Customer expectations are generally high across industries in the current age. That’s not surprising given how most customers are more exposed to quality services thanks to the rise of internet and also the higher brand competition that hyper-capitalism brings.
This higher expectation is not just limited to the quality of the product that a customer buys from a brand. Rather, the expectation is carried across all points of interaction between the customer and the brand- from websites through point of sale and service centres.
Dissonance between internal journeys and intended results is more common than you may think
This higher quality expectation naturally puts pressure on brands to up their game. They do this, they focus a lot of the customer journey- which could be considered as the steps that the customers take which result in a customer-brand interaction. The brand then tries their best to improve these steps to the best of their ability.
This improvement is brought about by applying better technologies and/or operational methods.
This is as it should be.
But the catch is that the customer journey couldn’t be improved without improving the internal journey.
Improving internal journeys
Internal journeys refer to the business processes that happen in-house which are necessary for not just the smooth functioning of the organization but also for customer satisfaction.
To improve the latter then, you should map the different processes that make up the internal journey.
Such a mapping gives a clear picture of not just the processes involved but also the teams that are involved in each process. More often than not, bringing about improvements would mean defining the teams better- with more significant goals to pursue for each of them.
In other words, the leader should ensure that the teams have a compelling shared vision to pursue.
Compelling Shared Vision is the vision that’s born from among the team members- derived from their skill sets and aspirations. It’s the shared goal towards which the team can move. Given that it’s not imposed on them from the outside, they are more motivated to pursue this vision. Also, given that it has their own skill sets as a basis- it is meaningful for the organization to have teams pursue their compelling shared vision.
Once the teams are divided based on their Compelling Shared Vision, it’s then time to match the right person in the team to handle the right process. This too is possible by virtue of discovering Compelling Shared Vision.
Better customer journeys
Temenos Vision Lab or TVL is a unique session developed by Temenos+Agility which helps teams discover their Compelling Shared Vision. Developed based on 25 years of business consultancy experience, TVL incorporates proprietary tools and is conducted by some of the best transformation coaches in business.
TVL also has multiple steps that guide you through the different stages which are necessary to realize the vision. One of these stages involves the change agents sharing their highest aspirations as well as challenges that they have overcome in the past with the others. They also share the way with which they overcame the challenges in the first place- the strategies they adopted and the ways in which they tackled anything unexpected that they hadn’t foreseen in their strategy.
This gives a clear view of the kind of professional they are- not just their skills but also what drives them to perform well in the first place. This is the kind of insight that you could never derive from an ordinary setting or office interviews.
Once you have this insight, it becomes easy to match the right person to the right task or vice versa.
Now, the containers or silos are well defined. You also have the right persons to perform the right tasks in the team. In other words, it’s ensured that each of the teams would perform optimally.
Now, what’s left to ensure is that the improved processes in each team would collectively translate to better customer experience. But that’s a given in this scenario- given how you have mapped the internal journey that’s directly relevant to the customer journey.
In other words, by defining the Compelling Shared Vision for the relevant teams, you instigate a sea change in quality of internal journey. And that change results in better customer journey.
