Key Concepts

What are Customer Journeys and Customer Experience?

Uncovering what Customers really do

A Customer Journey is the end-to-end process taken by a customer to get an expected result (for instance buy his/her new home), from the customer’s perspective.  A Customer Journey is therefore a sequence of steps performed by the customer, some of which are performed in contact with the company (digitally, face-to-face, over the phone, etc.) and some others by him/herself (for instance doing some research on the Internet).

The total number of Customer Journeys for a company varies a lot depending on its activity.  Whereas an insurance or telco company can have a dozen of main journeys (for P&C insurance: book policy, renew policy, handle a claim, etc.), a retail banking company may have hundreds, due to the large number of products and the events that can happen (a retail bank is a production factory for credit, cards, payments, investment, etc.).

For retail banking business, I have structured the customer journeys into 3 groups.  Each of them drives specific customer expectations.

Focusing on Customers' emotions and mental model

The Customer Experience is the perception of the customer when going along the customer journey.  All aspects of the journey are contributing factors of this perception (quality of contact, ease of getting things done, clarity of the information provided, perception that his/her request or problem is taken with care, etc.)

When describing a Customer Journey, it is therefore crucial to indicate the expected perception of the customer for each step (reassurance, sense of ease, peace of mind, etc.).  Designing a Customer Journey aims to manage the customer’s perception and experience.

One common pitfall of customer experience management is to try to address each interaction individually (e.g. email, call to service center, online request, etc.).  The perception of the customer is caused by the end-to-end journey and the end result.

Warning — Difference between a Customer Journey and a traditional process

Customer Journeys look like traditional processes, but they differ in many ways.

The main difference is the customer orientation.  In a traditional process banks or insurance companies focus on their internal constraints and objectives (regulatory constraints, fit with the company's organization, siloed-objectives of the various company's department involved in the process, etc.). The customer journey intends to focus on the customer's point of view (customer's objectives, perception, etc.).  Of course, there are internal processes underlying every customer journey, but the design starts from the customer and the way the company wants to serve him/her.

Another difference is that Customer Journeys highlight the expected perceptions from the customer, whereas internal process will be based on more "factual" elements (such as expected values of internal KPIs).

Below example shows the difference a bank's "mortgage loan" process when considered from the customer's point of view – the first difference starts with the name, which underlines the focus in itself!