This is timely and helpful information for those wanting to introduce their company to the idea of stepping up from competing with products and services or with pricing and more features to becoming more profitable and sustainable as a customer experience company. The best customer experience companies are much less susceptible to getting caught in the powerful vortex of commoditization (or commodification!).

Here’s the first paragraph. Click the link below and go to Quirk’s for the article by Carol-Ann Morgan! Enjoy . . .

Putting the customer at the heart of the business is the central tenet of marketing. Marketing is about generating products and services that are rooted in the needs of the customer rather than the need of the company to sell its products. To be in tune with the needs of customers, rather than second-guessing, a company must move toward customer-centricity and ensure that the voice of the customer is integral to its strategy and that the customer is considered and discussed at the boardroom level and not just by the customer-facing staff and departments. Are you experienced? Article in Quirk’s Media

Many of the companies that use personas are famous yet all companies can use personas for strategic advantage.

Maria Melendrez, Senior User Experience Engineer at Mitchell International will share her expertise in
persona and strategy development with you. You will also be able to see the personas that Mitchell uses (they are large!).

I hope you can attend. If not, see about learning more about how Personas can give you the strategic advantage that many of the best companies have.

Here is the detailed information about the event: Sign-Up Here

Personas — The Key to Customer Experience Strategy and User Experience Strategy

There are a group of companies that are different, more profitable and sustainable than most other businesses. They lead by delivering extraordinary customer experiences and user experiences, yet they account for just five percent of all businesses worldwide. These leading businesses develop their customer experience strategy and user experience strategy beginning with very effective personas.

These personas are the basis for determining, developing and delivering extraordinary customer experiences. Personas are an essential foundation of business strategy and improve: product development, user testing outcomes, user interface design and customer satisfaction.

Please join us for this engaging session about customer experience best practices, developing effective personas and how personas are being applied at Mitchell International and programs for scaling personas company-wide for strategic advantage.

Key topics include

• Why Customer Experience and why now?

• The percentage of companies that really understand Customer Experience

• Best practices – The Customer Experience 3Ds: Improve product design and development, GUI design and product strategy performance

• Best Practice Customer Experience and User Experience Strategies with Personas: Increasing the effectiveness of your UX design, customer experience and business strategies

• Mitchell International Persona Case Study: Specific Mitchell Persona Examples; How Personas are used by teams; The Propose a Persona program for scaling personas company-wide; The Customer Ride-Along Program for observing the customers in the wild

Speakers

Maria Melendrez, Senior User Experience Engineer, Mitchell International

Maria Melendrez is a Senior User Researcher at Mitchell International conducting research locally and nationally.

Prior to coming to Mitchell, Maria was SAIC’s Usability Strategist and User Experience Lead. Maria has over 20 years of experience in the software engineering field applying her M.S. Psychology education and human factors visual speed of information processing research background.

Maria is one of the founding members of the User Experience Business Information Group that was started by founder and advisor, Sean Van Tyne.

Jeofrey Bean, Author, Speaker and Principal of Del Mar Research and Consulting

Jeofrey Bean is the author of the book The Customer Experience Revolution - How Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks Have Changed Business Forever, with Sean Van Tyne. He is also the Principal of Del Mar Research and Consulting applying his expertise at building value and differentiation with marketing, product development, services development and customer experience leadership. Jeofrey’s experience spans strategic to tactical with small innovative companies and large successful organizations like IDriveSafely.com, LPL Financial, AT&T, NEC and Quest Diagnostics.

He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Customer Care News, Board of Directors of The Customer Experience Institute and an Adjunct Professor of Business Management and Marketing at University of California San Diego, presently teaching Online Marketing Strategies. Jeofrey speaks regularly about customer experience, user experience, social media, customer loyalty and brand equity. Venues include Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), The LPL Financial 2012 Conference and J.D. Power & Associates 2012 Service Excellence Summit.

This event is sponsored by Software San Diego (formerly The San Diego Software Industry Council) and Mitchell International

Sign-Up Here

Sean’s a UX guy, so he started off his presentation explaining the difference between Customer Experience and User Experience. Here’s how he delineated the two . . . The 12 Essentials of the Customer Experience

Book authors Jeofrey Bean and Sean Van Tyne were guests on the Mike Lee Financial News and Talk Show that aired on San Diego radio AM 1450 September 17, 2012 from 1:00pm – 1:30pm. Mike Lee interviewed Jeofrey Bean and Sean Van Tyne about their book The Customer Experience Revolution – How Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks Have Changed Business Forever.

Listen to the Full Interview

Download Interview

Click here if the interview above does not work or if you would like to download the audio.

One of the most frequently asked questions at presentations and seminars about customer experience leadership is: Where does my company begin? While there are many approaches to customer experience leadership, and mapping the customer journey can be a very effective beginning.

Here’s my customer journey mapping check list for getting started. Whether you are mapping the customer journey for customer experience improvement, defining a better customer service experience or innovating a completely new customer experience, this is a very good place to start!

What is a Customer Journey Map? Sometimes referred to as a customer experience map, customer journey maps are easily readable documents or illustrations that accurately represent the experience people are having now or the experience they will have in the future. At this point you may be asking: Where do I start?

1. Commitment and definition are keys to the effectiveness of customer journey maps and customer experience strategies. Part of the effectiveness of a customer experience strategy, tactic or operation depends on the commitment of the leaders of the company and culture, and the company-wide agreement on how customer experience is defined. And the definition of customer experience and user experience is next!

