSG’s technology in your future-looking customer journey mapping to edge out competition. To find out more about our technology, contact our team to get the conversation started!

OSG is a “catalyst” that helps our clients be the best at decoding their customers’ decisions. Our clients have seen a minimum 20% improvement in customer engagement by implementing smart insights delivered using our behavioral analytics products.