MANAGEMENT WITH ARIS CLOUD

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1 ARIS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT WITH ARIS CLOUD TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Putting customers first 2 A good customer experience 3 Specifying the process 3 Specifying the experience 5 Designing for good customer experience 6 Customer journey modeling 11 Touchpoint analysis 12 Keeping the customer informed 13 Testing the customer experience 14 Bibliography Putting customers first Almost every business and organization will claim that it puts customers first and that improving customer service is one of its key objectives. However, despite this, many businesses still continue to build very internally focused processes that fail to properly consider the experience customers have when they interact with the business. Successful businesses, on the other hand, are those that see customer satisfaction as a key differentiator and enabler for success. They truly live these values rather than just going through the motions. To a large part, this has been driven by the success of online retailers such as Amazon and DELL that have been totally focused on delivering high-quality service resulting in a largely excellent customer experience. The degree to which a business really does put its customers first can be seen by looking at its business processes. The best organizations will take an outside-in approach; that is, they look at how their customers want to interact with them and then build business processes around these customer interactions. For many businesses, the Internet has completely changed the way customers interact with them, and keeping abreast of changing technology and shopping trends is vital to ensure top-class customer service. For instance, click and collect became a hugely important delivery channel in the U.K. for Christmas 2014, and a major retailer that struggled to deliver orders for collection in time for Christmas saw its sales figures drop significantly. So in today s world, a good process is no longer enough; it s the customer experience that the process delivers that really counts. This white paper looks at how to design processes that deliver a good customer experience using techniques such as customer journey modeling, touchpoint analysis and Moments of Truth (MofTs). BUSINESS WHITE PAPER

2 Using such approaches to improve customer satisfaction has these benefits: Increased business customer focus Enhanced customer loyalty Increased sales Reduced brand risk Better measures and KPIs More focused improvement projects Identification of gaps, issues and opportunities A good customer experience Some of the key characteristics that affect a customer s experience during a typical retail interaction include: 1) How easy was it to contact the organization? 2) Could the customer use the communication channel he wanted? 3) Was it easy to order a product or request a service? 4) Was it delivered when the customer wanted it? 5) Did the customer get what he ordered? 6) Did it work or was the service effective? 7) Was the bill correct? 8) Could the customer pay using the method he wanted? 9) Was good help and support provided? 10) If the customer had a problem, was it dealt with satisfactorily? All of these are important to the customer, although the comparative importance of the individual elements will vary from customer to customer and for different products. What is common to all of them is that they are, to a large extent, determined by the business processes. Of course, employing good people who are well trained is vital. But people can only deliver good service, day after day, if they operate within effective and efficient processes. Along with these specific points, good customer experience depends on the effectiveness of the complete journey the customer travels on his way to receiving goods or services. The effectiveness of the journey is partly determined by the levels of service the customer has come to expect (e.g., online ordering, personal shoppers, next-day delivery) and also by the way the customer has been conditioned by the experience provided by the best-in-class companies, such as Amazon and DELL. So as well as thinking just about the needs of the business, it is also important to think about the needs of customer and trends in the market. These three areas can be thought of in terms of voices that need to be heard: The voice of the customer the customer s needs and expectations The voice of the business the business objectives and constraints The voice of the market current trends and what competitors are doing Once these have been taken into account to design the process, the voice of the process will show how the process is performing: The voice of the process measures that describe how the process performs What is considered to be the best experience will change over time as customer expectations change, technology changes and best-in-class businesses set higher goals. 2

