Nationwide On A Customer-Centric Approach To Journey Mapping

"A map on its own doesn't do anything," declares Heidi Munc from Nationwide. "I can have a map of Nashville sitting on my desk, but unless I get in a car and put some gas in the car and start driving, I'm not going to get to Nashville, right?"

Not merely valuable for adventurists, Munc's advice speaks to an important customer contact reality.  Journey mapping may be important, but it by no means guarantees customer centricity.

For starters, it is important to consider the quality of the map.  Does it merely tell you about the different touch points, or does it give you vivid insight into how customers feel when interacting?  Does it help your agents understand why their job is so valuable?

"[A typical journey map is] not really a replacement for those true customer stories that have the ability to tug on your emotional heartstrings and really incent associates to make improvements that help benefit our customers or members," says Munc.  "We'll try to find ways to whatever really insightful quote or story that we learned when we're out in the field doing qualitative research.

"We find ways of bringing that to life in either the journey diagram or in addendum documents where we're telling user stories."

Upon establishing a comprehensive, sentiment-rich map of the entire journey, it is important to turn attention to execution.  The goal, after all, is not to map the existing journey but orchestrate a better one.  One that reduces customer effort and increases personalization.

Munc, a speaker at the upcoming CCW Nashville, shares her thoughts in the latest CCW Speaker Spotlight Series.  Listen below!