DMWF Speakers Make The Case For Customer Journey Mapping

When marketers are all about perfecting the customer experience, how do you differentiate the way your brand connects to keep prospects and customers interested, engaged, and loyal?

When marketers are all about perfecting the customer experience, how do you differentiate the way your brand connects to keep prospects and customers interested, engaged, and loyal?

That was the topic du jour at the Digital Marketing World Forum (DMWF), when Markus Grupp, director of digital customer experience at Indigo Books & Music, took the stage this morning at the Metropolitan West in New York City.

Customer experiences can vary greatly, Grupp said, making journey mapping all the more important.

Why map it? According to Grupp, customer journey maps help companies create a common understanding about the existing customer experience and enable them to share insights about behaviors and needs across touch points in an easily understandable format. Additionally, customer journey mapping allows brands to uncover opportunities to innovate by uncovering pain points.

“Start by understanding your customers better,” Grupp said. “Observe them in context in terms of what are they doing and how are they doing it.”

The three keys to experience mapping, he said, are conducting customer research, involving a cross-functional team, and creating an actual map that can be used around the organization.

“Ask good questions,” Grupp said. “Be curious and listen. Ask customers about what is their most frustrating part of the day. Listen with an open mind and don’t judge.”

Elliott Bell, senior director of brand and marketing at The Muse, echoed Grupp’s comments. Listening to customers isn’t just limited to email surveys or social listening, either, he told attendees.

For example, The Muse does a regular exercise where one of its customers is recruited to get onto Skype in front of all of its employees to talk about his experience with the service. This has been a great way to gain a better understanding about what is and is not working, as well as to gain insight on ways to improve, Bell said.

Kristal Bergfield, a marketing and operations consultant who used to work at American Express, said that the key to a good customer experience is consistency.

“Whether it is the onboarding team, acquisition team, or marketing team that is interacting with a customer, the experience should be consistent and embody the qualities the brand is known for,” Bergfield said.

Kibi Anderson, head of digital strategy at Bloomberg, said her organization is very focused on consistency, which can be hard for a publisher that works with third parties for content syndication across different channels and platforms for distribution.

“Our goal is creating consistency so that wherever you experience our content, there is a consistent experience,” she said.

One of the biggest customer experience mistakes companies make is thinking too much about what the company wants customers to do instead of what the customer wants to do, The Muse’s Bell said. “Understand upfront what customer goals are,” Bell said. “They might be, and most likely are, different than your company goals.”