3 Specifying the process Designing a process is about identifying the sequence of tasks necessary to deliver a business objective along with the resources needed to deliver those tasks and the environment in which they operate. The process design shows the important decision points and various paths the process can take. It is unlikely a design will show every possible decision and path. But a good process design should identify all of those that have a significant effect on the customer or the business. Business scenarios When an instance of a process is executed, then a particular set of decisions is made and specific paths (and maybe loops) are followed depending on the particular circumstances surrounding the process. Defining all the important potential process scenarios (i.e., the routes through the process) is an important early step to ensure that the process design is as complete as possible and to enable later process testing to ensure all the different scenarios are effectively catered to. Specific scenarios may be triggered in response to customer needs (e.g., ordering a product) or business needs (e.g., compiling a monthly sales report). Requirements In the past, processes were mostly developed to meet business needs, usually described by a set of requirements defined in collaboration with key stakeholders from many parts of the business. However, in order to deliver best-in-class customer service, it is important to put much more emphasis on customer needs and build the processes around them. User stories To define a customer s needs, a less formal technique called user stories is often employed. User stories are expressed in the form of a statement that identifies the activity the customer wants to perform and his reason for doing it (e.g., I want to register with a website so that I can order products in future without having to re-enter all my details ). These user stories are compiled by the business, often by the marketing and sales departments, and in conjunction with the customer using focus groups or agile development methods. Using the I want so that I can format makes the story easy to understand and focuses attention on why the customer wants to do something, ensuring the process achieves what was desired rather than just providing a specific functionality. Scenarios are mostly used for testing processes while user stories and requirements are applied when specifying and designing the process. Stories can be defined at varying levels of detail, and a high-level user story can be decomposed into a number of lower-level user stories. User stories are similar to, but not exactly the same as, use cases used by software developers who may use the user stories to define their use cases. Specifying the experience Defining user stories ensures that the business processes achieve what the customer wants. However, by themselves, they don t ensure that the customer will get a good experience. To ensure a good customer experience it is necessary to look at the flow of activities the customer undertakes and how the business processes respond to the customer interactions. In practice, it is not possible to know the exact process the customer follows. The customer may interact with a number of business processes (and a number of different businesses) during the course of his activities. The customer doesn t directly follow these business processes as he isn t executing the processes himself but is interacting with processes carried out by the business (i.e., by people or IT systems). In most cases, the customer will have a very informal approach to achieving his aims. The customer may start an interaction and then abandon it. He may do things in a different order than the business intended, or he may take a break and then later come back to complete a task. 3

4 However, it is possible to identify the key activities the customer will want to undertake (the user stories) and the interactions the customer will have with the business to accomplish them. In addition, the steps and interactions that, by necessity, the business will have to impose can be identified. How the best-performing organizations operate can provide additional insight into how people have come to expect the journey to progress. Customer journeys Putting together the customer user stories with the business processes, and identifying the interactions between the customer and the business, defines the customer journey. A customer journey shows the flow of activities and the interactions with the business that the customer undertakes to achieve his goals. Typical journeys may include ordering a product, cancelling a subscription, checking a balance or returning a product. Often the term customer journey is used to describe a visionary representation of how the business wants to interact with the customer. These types of customer journeys will normally be prepared by the marketing department or customer experience specialists. They will employ colorful graphical visualizations designed to appeal to customers and sales people. While these types of journey models are valuable for expressing the vision and setting the direction for transformation projects and IT development, they are not sufficient by themselves for ensuring a good customer experience. In order to ensure both the business processes and IT systems actually deliver the required process, it is necessary to develop customer journey models that show the customer interaction with the detail of the business processes (see page 6 customer journey modeling). The journey may involve interactions with several processes that the business has designed as separate processes (e.g., order handling, billing and fault handling). It is important to look at the complete end-to-end experience of the customer, not just that of a single process or small number of interactions. Customer journey modeling gives a much more realistic view of what the customer experiences than the analysis of individual processes. Personas Just as there are various scenarios for business processes, there are also various routes that customers can take on their journey depending on their needs and their method of interaction. It is important to consider all the most important routes in the customer journey model. Not all customers are alike; different types of people will have different approaches and objectives. By defining the different customer type groups or persona (e.g., small business owner, techie, homeworker or retired person), customer journey models can be created that reflect how different types of people want to interact with the business. Touchpoints and moments of truth The customer may have many interactions with the business, but some of these will have particular significance for the customer, or the business, or both. For instance, the point at which a customer places an order is a major interaction that signifies the customer has decided he wants the product or service; it also represents the start of a contractual agreement. The importance of this particular interaction is recognized by both the business and the customer. Interactions that involve the customer are known as touchpoints. An important touchpoint, where the business can make or break its relationship with the customer, is known as a Moment of Truth (MofT). Getting the customer experience wrong at an MofT can have a very detrimental effect on the customer s perception of the business (and its brand), which can often lead to the customer deserting the brand. On the other hand, providing a good experience can create huge loyalty to the brand that can persist even in the face of future problems. Modeling the MofTs on the customer journey model enables the business to clearly see where it should focus process improvement efforts. MofTs may not all be interactions that both the customer and the business recognize, but events that are only recognized by one of the parties. Probably the most important MofT for the customer is when he first uses the product and whether it works or not, but the business won t directly have any visibility of this. Similarly, an important MofT for the business is when it receives payment. 4

