Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course

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1 March 25, 2013 Why Read This Report Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course Journey Mapping Enables A Diverse Global Airline To Lift Quality Of Service While Growing Rapidly by Jonathan Browne with John Dalton and Carla O Connor Emirates is one of the world s fastest-growing airlines and positions itself as a lifestyle brand, setting high expectations for service quality in a competitive market. As Emirates expanded rapidly, adding thousands of employees yearly to its multicultural workforce, the airline faced a challenge to consistently meet or exceed customer expectations. Forrester identified Emirates approach to using customer journey maps to plan customer experience improvements and train employees as a best practice. Situation: Inside-Out Perspective Hampers Customer Experience Delivering a highly differentiated travel experience with a small fleet, Emirates took off as one of the world s fastest-growing airlines in the past decade. 1 This rapid growth created operational challenges that resulted in disjointed, and sometimes disappointing, customer experiences. Best Practice: Customer Journey Maps align projects and training To address the complex challenges that Emirates faced while growing so rapidly, the Emirates customer experience team led an initiative to refocus the company s efforts on building an exemplary customer experience. To achieve this, the team: Captured existing customer understanding insights. Before embarking on the research phase of its journey mapping process, Emirates brought leaders together to document their understanding of what the customer journey looked like. The Emirates team used sticky notes and markers to visually plot the stages of the customer journey and the individual touchpoints involved in each stage. This exercise built consensus around the need to embrace the customer s perspective, and it gave the team members a solid understanding of what was lacking in their understanding of the overall customer journey. Hired professionals to build a holistic view of the customer journey. After gathering feedback from customers and internal stakeholders, Emirates then turned to Mulberry Consulting to conduct deeper customer understanding research and build a comprehensive customer life cycle map. Mulberry also conducted training sessions with Emirates employees so that the airline could continue building journey maps on its own enabling the airline to internalize this method of developing a customercentric view of its business. Conducted a root-cause analysis of flaws at moments of truth. Using the finished journey maps, the Emirates team focused its attention on customer moments of truth analyzing known problems to identify root causes and possible solutions. For example, a detailed review of negative airport Headquarters Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA, USA Tel: Fax:

2 Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course 2 experiences revealed that customer expectations were set inappropriately by contradictory paper brochures, online descriptions, and sales talking points. The team used these findings to demonstrate the problem to relevant stakeholders and make the case for improvement. Identified not only relationship breakers but also relationship builders. Emirates ambitions went beyond simply finding and fixing problems. Craig Lee (senior manager, performance development, customer experience) explained: If we want to remain a differentiated carrier as we grow, we need to provide more value than the customer expects. Journey mapping enabled Emirates to identify previously unrecognized opportunities for novel improvements. For example, equipping the cabin crew with tablet devices enabled in-flight crew members to provide a more seamlessly coordinated experience flight attendants now note customer preferences, and those preferences are passed along to the crew on connecting and subsequent flights. By analyzing the luggage-carrying habits of one group of loyal customers, the team was able to show that a baggage benefit for this segment would not be useful, but waiving excess baggage fees for this group made sense for the business. Built momentum with willing partners. The Emirates team had the support of the executive management for elements of customer experience innovation. Still, some departments weren t convinced to participate in the transformation. However, the team didn t focus on overcoming resistance. Instead, it launched projects with departments that wanted to participate. The success of those projects received recognition and persuaded other departments to get onboard. Refined journey maps for employee training. To engage employees throughout the organization in thinking more consistently about the customer journey, Emirates worked with a visual training design company, Trainiac, to create rich visual versions of its customer journey maps (see Figure 1). These large graphic vignettes large enough to encourage walk-throughs by employees make it easy for the company s multilingual workforce to see and imagine the brand promise and customers experiences, without the need for translation. 2 To extend the reach of these maps, Emirates also created flash cards that represent different touchpoints highlighting customer perceptions and the potential for building or breaking the customer relationship at specific moments in the customer journey (see Figure 2).

3 Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course 3 Figure 1 Emirates Graphical Maps Convey Customer Needs To A Multilingual Workforce 1-1 Graphics convey customer needs and perceptions at moments of truth Source: Emirates Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

4 Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course 4 Figure 1 Emirates Graphical Maps Convey Customer Needs To A Multilingual Workforce (Cont.) 1-2 Maps are printed large enough to allow employees to walk through and role-play in training Source: Emirates Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

5 Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course 5 Figure 2 Emirates Touchpoint Cards Highlight Potential To Make Or Break Customer Relationships Source: Emirates Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Next Steps: Keeping Maps Fresh And Relevant During the past four years, Emirates has concentrated on leveraging the lessons learned from the original journey maps it developed with Mulberry and Trainiac. But the Emirates team does not want these tools to lose their potency. The team plans to revisit the company s journey mapping approach and outputs to make sure that its maps still make the customer story come alive for employees. That means ensuring that the maps capture more recent technological advances and new customer behaviors so that they will continue to give decision-makers relevant actionable insights. BEST PRACTICE RESULTS: MORE INTERNAL ALIGNMENT, BETTER EXPERIENCES Emirates achieved several hard and soft results from its journey mapping efforts. In particular, the firm has: Established a common language for employees. Before the introduction of customer journey maps, employees across the company had little understanding of the end-to-end customer

6 Case Study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps To Keep The Brand On Course 6 experience. Standardized journey maps have given employees a common understanding and a common way to talk about the customer experience. Today, employees commonly talk about customers rather than passengers, and ideas that don t have a customer focus get challenged with the rejoinder: If it doesn t enhance and add value to the experience, why are we doing it? Established the customer s perception as the quality standard. In the past, audit teams took a departmental approach to reviewing quality of service a lounge experience was evaluated via the metrics of the catering, cleaning, and staffing departments. Now, activities have experience goals based on end user impressions the perceived time spent waiting in queue matters to customers, as does clarity of the signage. Using visual references on tablet devices that show what good experiences look like, service audit teams now conduct much richer reviews that remind team members what the experience feels like from the customer s point of view. Endnotes 1 By September 2011, the airline had become the world s third largest carrier in terms of monthly capacity (available seat kilometers) with 7.3% growth over the previous year. In November 2011, the airline placed the single largest order in Boeing s history for 50 new Boeing 777 aircraft. Emirates currently operates 196 aircraft to 125 destinations on six continents. Source: Emirates ( about/the_emirates_story.aspx); Jamie Dunkley, Boeing wins record $18bn order from Emirates at Dubai Airshow, The Telegraph, November 13, 2011 ( transport/ /boeing-wins-record-18bn-order-from-emirates-at-dubai-airshow.html). 2 The maps that Emirates created with Mulberry Consulting conveyed detailed information about customers processes, expectations, and perceptions enabling the airline to plan projects but they were too complex to serve as employee training materials. Emirates therefore developed simplified, visually appealing maps and printed them on large fabric sheets. In training sessions, employees use the maps as guides as they role-play different parts of the customer experience, giving workers an opportunity to consider these journeys from the customers perspective and discuss the potential impact that their decisions and actions have on customer perceptions. Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 17 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Forrester, Forrester Wave, RoleView, Technographics, TechRankings, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Reproduction or sharing of this content in any form without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. To purchase reprints of this document, please clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional reproduction and usage information, see Forrester s Citation Policy located at Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change