Customer Journey; Key Focus For Digital Transformation

According to a report from McKinsey & Company, almost 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail for various reasons. Yet we continuously hear a lot of buzzwords around digital transformation from industry members, consultants and media members. Buzzwords are easy, but real progress in digital transformation can be extremely difficult, especially for organizations with legacy technology stacks, business processes or culture. However, organizations can be much more effective in their digital transformation aspirations by coordinating and focusing their effort around key customer journeys.

Customer journeys are an end-to-end approach to conceiving and solving each customer mission. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a customer or prospect goes through to achieve a goal with the company. The customer journey map shows a holistic view of the journey that includes customer touchpoints across both digital and live channels, customer satisfaction across those touchpoints, internal people, processes and systems involved, and opportunity areas for enhancing the customer journey. The holistic view of the customer journey allows us to create a futuristic transformative vision of the journey and helps us develop a strategy, road map and execution path to advance toward that vision.

Specific customer journeys and sub-journeys vary by industry, businesses and types of customer interactions. Thus, it is important to apply the framework in the appropriate business context. Below are some examples of customer journeys and sub-journeys.

1. Journey: Becoming a customer.

2. Journey: Using the company’s products and services.

3. Journey: Expanding relationships.

4. Journey: Solving problems and issues.

Customer journey-focused digital transformation is organizing various digital transformation initiatives around a set of end-to-end customer journeys instead of running several uncoordinated initiatives. Digital transformation initiatives can be organized in a variety of manners, but organizing them around customer journeys is likely to deliver strong customer/business value on a sustained basis and improves the chance of success in the long run.

Starting with the customer journey, creating the future vision of the journey and organizing various initiatives to advance toward the vision in a holistic manner (instead of thinking purely within those capabilities) can significantly improve the effectiveness of the digital transformation. For example, a list of initiatives such as a redesigned digital experience, automated triaging, back-end process automation, an omnichannel-integrated experience and end-to-end workflow orchestration can be planned to transform the overall journey.

Key Steps For Customer Journey-Focused Digital Transformation

An organization can begin to organize its digital transformation initiatives around key customer journeys by following below key steps:

• Develop a list of relevant journeys.

• Prioritize key journeys based on customer and business value.

• Define expected outcomes and tie them to the overall business strategy.

• Organize teams and initiatives around the high-priority journeys.

• Assign/invest in the right talent.

• Embrace agile principles.

• Deliver early wins.

• Focus relentlessly on execution.

• Focus on outcomes, not outputs.

Key Benefits Of Customer Journey-Focused Digital Transformation

There are some distinct and significant benefits of focusing on customer journeys:

• Focusing on customer journeys can improve both customer experience and operational efficiency, as friction in the customer experience typically equates to friction in internal operations.

• There’s a higher likelihood of sustained success, as organizations are likely to continue investing in customer experience even when there are changes in leadership or business priorities.

• By developing customer-centric and change-centric culture and capabilities, customer journeys can become the main mechanism for change over time.

• In today’s digital world, improved customer experience is a table stake, and a delightful customer experience can be a differentiator. Thus, customer experience can help retain existing customers/revenue and drive top-line growth.

If you need help with your digital transformation journey, write to us at Contact@qhala.com