5 Once MofTs have been clearly identified and evaluated, business owners should be assigned to each of them. It should be their responsibility to monitor the MofTs and drive improvement projects. Business change projects should always be evaluated based on their effect on customer experience and MofTs. If the projects can t identify any benefit, or it is likely that customer experience may suffer, then the project should not be allowed to go ahead. It is a mistake to argue that a small drop in customer experience is acceptable in order to introduce new IT equipment or upgrade a website, for example. KPIs Understanding the difference between the customer s MofTs and the business MofTs is vital to setting appropriate measures Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will be used to assess customer satisfaction and business process performance (the voice of the process). It is very easy for businesses to set KPIs they believe are good measures of the process but which bear no resemblance to the customer s experience. Businesses often have a wide range of customer experience measures, but often these are not directly linked to the process. This means it is difficult to see how to modify the process to improve these measures or predict the level of customer satisfaction of a particular process. By basing the KPIs on the customer journey model and the MofTs, a direct link between customer experience and the process is established. Designing for good customer experience A vital part of designing a good business process is to consider the customer journey that the process (or a combination of processes) creates for the customer. Of course, the customer s perception of the journey will not just depend on objective judgments about the effectiveness and efficiency of the process (normal process measures or KPIs). It will also depend on much softer issues around what the customer is thinking and feeling, his perception of the organization s brand, and previous experiences (especially problems) and issues outside of the organization s control, such as the speed of his Internet connection. To a large extent, the customer s expectation of what he needs to do to obtain a product or service (his mental model of the process) will have been set by the best-in-class companies. If the customer encounters an organization that provides him with a very different approach then, unless it is clearly better than what s been encountered before, the customer is likely to be frustrated and rate the experience as poor. A business that wants to introduce a new innovative process will need to make sure it really does work well and also consider how to introduce customers to this new approach. To design a process with a good customer experience, it is necessary to design, model, simulate and test the associated customer journey, in addition to designing, modeling, simulating and testing the process. These should not be done independently; they are integrally related. The key steps in designing for good customer experience are (see Figure 1): Capture business requirements Capture customer user stories Design the target customer journey Define target MofTs and KPIs Identify business scenarios Design the business processes Model process data flows Test process scenarios Evaluate the actual customer journey 5

6 Figure 1: Designing for Good Customer Experience In practice, these steps will be carried out iteratively. For instance, some MofTs may be defined at the outset and then refined and augmented when the customer journey model is created. When starting to design processes for good customer experience, it is important to make sure that value is delivered quickly and the business can see the benefit. Avoid setting up a program to create large numbers of customer journey models. Instead, concentrate on a few key areas where there are new products being launched, new opportunities, customer issues, poor measurements in place or other problems. It is important to involve a wide range of business stakeholders in the modeling (e.g., sales, marketing, customer experience teams and process designers) as well as customers to ensure the model is representative of the true experience. It is also important to consider the data used by the business processes and the information supplied by and sent to the customer. Often apparently well-designed processes fail because the designers have not considered the flow of data through process. A big source of customer dissatisfaction is when the customer is asked for data at inappropriate times or repeatedly asked for the same data. An example of an annoying data request is when an airline flight booking system asks for personal details of all the passengers before showing the cost of the tickets. The key data items for each touchpoint and MofT should be identified and included in the customer journey model. There may be other important data collections not associated with customer touchpoints (e.g., automated or third-party requests) that are also valuable to include on the customer journey model. Customer journey modeling Customer journey models can be developed using a range of bespoke tools or standard graphical drawing packages. Nicely drawn graphics with images of people and products can be very appealing to customers, the marketing department and senior executives. While visionary customer journey models are valuable and presentation is important, it is vital that the detailed customer journey models are not seen as something separate and distinct from the processes. If they become disconnected from the detail of the underlying process, they are no longer representative of what is really happening in the business and the customer s actual experience. A recommended approach for creating detailed customer journey models is to use ARIS Cloud to create journeys in the same database as the process models, sharing the same repository of information. Once the customer journeys have been evaluated, then graphic designers can create visually appealing graphics and Web pages targeted to specific audiences but based on the underlying ARIS data. This way the technical correctness of the model can be maintained. The BPMN collaboration diagram lends itself nicely to modeling customer journeys. The pools of the collaboration diagram can be used to represent the private processes of the different participants in the process (the customer and the business) and messages show the interactions between them. 6

