For some organizations the core objective of customer journey mapping is to reduce the loss of prospects. For others, the goal is to start understanding the experience of prospects and customers who are trying to navigate your organization. For those responsible for product and service development, it’s about uncovering opportunities to serve customers better.
In most cases customer journey mapping starts with building a realistic picture of how customers experience working with, or attempting to work with, your organization / solution.
But how do you get your team started?
Let’s be honest. Many organizations are starting with silos. Individual teams may run a finely tuned operation with great KPIs but without an entire journey, a flow, your prospect is left to their own devices to navigate your organization.
What Is A Touchoint Workshop?
A “touchpoint workshop” provides an excellent mechanism to get your team started thinking along customer lines. It maps those existing points in the organization that prospect ‘touch’. It’s a first draft ‘as is’ customer journey, a draft map of what’s already going on.
Individuals in your organization already know what they each individually contribute towards fulfilling customer needs. A touchpoint workshop bring together those people in your organization who are familiar with the solutions, systems and processes that prospects and customers touch.
Team Benefits of Touchpoint Workshop
- Grounds the work of individuals and departments in the customer context.
- Exposes your practitioners to the concept of customer journey mapping in a very tangible way.
- Provides a mechanism for practitioners to contribute their sliver/ touchpoint of knowledge to the overall picture.
- Identifies silos between departments that contribute to losing prospect on their customer journey.
- Uncovers misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions about what others are doing to assist the customer on their journey to value.
- Shines a light on gaps between what are you doing, and what you could be doing, to fulfill customer needs.
- Brings to light quickly that, for success, collaboration between departments and different aspect of the solution is required.
- Enables individuals and teams to learn together.
Prerequisites For Touchpoint Workshop
What needs to be in place before the workshop starts:
- Customer Persona; different customers have different needs. Select just one customer persona to make getting started manageable.
- Customer Persona Ecosystem; you need a sense of which departments, processes and staff/people matter in order to have the right participants.
- Journey Endpoint; pick a significant milestone, such as placing an order, aligned to your business or solution goals.
Resources For Touchpoint Workshop
- People; the practitioners responsible for individual journey touchpoints: those who know the operational details. Whom to select depends on the journey chosen. Around 8 is a good number. Examples include those who:
- work together with service providers and others who round out / enable your offer.
- talk to this prospects pre, and post sales.
- understand the email list used in a lead nurturing campaign.
- know what site visitors are searching for.
- guide content marketing development such as brochures, case studies, and ROI calculators.
- manage your channel partners.
- Workshop facilitator; this is not a blame game, it’s a learning opportunity. Experience in facilitation goes a long way (Jane can assist with this).
- Space: a meeting room suitable for moving around.
- Time: for a quick start, half a day or a day yields a lot of results and enthusiasm.
Mistakes, and discovering gaps provide rich learning opportunities. Take them.
To get expert assistance with customer journey mapping, contact Jane.
[inbound_forms id=”23″ name=”Website Lead /thank-you”]