The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

I found talking about customer experience analytics a little too broad. That ultimately, it’s grounded on customer journeys x personas. Hence I thought possibly with Customer Journey Analytics or Journey Analytics (JxA) for short, we are finally able to evaluate the sum of interactions across the customer life cycles, encompassing omni-channel (physical/ staffed/ digital) touchpoints to journeys and “episodes”; having worked in varying scale of CX type ‘transformations’ for more than 18 years, I personally found with JxA we have the best chance yet at validating -> rebooting CX strategies with closer alignment to #purpose and #trust – oh and yes, to tailor product and services (better) to customers’ needs [which is in fact a by product].

We all know experience is the product; we’re all competing in the experience economy – but I’d for simplicity let’s focus on use cases from the telecommunications (“telco”) sector as it’s close to heart – and a sector most can relate too (after all we are all consumers).

JxA stitches together spectrums of data/ derived + connected data from different customer activities (activities spawn transactions and transactions are classified as interactions when we have a bi-directional employee-customer exchange regardless the channel/ system), has become pivotal for the telcos across the globe, providing the means to improve the customer experience – but often overlooked are ‘non NPS’ related indicators – oh yes, NPS is a lagging indicator! Don’t forget ‘simple’ sometimes forgotten metrics such as retention or customer complaints. Things we can get a hold of and work on – immediately! Something the product, sales, marketing and service folks can rally around. There’s a lot we can do as ‘quick wins’ negating the need for tech investments early on; perhaps even streamlining internal/ external communications e.g. a welcome pack and consistent onboarding process. Easier said than done – not all Operators have mastered this ‘simple’ feat. Firstly it takes investment of money and time – employees internally – to believe in the greater good, and it has to be cascaded down from the very top. No it’s not another vision/ mission statement, it’s actually every employee feeling safe and being trusted to be their best, every time, every day. JxA has the ability to link together scattered pieces of data, and enhance a telco business’s objectives. Siloed approaches are becoming obsolete – take call centers as an example – there is only so much that you can do with data from only one system. But look deeper, and ‘listen with our eyes’ and we see (often) that call centers are inundated with inbound calls/requests re: ‘upstream’ product and service design. Case in point, would you expect prepaid subs to even attempt a call to the contact center – when and if, key interactions are seamless and transparent? Would you expect prepaid subs to enquire about ‘basic’ product/ usage transactions? The complexity of the post-paid and enterprise (B2B) bundles signal the need more ‘humanistic’ touch-points to take lead/ charge; a powerful lever to build trust across the enterprise (telco) and more importantly, with the customer and the larger ecosystem.

By turning insights into actions (there’s really no point otherwise!), telcos can better measure the customer/ employee experience, and make informed +iterative/ committed decisions to refine it. The worst part of CX is when customer feedback is not valued; and operators must show that there’s a closed-loop system and feedback is being worked on! The data not only allow them to take proactive approach towards customer satisfaction, but enable the prediction of future failures as well. With customer journey analytics, you can evaluate the touchpoints to journeys, and revamp your strategies to better cater to customers’ needs.

The telco sector is evolving – it’s under pressure/ duress. Cratering margins and hyper competitive x connected ecosystems are leaving nothing much left to imagination. Telcos (every other business really!) have to compete on experience. It’s a gambit. Think about it – a utility, much like water, electricity, almost a basic human right having to differentiate. Boards and C suites having been successful years (‘back to basics’) past now having to adapt and work with connected ecosystems. Things quickly don’t add up.

The focus must always be the customer, “outside-in”. To understand the ‘customer’ we have an array of methods and assets, and we will talk about Journey Science or JxA.

Building the experiential fabric, layer by layer..

Many leading telcos are embracing JxA e.g. there are plenty of tools like Qualtrics + successful Pilots out there; but the key lies in execution as always. My view is that JxA is a tool/ platform for businesses to ‘shine the light’ and gravitate focus on agreed pain-points to pave way for greater (economic) impact. With JxA we can all talk the ‘same language’ aka the language of the customer. With JxA we have moderated, more concrete/ constructive discussions on how to continuously improve e.g. if it’s product complexity we might want to simplify bundles + increase transparency (no hidden fees) and co-create new ones. One good way to better understand digital journeys is through a omni-channel, end-2-end, view. Journey Sciences, at its best, provides enhanced data accessibility and increased analytics agility, and helps in weaving together disparate pieces of data. This makes it possible for telco businesses to link together structured and unstructured data back to their strategic objectives, and quickly modify them to ensure they cope with the evolving customer demands. However, in order to get insight into customer experience through journey analytics, it is critical to focus not only on the individual moments but the customers’ end-to-end experiences as well. 

Relentless Execution! Pound the rock #often

The main benefit of JxA is that it enables operators to better (anticipate?) recognise customer needs, and assess their satisfaction. While we might think JxA is marketing focused, it actually all encompassing – and why I felt calling it Customer Experience Analytics isn’t doing it justice. We know JxA powers insights to actions; these insights derived from customer pain-points (surveys, focus groups, text and sentiment analysis, ethnography, anything really!). For example, a subscriber seeking technical support for their device has multiple paths to resolution. JxA enables businesses to evaluate each step of the journey experience, and figure out the critical points that could negatively impact customer experience. With this kind of information, businesses can develop strategies to overcome hurdles customers face on all such touchpoints, resulting in improved customer experience. Let’s take the case of a home relocation “episode”. The journey starts when there’s an inbound request to transfer services to a new location. From start to end, there would be calls to the contact center, hopefully no visits to the physical store and of course, truck rolls and technician visits to install, configure products and services.

