360-degree-experience

š The “360 degree customer experience” is all about the careful management of the end-to-end cycle your specific audience takes, which can vary in different industries and markets. This encompasses everything from User Data, Behavior tracking, Social Media activity, and real-time / historical analytics to create a holistic view of your audience. This can also be used to identify gaps in processes, overlaps of audience behavior and ideally highlight areas that could use improvement or expose weaknesses.

So, how do we get started down this path if you work at a fairly large organization? This task seems daunting and could cross over between departments, making the process even tricker. šStart by gathering information within your organization required for planning the 360 degree experience, which derives from sources typically in different business units.

šAs part of this initial “inventory” step, a comprehensive review of tools (and teams) are necessary. A good starting place would be …

1. Surveying your customers
2. Compile data to reflect customer journeys (Email systems, Sales / CRM Systems, Social Systems, Website Analytics, etc.) and identify user interactions
3. Map Lifecycle steps and begin examining user paths

šSurvey every customer - Satisfaction surveys not only help you instrument a better product, they also help you identify at-risk customers before they leave you. Complaints can be great! They will tell us exactly where our product or overall experience is completely failing. Keep your surveys brief (1-2 questions), and make sure emailed users don’t need to go to a separate 3rd party survey site to complete the form.

* Savvy companies drive all poor ratings directly to an assigned sales or support team for email follow-up. Informing them of upcoming product enhancements, offering discounts or simply letting them know that you’re listening is worth doing. Use positive ratings to identify people for VIP programs or for driving social email promotions!

Compiling Your Data – šTake an in-depth look and reflect on your individual customer journeys (Email systems, CRM Systems, Social Systems, Website Analytics, eCommerce platforms, etc.). Delivering on the 360-degree view is not simply about having a unified database of all activity, but rather being able to pull together the pieces of information that are relevant for a specific customer workflow and specific interaction with your product.

šMapping Lifecycle - Once data is aggregated, its critical to identify areas of strength and weakness. The purpose of the entire 360-degree customer experience mapping is to influence and change institutionalized behavior and activity within your organization.

* Data Scientists and Analyst roles have become more critical in many organizations for this exact purpose, being able to identify not only problem areas, but also identify areas of potential missed opportunity and growth. šData is king. Typically, results of such an internal review and audit can expose weaknesses in unexpected areas.

Now, let’s look at few specific use cases where the Customer Journey Maps could make a difference for you…

šUse Case # 1: Overlapping Initiatives (Sales, Editorial, Marketing)

šAfter detailed review was conducted of our separate sales, editorial and marketing distribution lists between departments using aggregated data collection, it was clear there was abundant overlap of audience between our global divisions (which was a surprise to many). This resulted in spamming of user emails without proper sequence to cross division initiatives, as well as missed opportunity for cross-over sales. New product ideas were generated after seeing some of this unique customer overlap.

šUse Case # 2: Daily Social and Email Activity (Editorial, Marketing, Business Development)š

šIn recent research of aggregated real-time and email analytics for customer profiles, it was uncovered that engagement was flat for standard Newsletter and Social Media traffic for many months with little or no growth. šAfter an in depth A/B test was conducted using aggregated data between email and social media platforms, the user experience was detailed for individual users. It was clear that we had higher open rates and better social traffic growth at an unexpected hours during the day and in the evenings, which resulted in drastic process change.

šUse Case # 3: Loss of Ownership (Sales, Editorial, Marketing, Technology)

šAfter creating a specific “customer journey” for eCommerce products, it was clear there were areas of business that lacked ownership, following up with customers that do not complete the transaction funnel. Key touch points were assigned to specific departments to address areas of inconsistencies (and glitches in customer journeys), simply because no internal team has been tasked with ownership of that element. Journey maps can create clarity around alignment of departments or groups with different stages or key touchpoints in the journey that need addressing.

Reference Materials for Customer Journey Mapping

• šSticky Notes & Whiteboards — for quick and dirty journey mapping where your sources of information/research change rapidly
• šSmaply  (https://www.smaply.com/)— creates digital personas, journey maps, stakeholder mapsš
• šTrello / Mural  —  digital sticky notes and organization tool for online brainstorming, synthesis and collaboration
• šMapovate  (https://www.mapovate.com/) — digital journey mapping

Hope this info has been helpful!