CX Vision

Customer Experience Vision

Developing a customer experience vision is a necessary first step in pursuing an organizational change in the way your business provides services to its customers. A customer experience vision defines these aspirations and why they matter to your customers. Learn more below.

Jim Tincher

Stop Playing CX Whack-A-Mole

/0 Comments/in , , /by

“All happy customers are alike; each unhappy customer is unhappy in its own way.”

Okay, that wasn’t really my quote – I’m paraphrasing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, where he wrote “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But it does fit at least some companies’ experiences.

This is especially true with a client we’re working with right now. The happy customers sound so similar that it’s almost boring. Almost. They like the people; the product does what it’s supposed to do, and customer expectations are set appropriately. Unfortunately, that description only applies to half their customers. Read more

Jim Tincher

What Wells Fargo (and the Rest of Us) Can Learn from Samsung

/0 Comments/in , , , /by
  • “Who knows what happened to us two years ago?” Wells Fargo’s Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Moldafsky (I originally wrote about this here)
  • “Who’s heard of our product, the Note 7? [pause] Yes, pretty much everybody, in every plane trip, for about a year.” Michael Lawder, SVP, Customer Care, Samsung Electronics America

Both these speakers began their speech with a similar attempt at humor to grab the audience’s attention, referencing an event that happened in late 2016, but a small difference speaks volumes to their contrasting attitudes. This small difference shows why Samsung has fully recovered while Wells Fargo continues to falter.

Problems can happen in even the best-run company. Pixar, Amazon, GE – all have experienced problems. This post isn’t about preventing problems (although many of these – particularly Wells Fargo’s problems – should have been avoidable). Instead, it’s about what to do once it happens. Read more

How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer Journey Mapping Book
Jim Tincher

What Does Journey Mapping Do for You?

/0 Comments/in , , /by

How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer bookI was recently in a call, and an executive new to her company’s journey mapping initiative asked, “Exactly what does this $150k I’m spending on a journey map buy us?” Luckily, our client had a ready answer, but that’s not always the case.

Read more

Dustin Kirkpatrick Unsplashed
Nicole Newton

Are You Ready for Your Close-Up? Using Video to Bring the Customer Experience to Life

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

Dustin Kirkpatrick UnsplashedThis post, written by Heart of the Customer B2B Practice Lead Nicole Newton, is the third in a week-long series about some of the ways journey mapping differs from traditional market research. Guest authors Corey Pawlak, Cathy McLane and Nicole Newton will share their expertise in recruiting and interviewing B2B customers, why 10-page reports are better than 50-page reports, and using video to bring the customer experience to life. 

As a long-time marketing research practitioner, I am focused on gathering the most accurate data to answer the problem being researched. Why are sales lower than anticipated? Why is our customer retention rate lower than projected for certain product lines? What can we do to make it easier for customers to work with us?

Read more

San Kayzn Unsplashed
Cathy McLane

How a 10-page Report Can Help You Win Your Customer

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

San Kayzn UnsplashedThis post, written by Heart of the Customer Project Manager Cathy McLane, is the second in a week-long series about some of the ways journey mapping differs from traditional market research. Guest authors Corey Pawlak, Cathy McLane and Nicole Newton will share their expertise in recruiting and interviewing B2B customers, why 10-page reports are better than 50-page reports, and using video to bring the customer experience to life.

As a strategic communications advisor and program manager, I’ve seen my share of customer insights reports. They’ve ranged from 50 pages with data tables on every page to succinct PowerPoint presentations that have cool animations but very few actionable insights.

Read more

Corey Pawlak

How to Recruit and Interview B2B Customers for your Customer Journey Mapping Project

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

This post, written by Heart of the Customer Project Manager Corey Pawlak, is the first in a week-long series about some of the ways journey mapping differs from traditional market research. Guest authors Corey Pawlak, Cathy McLane and Nicole Newton will share their expertise in recruiting and interviewing B2B customers, why 10-page reports are better than 50-page reports, and using video to bring the customer experience to life.

In journey mapping, customer interviews are used to validate, refine and revise internal beliefs about customer perception and experience with your firm. It’s essential for understanding and reflecting the voices of actual customers. Therefore, recruiting customers to interview for the customer journey mapping process is a crucial—yet potentially time-consuming—step.

The first step is to define the targeted interview pool criteria.

Read more

Jim Tincher

How Journey Mapping Differs from Traditional Market Research

/3 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

We find a lot of confusion in the marketplace around journey mapping. Some think that journey mapping is just a workshop where you take all the people who created your broken, siloed experience, give them Post-It Notes, and Bam! You have a journey map. Others go the opposite direction, considering journey mapping to be traditional market research with a nice-looking report. It’s this latter group that we’re focusing on this week in a series of posts about what exactly is different between traditional market research and best-practice journey mapping. Read more

Randy Fath - unsplash
Jim Tincher

The Most Important Question: Who’s on your Journey Mapping Team?

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , /by

Randy Fath - unsplashNote: We’re celebrating the upcoming launch of our new book, “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Customer Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change,” by Mapper-In-Chief Jim Tincher and B2B Practice Lead Nicole Newton. In the book, we introduce five journey mapping questions to answer as you launch your customer journey mapping effort.

First, Jim walked through “What’s the Business Problem or Opportunity?;” Nicole introduced the topic of “What is the Right Journey?,” Jim wrote about “Who’s the Right Customer?” and Nicole documented how to select the right approach.

Interested in the five journey mapping questions? Watch the intro to our YouTube series on the topic here.

Now we come to the fifth question, and, as they say, “last, but not least,” but in our case, the last question is actually the most important to answer. That’s because we’re working to ensure that journey mapping drives change, but we know that usually, it doesn’t.

Read more

Nicole Newton

Collecting Information About Your Customer’s Journey: What’s the Right Approach?

/1 Comment/in , , , , , , /by

 

Note: We’re celebrating the upcoming launch of our new book, “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Customer Journey Mapping to Drive Customer-Focused Change,” by Mapper-In-Chief, Jim Tincher and B2B Practice Lead, Nicole Newton. In the book, we introduce five journey mapping questions to answer as you launch your customer journey mapping effort. 

Three weeks ago, Jim walked through “What’s the Business Problem or Opportunity?,” two weeks ago Nicole introduced the topic of “What is the Right Journey?” and last week Jim wrote about “Who’s the Right Customer?”

Interested in the five journey mapping questions? Watch the intro to our youtube series on the topic here.

Once you’ve defined the customer and the journey you would like to map, you will need to select the best approach to collect information about the experience. 

Read more