Improving Customer Journeys through Transparency

Hitting a golf ball is easy. Hitting a golf ball far, consistently- that’s something else! It’s the same with customer experience ; we never really master it- it doesn’t have an end/ finished state. It’s playing an infinite game, we only strive to better ourselves.

For improving customer experience, it is essential to connect all the data down to the individual customer level to fully understand the required changes.

To practice insights to action, we do actually need actual data. There’s never enough. The trick is to start anyways, and monetise/ gamify. Most operators are drowning in data- data rich, insights poor. It’s quite unfathomable this day and age not to be able to exploit the abundance of data spectrums available to operators today!

To piece together customer journeys gather data from as many systems, channels as possible – and track the individual journey the customer experiences. We’ve built custom JxA assets such as the Experience Calculator (xCalc) to quantify economic/ experiential trade-off for pain points and derive experiential improvement opportunities (EIOs) across the organisation. No rocket science, the secret sauce is really in the execution. The insights bit (of insights to action) is easy, really. Really.

Typically, more than 50 percent of customers make omni-channel journeys; meaning, in order to understand their behavior, establishing connection among all the data is quintessential. Because of the deep roots of technology in today’s common lifestyle, many journeys start from digital channels, but eventually go into a human channel for completion. We argue that high cost to serve should shape lasting experiences e.g. transforming service focused (transactional) culture at owned stores into experiential centres – and spending more time converting transactions -> interactions -> experiences. It might be counter intuitive at first, but precious real physical estate should be used to shape lasting experiences, let lower cost to serve channels (digital self service etc) remove friction from “simpler” transactions. Think about it – the “actual” deal closure (transaction, paperwork) can even be automated! What’s irreplaceable about the process, is the authenticity and trust built between humans (customer, agent).

For improving customer experience, it is essential to connect all the data down to the individual customer level to fully understand the required changes. For telco businesses to completely understand customer journeys, they must gather data from many different channels, and track the individual journey the customer experiences. Typically, more than 50 percent of customers make multi-channel journeys; meaning, in order to understand their behavior, establishing connection among all the data is extremely important. Because of the deep roots of technology in today’s common lifestyle, many journeys start from digital channels, but eventually go into a human channel for completion. 

Mo data, mo problems..

Data really is the new oil of the 21st century; it all over, permeating across customer journeys and lifecycles. Every ‘strand’ can be viewed as a snapshot, or pulled/ elongated – it’s a continuum. If we take this further, it’s akin of customer DNA strands, all unique! With JxA we begin to peer into the intricacies of the experiential fabric; it’s not one dimensional at all. Geek speak – we are able to ingest, fuse, stitch and hypothesise the entire gamut of data types/ spectrums available to us – in-depth data e.g. where, what time, which cell-site a call, location originates viz a viz aggregated data sets, e.g. how much talk time over x hours/ days/ weeks, frequency of reloads etc. Data comes in all shapes + sizes, raw, processed, half-cooked.

It’s easy to now imagine – how a single ‘strand’, a single customer journey has within it hundreds of thousands of data points embedded – with JxA we can ‘slice and dice’, or more fittingly, transpose and identify pain-point and themes. Case in point, if we had granular data on long wait time at stores – that might be telling us part of the story. If we then cross pollinate video stream feeds from the network of stores we might see that congestion occur specifically when x where – and trace residual verbatims from #socialmedia might help us triangulate on specific ‘transactions’ causing delays (maybe unclear return, repair or insurance policies?). Applying insights to action, these can be solved for in the short/ mid/ long term. A quick fix could be to allocate man-power to fit supply/ demand curves better per store/ location (or choice locations). Longer term solutions could look like e-appointments etc to better predict demand. You get the idea.

It’s quite rare, being able to triangulate and diagnose, with atomic data points. These could be page visits, or app downloads, or any ‘transaction’ e.g. a bill print. JxA helps us apply proper/ requisite problem-solving lens, else we get inundated #datadeluge – data rich, insights poor!

Install, tune, outperform! Crawl, walk, run..

Mastery of one’s craft is never done – customer experience is an infinite game. Play to better ourselves, not to win (vs the competition). JxA allows the operator to continuously + iteratively make small improvements (remove frictions in the customer journey) while planning out and shaping mid to long-term strategies #agile

Over the years as a practitioner, I’ve noticed with my clients (telcos across the region) the Chief Experience Officer role emerge and evolve – typically alongside another pivotal executive, the Chief Transformation Officer. There’s a lot of synergy in this alliance; strategy to execution, insights to action.

Assets, and other CX artefacts we co-create with clients become institutional knowledge and builds equity – JxA is one such asset. Identification of pain-points, the ‘what’ is easy. It’s always, has always, been about relentless #execution. Start with the possible and soon we will be doing the impossible – meaning, pound the rock, fix the basics, the low hanging fruits. These could be stuff requiring less investment (technology?) and executable within shorter sprint cycles.