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Nicole Newton

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

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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?

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Cathy McLane

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

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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.

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Corey Pawlak

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

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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.

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Jim Tincher

How Journey Mapping Differs from Traditional Market Research

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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

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Jim Tincher

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

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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.

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Nicole Newton

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

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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. 

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Life Insurance Journey Map
Jim Tincher

Who’s the Right Customer to Map? Your Third Journey Mapping Question

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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. We’re using the launch as a cheesy excuse to walk through the Five Journey Mapping Questions.

Two weeks ago, Jim covered “What’s the Business Problem or Opportunity,” and, last week, Nicole introduced the topic of “What is the Right Journey?”

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Nicole Newton

Defining Scope: Should You Map an End-to-End Journey or a Specific Sub-Journey?

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Editor’s Note: As we get ready for our book launch in May, we’re previewing the major topics. This post was written by co-author Nicole Newton, HoC’s B2B Practice Lead. You can read more about our book at https://heartofthecustomer.com/book/.

Mapping the Right Journey

At Heart of the Customer, we recommend starting a journey mapping project by answering these five questions:

  1. What is the business problem or opportunity behind mapping?
  2. What is the right journey to map?
  3. Who is the right customer to map?
  4. What is the right approach to gathering the voice of your customer?
  5. Who are the right people to be on your journey mapping team?
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Jim Tincher

Three Common Customer Journey Mapping Business Cases

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Editor’s Note: As we get ready for our book launch in May, we’re previewing the major topics. You can read more about our book at https://heartofthecustomer.com/book/.

What differentiates a mapping program that drives action from one that doesn’t? A major factor is the reason for doing journey mapping in the first place.

We can confidently predict whether a mapping program will be successful in our very first conversation. Does the company have a solid reason they want to do mapping? Or is it because they heard it’s a good thing to do?

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