What is the role of gaining insight and analysing in the iterative loop of developing customer experience?

To create a good customer experience, organisation needs to understand who their customers really are, their motivations and expectations as well as their needs and wants. A deeper understanding can be gained through gaining insights and analysing customer experience which then support the iterative development of customer experience. While the foundations provide the base in our customer experience framework and the vision functions as the focal point for all activities, the two phases are on the continuum of activities that create the iterative loop of gaining insight, analysing, developing, and measuring customer experience.  

We consider the phase of gaining insight to be the starting point of the continuous loop of customer experience improvement cycle. It is where all the collected data about the customer experience transforms into insight. There are multiple methods to collect data such as customer surveys, feedback forms, customer personas, focus groups, observation etc. For example, there are also organisations where it is mandatory for each employee from all levels of the organisation to spend some time in customer interface to understand the customer service activities and observe the customer interactions where they happen. This also shows management's commitment to improving the customer experience. In digital channels the customer insight is collected through website analytics, purchase data, and other sources of transactional data. With this kind of data, the organisation can understand the patterns in the customer experience.  

Challenges that the current global circumstances pose are that the needs, wants and expectations may change quickly due to global events or political decisions. Thus, it is even more important that the improvement cycle functions well, and the customer data and feedback collected turns into customer insight and feeds into the customer experience analysis phase. Based on our experience, turning customer feedback or survey results into actionable insights can be challenging because the feedback may be collected in formats that are more challenging to process or that the operating models for feedback analysis are inadequate.  

However, the analysing phase cannot be performed unless the customer insight is successfully formulated in the previous phase in customer experience framework. With analysis we mean the process of understanding current and desired future state of the customer experience by creating and mapping out the customer lifetime models and specific customer journeys. Customer journey maps should also always be updated according to changes in customer personas and their behaviour. Our suggestion for this phase includes utilizing existing customer insights or performing required studies to create the customer journeys and walking them through with customers. This includes creating the customer journeys of targeted customers and understanding better their wants, needs, challenges, and expectations. Through identifying the pain points and positive aspects collected in the customer insight phase, one can locate them to the customer journeys and visualise the repetitiveness of those aspects, to ideate concepts for development. Finally, this then enables the prioritization of development items to ensure they capture both customer and business value.  

To create an outstanding customer experience, organisation needs to develop capabilities to convey the continuous changes in the understanding into effective improvements based on the insights and analysis.

 

While the visual illustrations of customer journeys capture customer needs and challenges in an intuitive way, the mapping is sometimes perceived challenging due to the complexity created by various business functions, customer personas, channels, or partner networks. Many organisations that have mapped customer journeys may still have some challenges in utilizing the customer journeys systematically in the customer experience development. Additionally, based also on our experiences there should always be a governance process and criteria for prioritizing customer experience initiatives as well as structures for assessing different development projects for their contribution in customer experience.  

To conclude, the beginning of the customer experience improvement cycle provides the base on which the development and measurement activities are then build on. To create an outstanding customer experience, organisation needs to develop capabilities to convey the continuous changes in the understanding into effective improvements based on the insights and analysis. Through the customer insight and customer experience analysis the organization can identify the pain points and positive aspects of the processes and start developing the customer experience to new directions. This cycle of developing customer experience is what enables the continuous improvement, however; it is good to notice that it may reveal requirements also to reiterate the vision and through that the business goals and priorities. In the next article we will discuss further the phases of developing and measuring in our customer experience framework. 

Authors:

Henrikki Sandström
Senior Manager, Digital & Strategy
BearingPoint Finland

Karliina Kyhälä
Senior Business Consultant, Digital & Strategy
BearingPoint Finland