CJM: The 9 Essential Characteristics for Building Great Communications

Thursday, Sep 27th 2018
woman with smart tablet using iot communication

At Quadient we get a lot of questions about what makes Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) successful and what rules its contributors should stick to if they want to continue to add to that success. That’s why we decided to align the 9 essential characteristics of any successful CJM solution:

 

  • Lots of accurate detail that has been proven and validated: Maps are only useful when they are based on legitimate data and insights. And the more detail you have the more useful they become. From first interactions – such as when a customer visits a website or requests information – all the way through to purchasing and post-sales support, your maps should capture every step of every customer journey (because there will be more than one and some customers will engage with you in multiple ways).

 

  • Include qualitative and external data too: When you capture data and information, it is important that you aren’t relying solely on transactional information or data which comes through IT systems or databases. Listen to and observe your customers carefully, and, if you can access it, incorporate insights in customers’ interactions and touchpoint with competitors and other organizations.

 

  • Bring all of your efforts into one flexible digital view: Your customer journey maps should aggregate the results of all of your efforts across web, mobile, in-person, and social marketing and sales. It is a means to coordinating your efforts.

 

  • A query-able view of individual journeys in real time, over time: Marketing segments remain useful, but being able to engage individual customers based on their unique journeys in real time over their lifecycle of engagement is more powerful. Your customer journey maps should enable you to visualise each journey (including the lens/personas, touchpoints and goals, feelings and sentiments, satisfaction, outcomes and insights), compare it against other customers, and take action when it is needed.

 

  • Help you pop your bubble of assumptions: A customer journey mapping capability should assist you in breaking down assumptions you have about customer experience. As such, it should offer you a means to understanding non-customers and why they use competitors.

 

  • Deep integration with other systems: Your customer journey maps should not be a standalone system. They need to be integrated with other IT systems such as your customer communications platform and also areas like your CRM. The tools you use should, of course, be digital and allow you to add any artifacts – such as documents or media – as required.

 

  • Be shareable and accessible: Customer journey maps are more powerful when all stakeholders across the organization are able to not just view them, but fully understand their importance and can act on the insights they offer.

 

  • Respect privacy and have security-by-design: Your customer journey mapping capability must respect privacy and be developed with the highest levels of security in mind. The importance of this should not be underestimated.

 

  • Be constantly evolving and help you enact strategy for the future: Customer journey maps should not be static illustrations or diagrams that highlight yesterday’s personas. They need to evolve and constantly update based on customer experiences and needs. They should give you a way of planning, testing and implementing any changes in your customer experience strategy.

 

Was this list helpful? We invite you to download a complimentary copy of our white paper "The Essential Checklist for Customer Journey Mapping" to learn more about the future of CJM and perform your own CJM health check.