Before the land west of the Mississippi River had been explored by Lewis and Clark in 1806, little was known about this portion of North America. By surveying the landscape directly and creating intricate compass traverse maps, additional trade routes were established. As a result, Americans were able to gradually spread toward the Pacific Ocean following the Louisiana Purchase.
In the modern workplace, customer success teams can now practice customer journey mapping in order to track and predict the long-term success of a client. Like Lewis and Clark’s end goal, developing these roadmaps has created an important base for companies to lean on while trying to better understand how a customer interacts with their product.
The most successful customer journey maps take into account the fact that customers’ needs are constantly shifting, according to local e-commerce account lead Claire Costello. By employing these maps to their full potential, a team can not only see where victories have previously been achieved but also identify where to improve upon business practices for even bigger wins.
Built In Colorado caught up with Costello and two other local customer success leaders to better understand how their teams are leading repeat clients to success and charting those paths.
Businesses, communities and individuals can all construct their online presence at Wix. More than 200 million customers have utilized the company’s website-building platform worldwide, which E-commerce Account Managers Lead Claire Costello attributes to their “choose your own adventure” style of journey mapping based on desired outcomes and needs.
What’s one way customer journey mapping helps you deliver a better customer experience?
Working alongside e-commerce businesses every day, we get to see firsthand what products and practices have the greatest impact on traffic and revenue across diverse industries. With this data, we’ve been able to craft a customer journey that helps busy e-commerce stores prioritize the strategies we’ve found to be the greatest predictors of success.
We like to think of it as a “choose your own adventure.” Once we identify e-commerce best practices, we just need to map the customer journey based on the goals of the business.
These roadmaps allow us to help even the most technologically timid users with simple steps. For example, we recently had a cross-stitch shop owner who was hesitant about making changes and breaking her site. After evaluating her customers, traffic and resources, we helped her add a little call-to-action button, which got her big returns. Now that we’ve got her rolling, we are looking to redesign her site, improve SEO, monetize her instructional videos, optimize shipping and launch Facebook Ads.
What other teams or team members do you collaborate with to support customers throughout their success journey? And how does mapping help clarify everyone’s roles and responsibilities?
Our customer success managers work cross-functionally with many different teams at Wix to help guide the customer throughout their success journey – from our care team who gives timely support, to the marketing and product development teams who field feature requests and build new technologies to benefit our businesses.
Wix is unique for a large company. The culture is insanely collaborative and everyone’s mission is to help the customers succeed.
Success means being able to thrive in an environment where change is the only thing that’s constant.”
How do you evolve or fine-tune your customer journey map in response to product changes or changes in customer behavior?
As any entrepreneur in the e-commerce space knows, success means being able to thrive in an environment where change is the only thing that’s constant. The most successful customer journey maps take into account the fact that customers’ needs are constantly shifting and we must adapt to meet those needs.
To do this, we continually review customer data to inform the recommendations we make. This helps us to determine what is likely to work and what isn’t, anticipate issues that might arise, and make tweaks and optimizations that are likely to enhance performance and remove friction from the customer experience.
Customer Success Manager Ali Gaumnitz believes in the continuous cycle of customer journey mapping. Digital field management platform ENGAGE helps operators automate and track their services in order to lower costs and carbon footprint impact – which Gaumnitz says is successful thanks to proper mapping.
What’s one way customer journey mapping helps you deliver a better customer experience?
Mapping can help your process from beginning to end...or, rather, beginning to a continuous cycle of success. The continuous cycle will ensure goals are aligned and being communicated at all times internally and externally. Open up the dialogue consistently and often.
What other teams or team members do you collaborate with to support customers throughout their success journey? And how does mapping help clarify everyone’s roles and responsibilities?
Break down the silos and open up collaboration with all teams. Sales, marketing, professional services, product, and development will all have the ability to help the customer succeed throughout their journey.
Mapping allows each team to focus on a specific portion of the journey. But ultimately, everyone needs to be on board with making the client successful overall. The success team will work with the client the most in the long run, so this team needs to be ready to be the voice of the client within the organization and keep the other teams aligned once the client has been onboarded.
Have a good base for how you might expect your customer mapping to go, but don’t be set in your ways.”
How do you tailor the customer journey map to meet the unique needs of different segments or types of customers?
Be open to the fact that all clients will need to be sold, onboarded and followed up with differently. Have a good base for how you might expect your customer mapping to go, but don’t be set in your ways. Always look back at successes and opportunities throughout each journey with a client. Take notes, make changes and pivot when needed. Really listen to the wants and needs of the client so you can address how you can or can’t deliver and provide next steps.
KPA provides environment, health and safety (EHS), and workforce compliance software and services to mid-sized businesses. Vice President of Client Success Marty Smith believes that having a customer journey map not only ensures that everyone on his team knows their role in appealing to the client, but allows their clients to feel like they are receiving the best experience possible.
What’s one way customer journey mapping helps you deliver a better customer experience?
Our customer journey map is essential for us to deliver a high-quality and repeatable customer experience. It helps our clients feel they are changing their workplace safety culture as we support and provide guidance to help them meet their compliance requirements and goals. It also ensures that clients are aware of product improvements and that any roadblocks are met and resolved promptly.
We utilize predetermined touchpoints to ensure we are giving the customer the best experience possible. That starts right from the sales process, through onboarding and into client success. We determine the customer’s “health” as we progress through our process gates and determine if a change of approach is needed. We quickly involve appropriate team members to resolve situations and get the customer back on track promptly.
What other teams or team members do you collaborate with to support customers throughout their success journey? And how does mapping help clarify everyone’s roles and responsibilities?
Mapping ensures everyone knows their role in capturing the client, making sure they have a clear understanding of where they go next and how they will be supported and heard. There’s not a department that doesn’t play a part in the customer journey. Sales, implementation, marketing, product, and customer success are all key players in making sure our clients are supported during their partnership with KPA.
We partner heavily with our sales organization and perform hand-off calls for all sales to ensure everyone has the pertinent information to make the customer’s onboarding successful. We engage our support and/or product organization to quickly resolve any issues or provide feedback about our product. We collaborate closely with our safety consultants. The consultant helps lead the way as we maneuver through difficulties of safety and regulatory issues as they arise.
As we like to say, everyone in the company is in client success. We all keep in mind that every interaction is an opportunity to delight our customers and reaffirm their decision to choose KPA.
There’s not a department that doesn’t play a part in the customer journey.”
How do you tailor the customer journey map to meet the unique needs of different segments or types of customers?
Not all customers have the same goals, so it is important to understand what the customer wants to accomplish and why they decided to partner with KPA. We use this information to shift the schedule around or tailor tasks so that we are positive that the customer is getting an experience that is the most beneficial to their needs and desires.
Additionally, we must stay agile and evolve our mapping as government regulations within the environmental, finance and HR spaces change rapidly – especially after a change in administration. Working with our colleagues across departments, we are alerted to changes that we then communicate to the client. We do that by correcting our path and supporting those changes through our website training, or by giving guidance at a moment’s notice when needed.