2. What is The Customer Experience? Customer experience (CX) includes all interactions people have with or about a company’s messages, people, processes, products or services – The Customer Experience Continuum.

a.“With” as in direct contact with the company’s messages, people, processes, products or services.
b. And “about” including viewing third party videos, printed opinion including reviews and word-of-mouth. “About” also includes very powerful social media where one person can quickly communicate to many people about the extraordinary customer experience they just had.

3. Within the Customer Experience (CX) is the User Experience (UX). This is when a person directly interacts with a company’s products or services. Sean Van Tyne and I like to say that the user experience is the proof point that the promises made to people along the customer experience continuum are true.

4. When does the customer experience start? The best experience makers agree that a person’s experience with your company’s messages, processes, people, products and services start before they are customers. It starts from the time they are a potential customer to when they are a customer, and ultimately on to energized advocate for the company. Businesses that have the advantages of customer experience leadership have an unusually high percentage of their customers as customer advocates. This is not by accident! This is where you customer experience journey map should start.

5. Articulate the job description of the customer journey map. Using your business objectives and measures of effectiveness, including those that are customer experience and user experience specific, decide if this map will be strategic, tactical or operational? Relying on the definition of customer experience and the definition of user experience, a customer experience map or customer journey map can be developed at the strategic, tactical or operational level. This depends on the challenge in front of you. Clearly articulating what the job assignment is for the customer experience map as if the map was an employee is critical for effectiveness.

6. Be very clear about what the journey map will be used for. The customer journey map can be used to benchmark the interactions people are having with or about your company’s messages, people, processes, products or services right now. Remember too, that whether you have determine what the experience will be before development like the best experience makers, or not, people are still going to have experiences with or about your company’s messages, people, processes, products or services. The customer experience map should give you a very specific understanding of how people are experiencing your company presently along the entire customer experience continuum.

7. Customer journey maps and Innovating new customer experiences. The customer journey map can be used in determining the experience people will have interacting with your company’s messages, people, processes, products or services before you invest along this CX continuum. And this includes strategic, tactical and operational versions to help reduce uncertainty.

8. Benchmarking the experience customers have with competitors. Another insightful application of customer journey maps from the best in customer experience can be used to get a picture of the experience people are having with your company and competitors now. I am sure that Steve Jobs and the team at Apple had many of these prior to the 2007 introduction of the iPhone where the extraordinary experience they offered redefined the smartphone market. A market that was all new to Apple. Start-up business Square understood and documented the customer experiences with the existing attempts to turn smartphones into easy to use credit card taking mobile cash registers.

9. Map to the stage of the customer experience that the person is actually in. Since the definition of customer experience by many of the best includes that the experience starts before people are customers, to when they are customers and then become energized advocates, these three stages should be included in your customer journey map.

10. Customer experience mapping metrics: Critical to measuring the success of the customer journey map effectiveness. May people ask about what metrics they should use? Each situation is different so I will not go into a list of all things measurable. The most important point is that the metrics included be specific to customer experience. And they should occur at most stages on the map. These measures will be different than economic, market, internal business performance or customer satisfaction metrics. Two important customer experience metrics could be the number of customer problems solved in a certain time period (as defined by the customer) and the rate of converting a people from customers to energized customer advocates.

What should your customer journey map look like? Use the visual or text method that will have the most meaning for the people involved. From custom illustrations and text to flow charts, select the method of documentation that will be most effective for your team. Have a look at some of the examples of mapping the customer journey on Pinterest including Lego and Caterpillar. You may also get some great ideas from this article on the Oracle Blog by Isabel F. Peñuelas called Simple tips to design a Customer Journey.

After the initial maps are established or existing versions updated, it is important to keep using them so there is continuity from determining to developing and to delivering an extraordinarily customer experience.

As an integral part of the best practices of customer experience leadership, it is important to keep the customer journey maps updated. It is also important to decide when to discontinue updating and start innovating a new customer experience lifecycle. The customer experience leaders, or “Experience Makers” know that their journey of offering extraordinary customer experiences is continuous.

The results of customer experience leadership of being better, different, more valuable and more sustainable than most other companies are proof points of the value of the best practices. Customer experience mapping or customer journey mapping is critical in the beginning steps toward customer experience leadership.

If you have ideas, questions or resources to share about customer experience mapping let me know.

As I listened to Jeofrey Bean, I found myself writing down notes. Items like Click here for the complete article by Dennis Carpenter on 24x7social

The Customer Experience Revolution will be displayed with many other notable titles in The San Diego Public Library (Central Library) for the month of February and for all of 2013 online at the San Diego Public Library Local Author Exhibit.

San Diego Local Authors Award, Central Library Display and The Online Local Author Exhibit highlight the intellectual and creative accomplishments of writers in the San Diego region. In its 47th year, the aim of the Exhibit is to bring exposure to local talent and nurture the pursuit of the writing arts in San Diego.

How many companies around the world, regardless of size and industry, really understand customer experience like the leaders? We were in for a big surprise. Click here to read the complete article as Jeofrey Bean is guest blogger in Customer Care News

I believe this course, also known as digital marketing strategies or internet marketing strategies, will be different and better than most since it includes customer experience and user experience as strategic advantages.

I will cover many of the best practices that were learned by doing the live interviews and research with Sean Van Tyne while writing the book The Customer Experience Revolution - How Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks Have Changed Business Forever.

If you or a colleague are responsible for or depend upon online marketing strategies for success in B2C or B2B markets, consider this nine week evening in-class course. It’s offered by UCSD from January 16 to March 13 and then from April 1 to June 6.

If you have any questions or comments about the course, please do not hesitate to contact me or the University of California at San Diego.

Here’s to a great 2013!

Jeof