Idea in Brief
The Problem
Many companies excel in individual interactions with customers, but they fail to pay adequate attention to the customer’s complete experience on the way to purchase and after.
The Argument
Companies that perfect customer journeys reap enormous rewards, including enhanced customer and employee satisfaction, reduced churn, increased revenues, lowered costs, and improved collaboration across the organization.
The Solution
Companies need to combine top-down, judgment-driven evaluations and bottom-up, data-driven analysis to identify key journeys, and then engage the entire organization in redesigning the customer experience. This requires shifting from siloed to cross-functional approaches and changing from a touchpoint to a journey orientation.
Companies have long emphasized touchpoints—the many critical moments when customers interact with the organization and its offerings on their way to purchase and after. But the narrow focus on maximizing satisfaction at those moments can create a distorted picture, suggesting that customers are happier with the company than they actually are. It also diverts attention from the bigger—and more important—picture: the customer’s end-to-end journey.
