Experience Blueprinting: How to get Started?
We often see companies whom have just completed a Customer Journey Mapping exercise get either "stuck" or "stalled" in executing against the insights gained after they have completed a Customer Journey Mapping exercise. There are several potential reasons for this dilemma:
The overall inventory of issues and/or performance gaps is a bit over-whelming and companies find themselves asking "Where do I Start? not take-on too much?";
There are too many independent business units and/or silo-ed functional teams required to effectively improve the experience raising the challenge of "How do I build alignment?"; and/or
It is not exactly clear as to whom needs to do what in order to implement the desired end state customer experience, "Whom is responsible for what changes?".
Customer Journey Maps not an end unto themselves
The Customer Journey Map is an important step in the overall process of customer experience management, but, it is not an end unto itself. Customer Journey Maps help establish necessary "context" around the specific performance gaps or customer pain points from an outside-in, customer perspective. However, they lack the necessary detail to help guide or direct you in how to operationally fill or address these identified performance gaps.
This is where Experience Blueprinting steps in as a CX Design discipline that builds off the work performed in putting together a customer journey map from an "outside" perspective and helps you connect the people, processes, and systems (from an inside-out perspective) required to make operation the desired customer experience.
Getting started with Experience Blueprinting to help "operationalize" your Customer Journey Map
Here are some tips to help get you started in preparing for an Experience Blueprint workshop:
1. Focus on the most important Customer Touchpoints (loyalty drivers) and Performance Gaps
Based on your customer insights research identify critical performance gaps by touchpoint within the overall customer journey. Hopefully these insights are the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research as well as customer-centric analytics.These performance gaps come in all shapes and sizes and are further informed by the verbatim customer feedback and comments you received from your customers. Group them by phase of the overall customer lifecycle as you are looking to assess whether focusing on pre-purchase (e.g., brand discovery or awareness, consideration, etc.), purchase (e.g., select, buy, checkout, etc.), or post-purchase experiences (e.g., return/exchange, product support, etc.) are more important to focus on. It is important that you focus on those touchpoints which are loyalty drivers for your most important customers.
2. Determine a specific sub-journey within the overall Customer Journey to Blueprint.
A sub-journey is simply a collection of touchpoints that define a "series of connected interactions" that a customer has with your brand or organization in order to accomplish a specific goal or objective. Some examples might be their "path to purchase" or the steps involved in "returning or exchanging a product" that did not work for them. The reason for defining a sub-journey to focus on is simply to break down the problem space into something "more manageable" and "easier to solve or accomplish" with a smaller cross-functional team. As you inventory the touchpoints associated with the sub-journey, remember to capture the customer pain points directly associated with these touchpoints. Is the set of activities or steps too difficult, confusing, taking too long, and/or darn-right painful for the customer? These pain points, stated in the customers own words, will help with aligning stakeholders "empathetically" around the customer problem (critical step later in the process).
3. Build out the top layer, the Customer Actions associated with sub-journey, for your Experience Blueprint
By pulling together an inventory of customer actions associated with key touchpoints within the sub-journey you begin to define the boundaries of the experience you are looking to improve. In addition, the list of customer actions and touchpoints will begin to define whom within your organization you must reach out to and align with in regards to re-designing the customer experience. Do the customer touchpoints include interactions with the company website, sales associates, 3rd party product reviews, social media and/or customer support teams,? This more defined scope, with clearly defined boundaries for what's considered "in-side" your scope as well as what is considered "out-side" your scope will enable you and your team to focus your Experience Blueprinting efforts.
4. Build alignment and support with cross-functional leadership around improving the customer experience for the targeted sub-journey.
It is important that you build alignment on at least two fronts with cross-functional leadership. First, and most important, you must be able to align all stakeholders around "empathizing" with the customer, experiencing the journey through the "eyes of the customer". Without this alignment there is really no need to proceed as all CX Design initiatives should begin with customer empathy. Second, you must align with all stakeholders on the fact that addressing the identified performance gaps cannot be achieved without the joint effort, time, and commitment of all stakeholder groups. You will be blueprinting multiple layers of customer experience delivery including Customer Actions, On-Stage Interactions, Back-Stage Interactions, and Supporting Processes and Systems. You will need a collection of individuals, potentially across sales, marketing, operations, customer support and IT, to co-create and design new experiences. Most likely they will be carving time out of their regular work week to participate and you will need the sponsorship of their respective leadership teams. In addition, recommendations will need to be made by this team to eliminate or remove current inefficiencies or constraints within the organization which are currently road-blocks to achieving the desired customer experience.
5. Plan out the necessary preparation and execution steps for an Experience Blueprinting workshop
Now it's time to plan and prepare for your Experience Blueprinting workshops. We've seen these workshops approached in a couple of different ways. One option, is to start by developing an Experience Blueprint for the "As Is" state. Meaning that you literally map out each of the layers of the Experience Blueprint mapping the identified pain points to specific interactions and/or touchpoints within that sub-journey. In addition, you begin to identify what some of the underlying "root causes" might be for each customer pain paint. Once you have completed the "As Is" Experience Blueprint, working with the same co-creative team you start from scratch to design the "To Be" Experience Blueprint.
Another option we've seen performed successfully is to simply start with a clean slate and map out the "To Be" Experience Blueprint. The co-creative team is empowered to recommend the necessary on-stage interaction and/or back-stage interaction changes required as well as any new or modified supporting processes and systems requirements to enable the implementation of the desired customer experience.
Experience Blueprints are a critical component of your Customer Experience transformation initiative
In summary, be sure not to treat Customer Journey Mapping as an end unto itself. Recognize their strengths, but, acknowledge their limitations when it comes to executing on your Customer Experience transformation initiative. Start to look into leveraging the methods and techniques of Experience Blueprinting to help you execute against the CX performance gaps brought to life as part of your Customer Journey Mapping exercise.