Business
In this week's episode we are discussing Customer Journey Mapping for tourism businesses and destinations with Dr. Moira Scerri from SEPIA Consulting. Moira explains what customer journey mapping is, why it is important and how this impacts our marketing as well as other business departments and operations. I was inspired to interview Moira after reading an article she published on LinkedIn on the topic and you can read that article here. Customer Journey Mapping is taking the customer perspective and understanding what they do from the time they are deciding to do business with you to all the way through to after they have had their core experience with you. So it is looking at the customer from end to end. At the 2.51 minute mark with discuss why it is important to understand and see where the customer is coming from end to end. Reasons include better understanding the customers budget issues and emotional state. There needs to be different customer journey maps for each customer segment or what we now call customer personas. Developing the customer persona is part of the process. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the different stages the customer goes through throughout the journey. This can be done on paper or in a spreadsheet or via an online tool. It is about being able to visualise the interactions with the customer. From the 5.40 minute part Moira gives an example of what points may be included. "Typically in the past we used to work in a very transactional fashion, we used to try to sell to the customer all in one go. Like we only had one chance to sell something to the customer. Now with automation and now we are more sophisticated in the way we can be in contact with customers using technology we are now seeing we can interact with them over a greater period of time. And what that enables us to do is to look at what are the best points on their 'journey' that we are able to interact with them - and what service can we offer them at each of those different points." One of the primary benefits of this is it means we can build a stronger relationship with our customer even before they have engaged in our core offering. It also means we are building a relationship with the customer and we can map their emotional state at different points. What can we do when they are anxious, what can we do when they are excited, what can we do when they are feeling different emotions. From about the 9 minute mark Moira discusses another example relating to the airline industry. Here 'service atomisation' is also discussed - this is breaking down the service to the smallest component that they know that adds value. And then you can decide WHEN the best time is to offer that service offering (I like that, very cool). This section also discusses that its not just about looking at it from a marketing view point but operations including reducing waste which is not only good for the business and the customer but also good for the environment. "Thats the other benefit, you are looking how it interacts with the whole organisation and also if organisations are handing off to third party providers how those interactions work." At the 13 minute mark we discuss about what tourism businesses would benefit (spoiler alert here - it's all tourism businesses but tune in for more details). From about the 17 minute mark we talk about how to go about developing a customer journey map Understand your value proposition Develop customer personas Segment what the journey looks like including touch points Map out their emotional state within the journey Look at how we are delivering the service at the moment Then how can we change or improve our service offering Identify points of potential innovation From about the 20 minute mark I get excited about some of the opportunities from a ...