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!

1) Notability (Winner in the ‘Mobile Note Taking’ category)

There are lots of apps for note taking, each that specializes in different features that claim to be awesome. Most of them were rushed to market, with poor usability and UI, and are cumbersome and useless (in my opinion). EverNote, Listy, and a slew of other apps simply are not effective or entirely useful when it comes to taking notes on-the-fly. Notability is an app that is powerful as a note-taking app, but also useful for annotating docs, sketching ideas and even recording sessions. In addition to beautiful layout and design, you can replay notes, mark up documents and pdfs, and sync with every cloud service under the sun. I find the ‘drawing’ aspect of Notability extremely useful, and find new ways to utilize the app during every meeting I attend. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.

2)   Trello (Winner in the ‘Mobile To Do List’ category)

Another category overwhelmed with options, the basic ‘To Do’ list app has plenty of competition with lots of options to consider. In my opinion, there really is no option, as Trello leads the pack in terms of simplicity, UX/UI, and design. This app lets you create simple ‘lists’ of items, and uses an agile methodology overlay allowing users to ‘move’ cards from one stack to the other. This is useful for everything from Project Management, Development Backlog Planning, as well as everyday things like Shopping Lists. In addition to being simple and easy to learn, its 100% free and available via Desktop, Mobile Apps (iOS and Android) or natively on a tablet. I find myself making lists everywhere i go, and even like taking advantage of the meta data and tagging options to sort, filter and archive tasks.

3)   DropBox (Winner in the ‘File Storage and Cloud Access’ category)

What’s not to like about DropBox. I could have easily gone with ‘Box’, or other competitive tools, but DropBox has a simple, intuitive installation process and is widely used in many industries today. I am still baffled when i see organizations using Microsoft SharePoint, or even worse, a company Intranet to store files, which usually requires VPN or some other secure access method. DropBox is great on-the-go to access files on a mobile device, and is great for its access controlled ‘sharing’ functionality, giving users the ability to collaborate in a safe and secure manner. For its most simple use, a great way to store personal photos (not unlike Apple’s Cloud storage) and share with friends and family, without worrying about your hard drive crashing and losing all of your precious moments. Get into the cloud, people!

4)   ProCreate (Winner in the ‘Mobile Art and Image Editing’ category)

While typically not considered a ‘productivity’ application, artists and creative people will agree that there is truly an advantage when you have the ability to be productive through powerful apps, other than using a full-desktop or SaaS version of PhotoShop or Adobe Creative Suite. As an artist, I’ve tried many different apps that claim to be the best for digital artwork, but none seem to rival ProCreate for iOS. This elegant and intuitive application mimics the best of what PhotoShop has to offer, in a small package. While not exactly cheap at $9.99, it is definitely well worth it when you have the ability to do proper image editing, and more importantly, drawing and sketching using layers and the toolset available in Adobe. For an ever better experience, try using the JOT pen, which is a truly great way to get a ‘real’ drawing feel. The rubber ‘nub’ pens really don’t work well, and JOT works great with ProCreate.

5)   HipChat (Winner in the ‘Mobile Communication’ category)

HipChat was recently purchased by Atlassian, the company that makes great software like JIRA, and it’s a perfect combination of everything i love about mobile communication. Similar to tools like FLOWDOCK, HipChat excels through simple integration with other development tools, while combining Video, Emojis, and HashTag# capabilities. I’ve seen firsthand how productivity increases for any team using HipChat, great for groups of all kinds from development, to education, to friendly banter. Oh, and for teams of 6 or less, it’s 100% FREE. For an extra good time, try using my favorite emoji #itsatrap! (admiral akbar).

I hope this list has been helpful to my faithful readers. Don’t waste countless hours and space on your devices downloading and playing with apps that are a waste of time. Instead, try these out … you will not be disappointed.