Breakthrough in customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping headaches

I love a bit of retail chat, and it’s always interesting when a particular moan keeps cropping up. At the CX Retail Exchange show last week it was customer journey mapping.

The big grumbles I heard were:

• Too much data, often siloed across channels and not robust enough to base strategy on.
• Too little data on friction / pain points in the customer journey.
• Limited library of legacy journey mapping tools that don’t provide a full picture.

The Uncrowd journey mapping platform was built to solve these issues. Here’s how.

Achieving omnichannel consistency

Customers expect to interact with brands across multiple touchpoints. But as digital evolves and in-store adapts to market shifts, the challenge is to ensure they stay coherent.

Do in-store customers see the same as they see online? Are processes like discovery, staff assistance or returns consistent across channels? Can customers shift channels seamlessly?

Many retailers feel they lack the data and tools to view their complete customer journey across all channels, so they struggle to implement consistency.

CX leaders tell me they:

• …can’t easily identify discrepancies to create a seamless customer experience.
• …struggle to establish standard practices that foster operational excellence.
• …rely on fragmented feedback data with no capability to bring it together effectively.

How Uncrowd solves channel consistency

• Uncrowd collects data using multiple objective observers swarming channels simultaneously.
• The Uncrowd platform directly compares channels in a simple customer journey view.
• The dashboard generates recommendations for closing performance gaps and fixing discrepancies.

Mini case study

Uncrowd collected omnichannel data for a large UK apparel retailer. Our platform surfaced a discrepancy between out-of-stock levels online compared to in-store - the retailer was able to quickly and confidently take action to address the discrepancy

Customer-centric, data-driven retail

CX leaders want to create a more customer-centric company culture, driven by good data. But they struggle to achieve this because they don’t have the tools to embed data into decision-making.

Common challenges include:

• Lack of tools to reorientate the business to a customer-centric mindset.
• Hard to set OKRs and KPIs that go beyond just sales figures.
• No complete overview of the customer journey to target the right things at the right point.

How Uncrowd solves customer-centric culture

• Uncrowd observes the customer decision-making environment – shop floor, website, app. This customer-centric data drives action to improve the customer experience.
• The platform identifies less tangible retail KPIs that can lead to improved customer satisfaction.
• You can develop hypotheses and run tests targeting specific CX areas, tracking results with the next data collection.

Mini case study

A recent Uncrowd data collection measured how customers experience staff presence on the shop floor. Are staff available immediately? Are they approaching customers with a smile? Our client was able to see that although they scored well compared to some of their competitors on these signals, they weren’t significantly ahead. This was an opportunity to objectively measure improvements to CX performance based on staff attentiveness and attitude.

Identifying customer pain points

If you don’t have visibility on customer frictions / pain points in your customer journey, how can you achieve excellence? And just as important, when you find frictions, how do you know which to fix first? Which are losing you customers to the competition? Where do you prioritise investment?

Many retailers are struggling with a friction blind spot in their journey mapping.

• No way to identify and visualise specific customer pain points in the data.
• Increasing survey response volume doesn’t help link data to specific strategy.
• No way to link specific actions to fix pain points to conversions and sales.

How Uncrowd solves pain point identification

• Designed from the ground up to measure friction in the shopping experience. It’s why we built the platform! The data is displayed visually to show friction in the customer journey
• Because Uncrowd gathers the same data from your competitors, in-store, online and in-app, you see a direct comparison for a particular friction point. Are the competition doing this better than you?
• The platform automatically recommends action when a friction is found, giving you fast access to solutions that increase conversions.

Mini case study

Uncrowd collected data on post-purchase CX for an omnichannel retailer who had got rid of returns cards in a sustainability drive. Our data uncovered a friction - customers found making a return confusing. There was a risk of reversion to old methods, clogging up reverse supply chains. We helped them improve returns clarity with the solution of printing messaging on existing packaging.

Finding the right CX investments and savings

In the current economic climate, CX leaders have an impossible task; grow sales, grow the brand, grow loyalty, grow customers, all on an ever-shrinking budget.

The top problems we hear about:

• Can’t do everything but don’t have the data to select what to prioritise.
• Shiny new analytics solutions often require extensive internal resources to deploy.
• Money spent on data collection is wasted if that data can’t be effectively squeezed of value.

How Uncrowd solves investment triage

• Because Uncrowd shows your customer journey in context with your competitor’s customer journey, you can visualise key gaps or overspends and prioritise investment.
• Uncrowd requires no tech integration or additional internal resources, and it reduces costs by retiring legacy platforms and simplifying the insight stack.
• When you close a gap by fixing a pain point, the platform will show this at the next data collection, tangible evidence to support further CX investment.

Mini case study

We collected data on in-store layout for a national chain store and their closest competitors. They wanted insight on where they should direct future investment. The data showed that everyone in the sector scored highly on store layout. It would be difficult to improve significantly in this area, so investment would be better directed elsewhere.

Uncrowd was built to be the future of customer journey mapping. Up for a chat about how we can help solve your grumbles? Get me on chris@uncrowd.uk.