SIX GUIDING PRINCIPALS

HOW TO BECOME AN EXPERT IN MAPPING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Nine in ten contact centres do not have a clear picture of the customer journey across all channels leading to

a disjointed experience for customers.

These six principles will help you to understand the customer journey so that you can create a truly

customer-centric contact centre.

Principal One

THERE IS NO STANDARD BLUEPRINT

While there is no right or wrong way to map the customer journey, it must meet your organisational needs.

You should:

• Think about what success looks like from an internal and external point of view

• What outcome will make the customer and business stakeholders happy?

• Identify what you can influence to provide the optimal customer experience.

Principal Two

INCLUDE THE VOICE OF THE AGENT

Tap into your agents’ knowledge. As your eyes and ears on the ground,agents quite often have a unique insight into the nuances of your customer journey.

Agents can often identify significant pain points you may miss and they will increasingly feel more ownership if you use them to shape the experience.

Principal Three

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE NOT ALL THE SAME

We’re all different, and so are your customers. While you can’t understand every customer as an individual, creating rich personas that are representative of key customer groups will help you personalise the customer experience.

• How old are they?

• Are they familiar with technology

• Are they from different socio-economic backgrounds or cultures?

Principal Four

UNDERSTAND ALL POTENTIAL CUSTOMER ROUTES

Keep in mind a potential customer could have many possible routes across a number of channels simultaneously by the time they speak to an agent in the contact centre.

Identify the potential needs of the customer at any point in this process and place those needs into the customer journey to mould it around them.

Principal Five

IDENTIFY PAIN POINTS

Regulations don’t make it easy. A classic example of this is forcing customers to provide their security details numerous times within a single transaction.

Communicate with the customer and tell them exactly why you need these details to prevent it from becoming a recurring inconvenience and help customers to own the experience.

Principal Six

TEST, TEST AND TEST AGAIN

Make your journey map fit for purpose. Outline and test stressful scenarios and create measures to help your agents, and in turn, the customer journey - if an agent struggles to fulfil the customer objectives, then the key ‘get help” elements of the experience will fall flat.

Mapping the customer journey is just the first step of many in creating a truly customer-centric, multichannel contact centre.

The new EvaluAgent report based on a survey of contact centre professionalsexplores why so many are failing when it comes to multichannel strategies, and explains how you can deliver a truly joined-up experience for your customers.

Read the full report at:http://www.evaluagent.net/resources/multichannel-maze-report/