7 At the simplest level, the collaboration diagram can show the abstract or public process, which illustrates the interactions between the pools representing the customer and the business without considering the detail of the processes within the pools. It is called the public process because it is visible to both parties. This is a useful approach during the first stage of defining the customer journey and MofTs. Figure 2 shows an example of a high-level customer journey model for an online ordering process. The customer s order product online and the business online sales & fulfillment processes are just shown as BPMN tasks without any detail. The touchpoints are shown with message symbols. The MofTs and Keep Customer Informed (KCI) points are highlighted with a graphical annotation. Even from this simple model, it is possible to see that the customer s view of the process cycle time is different from that of the business. Figure 2: Overview of Customer Journey Model In reality, the touchpoints (the interactions between the customer and the business) are not all messages or communications (as shown by BPMN). Some touchpoints represent the dispatch or receipt of physical objects (e.g., orders or paper invoices) so a certain amount of poetic license is needed when modeling in BPMN. Custom symbols, coloring or user-specific attributes can be used to distinguish between different types of touchpoints. A more accurate understanding of the customer journey can be achieved by modeling the detail of both the customer process and the business processes. The BPMN pool for the business can sub-divided using lanes to represent different departments or IT systems carrying out the process. Many BPMN practitioners suggest you shouldn t try to represent the customer s process in the model and to leave the customer pool blank. They also suggest that the process model shouldn t take account of any activity that occurs before the business process actually starts. For instance, the process model would start when an order is received and wouldn t show the customer searching for products or entering the order. However, the danger of this approach is that it is very internally focused and doesn t help in creating a good customer experience. So while very detailed models of complex business processes will not show detail of the customer process, customer journey models should, where possible, show some level of customer detail. Figure 3 shows a customer journey model where both the customer s process and the business processes have been shown in detail. As mentioned earlier, it is not possible to actually know the customer s process. Nevertheless, there is benefit in modeling expected key customer activities (derived from user stories) and activities the business must impose on the customer, such as entering payment details. 7

8 By connecting the messages to the actual tasks that send or receive the message, rather than just to the edge of the pool, you can gain a much better understanding of the touchpoints and, hence, a realistic customer journey. Customer activities can be defined by working with customers, evaluating customer satisfaction survey results and looking at the best-in-class competitors. The example in Figure 3 adheres closely to BPMN modeling conventions. Different BPMN event types (e.g., multiple, message and timer ) have been used to show the customer waiting for a message, receiving a message or taking action when a message is not received within a certain time. There are three points (see detailed extract in Figure 4) where the customer is waiting for something (highlighted with a dotted purple box): order confirmation, dispatch confirmation and delivery. It is tempting to model these as tasks in a process flow, but in reality the customer breaks the process flow at these points and does other things. Using events rather than tasks to represent waiting points highlights the disjointed nature of the customer s process. The degree to which the modeling follows BPMN conventions will depend on the skills of the modelers and the intended audience. Making the model too complex or esoteric may put off the audience while making it too simplistic could potentially miss out detail that has a significant effect on the customer experience. Figure 3: Detailed Customer Journey Model 8

