SuiteCX Guest Article

Three ways journey mapping can drive employee engagement

Journey Mapping, especially around the customer experience, is becoming an ever more familiar discipline. One of the most compelling reasons to conduct a journey mapping exercise is to get various employee representatives around the room, engaging with one another and finding ways to make positive organisational change.

Often, however, once the map is completed and hanging on the wall, most organizations simply go back to their day-to-day, and much of the powerful insight and energy dissipates. Participants value the exercise, but they don’t know how to apply it in a practical, ongoing manner.

It’s tough to keep employees engaged. Temkin Group cites the lack of an employee engagement strategy as the biggest challenge among the companies it surveys annually. According to Temkin’s report, “We compared companies with above average employee engagement maturity with those with lower maturity and found that the leaders deliver better customer experience and also have better financial results than their counterparts.”

How can an organisation reach the desired level of maturity that results in enhanced revenue and happy employees? We can point to three key ways journey mapping can achieve this goal.

Consider the Employee Journey

A GlassDoor study conducted in 2015 revealed that in the US “average hiring times grew from 12.6 days to 22.9 days between 2010 and 2014,” and that “high-skilled jobs that require judgment, creativity and technical skills generally require longer, more intense job screening processes.”

Once finally on board, employees arrive with high expectations for training, guidance and job impact. Companies that have a strong understanding of their current state customer experience, especially those who have undertaken a journey mapping program, will be able to place new employees directly into areas that have been earmarked for improvement. Engaging around the customer experience allows new employees to jump right in and see meaningful impact from their efforts.

Build the customer and employee journeys into onboarding and ongoing training

A study conducted in late 2015 revealed that turnover is highest among highly service-oriented industries: Banking & Finance (17.4%), Healthcare (17.5%), Hospitality (27.6%) and Insurance (11.7). Companies can no longer expect employees to, within a week or two, understand the corporate vision,buy into it and apply it in their daily behaviour. Onboarding and training need to be focused on the customer’s goals, pain points and moments of truth from the outset.

Introducing new employees to the customer journey, as well as having them participate in their own journey mapping exercise, is an excellent way to ground them in the company’s CX vision. In addition, new employees mean fresh ways of thinking and the ability to bring new solutions to the organisation. Innovation can begin from day one if the customer-employee nexus is the focus of onboarding and training and part of the company culture.

Return again and again to the process

Improving the customer experience is never a one-and-done effort. Therefore, neither should journey mapping be a solitary exercise. Just as everything is in flux in the customer’s world, employees can also get overwhelmed by changes and lose sight of the ultimate goal: an exceptional customer experience.

A journey map, especially if it is regularly updated and maintained in a collaborative fashion, serves as a powerful focal point to which leadership can point again and again to reinforce their commitment to stay the course.

Conclusion

Another recent survey around customer engagement shows that belief in senior leadership is the strongest engagement driver, while growth & development is the second. If your company’s senior leadership is truly committed to excellence in customer experience as an ongoing vision, then employees will be more likely to not only stay, but show themselves that commitment in their every day activities.

About SuiteCX®

Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulting, SuiteCX is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision marketing are all components of this groundbreaking software.

Sources:

http://www.temkingroup.com/research-reports/employee-engagement-competency-maturity-2015/

https://research-content.glassdoor.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/GD_Report_3.pdf

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