{"id":47551,"date":"2021-10-07T16:49:11","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T16:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/resource\/journey-mapping-for-your-experience-program\/"},"modified":"2022-09-05T02:26:35","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T02:26:35","slug":"journey-mapping-for-your-experience-program","status":"publish","type":"resource","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/en-au\/resource\/journey-mapping-for-your-experience-program\/","title":{"rendered":"How Journey Mapping Sets the Tone for Your Entire Experience Program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author: Stacy Bolger, Vice President, Global Employee Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experience Improvement (XI) initiatives, when done correctly, are constantly evolving. You design your program with quantifiable ROI goals in mind, run it for a given length of time, and reunite with stakeholders to see how it did. If you\u2019re wondering what comes next with your initiative, want some help with optimizing program investment, or are thinking of expanding your program to new stakeholders and business areas, there\u2019s always a good place to start when it comes to that and more: journey mapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Exactly Is Journey Mapping?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Journey mapping is key to every experience initiative, especially those that are designed to drive real customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) improvement. Customer experience, employee experience, and employees\u2019 perspective of customer experience are all interrelated\u2014journey mapping allows us to understand those relationships from both audiences\u2019 viewpoints. If you don\u2019t have a line of sight on those relationships, defining challenges and what your experience program can do to solve them becomes much more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journey mapping allows brands to understand customer and employee relationships from both audiences\u2019 viewpoints.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

None of this is to say that journey mapping is simple. Over the many years I\u2019ve spent consulting on this topic, I\u2019ve seen the organizations I talk to contend with problems like a lack of executive sponsorship, siloed work culture, lack of resources, and confusion on overall company priorities\/vision. Fortunately, there\u2019s a two-stage blueprint that brands can use to navigate these obstacles, and it begins with strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step #1: Business Strategy and Alignment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The first step toward building a better customer or employee journey is to reevaluate your company\u2019s business strategy and organizational alignment. What business goals do these journeys build toward? Which customer or employee segments do you need in order to reach those goals, and what do you already know about them? Figure out which customers and\/or employees you\u2019re mapping for, and you\u2019ll have figured out the beginning of this process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, consider who your stakeholders are if you haven\u2019t already, and how well they\u2019re aligned around a common goal. If you\u2019re not sure on either of those questions, you can begin solving that problem by desiloing data within your wider organization. Sharing data isn\u2019t \u2018just\u2019 great for making sure everyone in your company has the same profile of the customer or the employee; it allows you to build up your internal network of CX advocates and, in turn, find the stakeholders you need to successfully journey-map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step #2: Finding Resources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve identified the journeys you need to map and the stakeholders\/advocates who can help you pull it off\u2014now it\u2019s time to talk resources. You can have all the right people in place and know which journeys to assess, but if you don\u2019t have the re.sources you need to act on what you find, then there\u2019s not much point to this entire endeavor. Data can be useful for creating a holistic view of the people whose journeys you\u2019re mapping, but transformative experience success only comes about as a result of direct action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, \u201cresources\u201d doesn\u2019t just refer to money (although that\u2019s nice to have for your project too). I\u2019m also talking about the human element; do your teammates have the analytical, project management, and strategic thinking skills needed to map your journeys? Additional factors to consider with journey mapping specifically include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Quantifying financial impact <\/li>
  • Ensuring improvements gleaned from mapping are scalable<\/li>
  • Measuring and monitoring changes implemented during and after journey mapping<\/li>
  • Addressing change management<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Knowing Is Half the Battle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    If you and your team can successfully evaluate your business strategy, gather stakeholders, marshall resources, and account for the obstacles I mentioned earlier, you\u2019ll have already won much of the journey-mapping battle. True, all of that is much easier said than done, but accomplishing those goals both simplifies the rest of this process and makes it scalable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Once you know which moments matter most to your customers and employees, you can delve deeper, gather feedback unique to each journey touchpoint, identify Experience Improvement opportunities, and understand how these journeys relate to each other. Then, using the desiloed infrastructure you put into place to initially reach this point, you can bring those learnings back to your wider organization and figure out how to meaningfully improve every experience! As an example, a journey map I once helped build for a client revealed that employees hadn\u2019t been trained to deliver on an expected standard of service. Journey mapping identified a chance for that client to meaningfully improve an experience for both customers and employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Creating Experience Improvement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    If journey mapping helps brands and organizations create Experience Improvement, then why do so many companies\u2019 programs fail to move the needle? Creating meaningful improvement hinges on taking action\u2014a lot of companies and even experience program vendors are content to build a journey map and then either scoreboard-watch or only react to problems as they arise. If you want to make a difference for the customers and employees for whom you\u2019re mapping, this passivity won\u2019t cut it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you think a journey mapping initiative is too expensive or time-consuming, consider the opportunity cost. Journey mapping creates initiatives that involve both people and their ideas, resulting in much more impassioned, connective experiences than initiatives that just tell people how they should change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Mapping customer journeys, feeding intel into a platform that can furnish actionable intelligence, and working with the teams you gathered to journey-map is what makes this process not just worthwhile, but invaluable. Journey mapping\u2019s collaborative, evaluative nature is what makes it a great way to optimize program investment to drive ROI, reevaluate your initiative ahead of its next cycle, and identify the behavior changes that are needed to improve customer and employee experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You can download a PDF of this article by selecting the button below!<\/em>
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