9 As with the overview model, the MofTs and KCIs are shown using text annotations, which make it easy to see that, in reality, there are more touchpoints and MofTs than were shown on the overview model. It is also easy to see that the customer s MofTs and those of the business are rarely, if ever, the same. Some of the MofTs (e.g., product faulty and reject order ) are not directly associated with touchpoints, but with outcomes of the customer and business processes (see Figure 5). Figure 4: Modeling Customer Waiting Figure 5: Outcome-Based MofTs The business processes can be shown in whatever detail is necessary to ensure a representative view of the customer experience. BPMN lanes can show how the process flows between business units (as shown in Figure 3) or IT systems. The use of lanes clearly shows how the customer has to interact with different parts of the business during his journey. It is important to ensure that contact from different parts of the business has the same look and feel to the customer and that information is shared between units so that the customer has an integrated experience. Lanes can also be used to show interactions with third parties who may be involved with the journey. Figure 6 shows an additional lane added to the detailed customer journey, illustrating the process undertaken by a third-party delivery company. This now provides a much more accurate view of what happens when the goods are delivered to a customer. It also shows how the process can be improved to give the business an MofT corresponding to the delivery (or failure of delivery) to the customer. In the original detailed model (Figure 3), the delivery of the goods is represented by a simple message ( goods delivery ) flowing from the business fulfill order task to the customer product received task. As far as the business is concerned, the process ends once the goods are dispatched and the business MofT shown at that point is not really genuine as the business has no idea if the customer actually received the goods, let alone if the product works. The customer review touchpoint cannot be used as an MofT, or as the end of the process, because there is no obligation on the customer to write a review. If the customer does write a review, it can be done at any time. 9

10 Figure 6: A Journey with Third-Party Delivery Figure 6 shows how this can be improved by getting the third-party delivery company to obtain a customer signature when the goods are delivered. The delivery company can then send an acknowledgement to the business when the goods have been delivered or a failure notice if delivery was not successful. This provides both positive (delivery successful) and negative (delivery failed) MofTs for the business and a more definite end to the business process. It would be even better if the business could receive notification from the customer that the product is working and the customer is happy with it. In practice, this is more difficult to achieve. With online products, it is often possible to detect when the customer is using the product successfully, which can provide a genuine MofT and end to the process. An alternative is to send the customer a message, saying the business believes the order is complete and assumes that if the customer does not object then all is OK. 10

11 This method is often used for fault reports and support requests, in which the business closes the trouble ticket and notifies the customer giving him a chance to respond if he doesn t agree. The use of detailed customer journey models allows all of these business scenarios to be effectively tested and evaluated, thus ensuring an effective customer experience. To be absolutely sure the process both works and provides a good experience, it is also necessary to model the data flows through the process and the journey. Even in the relatively simple example journey shown in Figure 3, there are many messages passing between the business and the customer, and it is vital to ensure that the correct data is passed during these interactions. It is also important to ensure that the data is available at the correct point in the journey and that the process doesn t assume data is available when it has yet to be collected. Data-related problems frequently occur in journeys with a lot of customer interaction and where the customer can choose to undertake steps in whatever order he pleases. For instance, a customer may have registered with an online supplier, but if he doesn t choose to login before selecting products, the business will only have limited or no information about the customer. In this case, the process will need to pause at some point to allow the customer to login or register. It is important to make sure that after such interventions, the process can continue seamlessly without asking the customer to backtrack or retype information. Websites that clear previously completed forms when the customer changes an option are a well-known problem. Data can be modeled in BPMN or separate data flow diagrams created in ARIS Cloud. Touchpoint analysis Once a first draft of the customer journey model is complete, it is possible to start evaluating customer interactions and identify all the touchpoints and MofTs. As mentioned, not all MofTs will be touchpoints; some are events only recognized by only one of the parties. For instance, the business may view the point at which a product is dispatched as an MofT. But the customer isn t interested in when it was sent, only when he receives it, which could be some considerable time after. This shows up as a limitation of simplistic modeling of the customer in one pool and the business in the other. BPMN assumes messages between the pools, which we use to represent touchpoints, occur almost instantaneously. If there are interactions that involve third parties or take significant time, then it might be necessary to add an additional pool. Tasks in these third-party pools can then have realistic time delays associated with them (see Figure 6). It is important to ensure that the customer journey models are realistic and don t pretend that things happen instantaneously or perfectly. The fact that things don t work like this, in reality, is the cause of much customer dissatisfaction. A good example is online ordering via the Internet. This has become more popular, and drastic improvements in technology and efficiency have allowed retailers to offer next-day or even same-day delivery. While at first sight this seems to be an indicator of business success, it doesn t always guarantee high levels of customer satisfaction. One reason for this is that many of the people who use online ordering are, in fact, at work all day. Next-day delivery is not very useful if there is no one at home to receive the goods. Failed deliveries often result in the customer having to wait until the weekend to collect the goods and, in some cases, having to travel long distances to a parcel pick-up location. This means the customer s delivery MofT is not the next day but several days later. To overcome these problems, many retailers have introduced click and collect schemes where customers can opt to collect their packages from one of the business s retail stores, a local shop or post office. This means that the original process (which at first looked very effective) has had to be re-designed and expanded to restore the hoped-for high level of customer service. A very internally focused business process design that defines the process as complete once the goods are dispatched wouldn t pick up these issues. It is only by analyzing the complete customer journey and considering the customer s MofT that can top-class customer service be achieved. 11

12 Figure 7: Touchpoint Analysis The example described shows how it is very easy for businesses to set KPIs they believe are good measures of the process but which bear no resemblance to the customer s perception. To highlight the difference between the customer s and the business s viewpoints, a touchpoint analysis diagram can be created (Figure 7). This approach extracts the important activities (equivalent to the key user stories), touchpoints and MofTs from the customer journey model and presents them as a timeline (often wrapped into a circle). This clearly shows the time-based KPIs (e.g., cycle time) from the customer s and business s perspective, highlighting where they differ and providing the basis for improving satisfaction. The example in Figure 7 shows the business process ending when the customer receives his goods (the cycle time in blue). This would correspond to the customer journey model examples described earlier. As discussed in the previous section, a better endpoint (shown with a star in the touchpoint analysis diagram) would be when the customer is sent a message to confirm the order is complete. An even better endpoint (again, shown with a star) would be if the customer is given the opportunity to confirm he is happy the order is complete. However, the touchpoint analysis clearly shows that the real endpoint only occurs when the customer has tried the product and it works. Keeping the customer informed An important way to improve customer satisfaction is keeping the customer informed about the progress of the process, which is delivering the product or service he ordered. This is normally done by sending Keep the Customer Informed (KCI) messages at key points in the process (e.g., order received or order dispatched). An enhancement to a basic-message KCI is to allow the customer to respond, for instance, to change the delivery date or time. Done well, sending KCI messages can result in a high level of customer satisfaction even when things go wrong or delays are experienced. However, sending too many messages or incorrect information can annoy customers and reduce their satisfaction level. Similarly, these days, it seems every website wants the customer to fill in satisfaction surveys or post reviews for even the most trivial tasks. It is important to capture satisfaction data for the entire customer experience and not just isolated tasks, such as using a Web page. 12

13 Modeling the KCI and review points as part of the customer journey models is a good way of ensuring they are effective and appropriate. Testing the customer experience The customer journey model and the touchpoint analysis diagram can be used to test how the business processes perform and what the customer s experience of them will be. Even for many mature process organizations, testing the customer experience is an unfamiliar activity. Organizations may be used in defining a customer experience vision, evaluating processes and doing customer satisfaction surveys after a new product or process is launched. But ensuring that the customer will have a good experience before launch is much more valuable. Early failures and poor customer experience can have a significant and long-term detrimental effect on customer perception and loyalty. Ideally, the business measures of process effectiveness (the voice of the process) should be the same as the customer s measures (the voice of the customer), albeit the customer s measures are informal measures. As mentioned, customers will have perceptions about how well their journeys went as well as judge the experiences based on the outcomes. The voice of the customer should include perception measures as well as outcome and process measures, although it is important to be aware that perceptions do not always correlate with the actual facts. Because it is not possible to have direct insight into the customer s process, other ways are needed to get feedback from customers. This might be using customer surveys or more direct routes, such as detecting when customers first activate the product or when the carrier delivers the item. It is important to make the effort to obtain these customerfocused measures because only then is it possible to truly understand the customer journey and be able to assess the customer s satisfaction. It is important to make all of the information and insight gained from customer journey models, MofTs and touchpoint analysis diagrams available to the business. A good approach is to create performance dashboards that use a summary of the models and MofTs along with important business KPIs. This brings customer experience to life for key executives. 13

14 Bibliography Maxie Schmidt-Subramanian. How Journey Maps Improve CX Measurement Efforts. Forrester, December Deanna Laufer. How to Build a Customer Experience Strategy That Works. Forrester, November Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha. Getting Help with Customer Journey Maps. Forrester, December Joana van den Brink-Quintanilha and Tony Costa. The Seven Steps of Highly Effective Journey Mapping. Forrester, October

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