A room with a view

Recent publications has raised awareness that companies need to focus on the customer’s end-to-end journey, and move away from “polishing” single touchpoints. The energy supplier Hafslund Strøm has adopted customer journey methodology for many years. Recently, they have found a new way to engage people across the company in discussing and analysing customer journeys.

We have been fortunate enough to have an entire wall to our disposal, says Tanja Angelsen Berg, responsible for customer journeys in Hafslund Strøm. A magnetic film covers the wall and makes it easy to position and re-position the touchpoints. The color designates the initiator of a message, and the symbol represents the channel carrying the message. Using pens, they can draw lines and connectors, or add text and symbols directly onto the touchpoints.

Tanja and Tobias Gausemel Backe, responsible for Customer Dialogue, have visualized the end-to-end customer journey on the wall. The start is when a new customer contacts the company, and it continues through the formal on-boarding process, reporting of power consumption, billing, and so on.

Customer journeys often transcend many organizational units in a company. Tanja and Tobias gather employee from various units in front of the wall. Here they literally get a common view of the customer journey. The tangible elements enables them to map, discuss, and experiment with the journey.

We will continue with a closer look at the dialogue with the customers throughout the start of their on-boarding journey, says Tobias.  What is the exact content of the SMS we send to the customer right after signing up? Does it make sense with the content of the next e-mail? With this approach, we have already identified several points for improvement, says Tobias.

When thinking ahead, Hafslund will map the key journeys to see their processes from a customer’s point of view. In this way, Hafslund may evaluate the consistency between the touchpoints and the journey as a whole.

The customer journey wall helps us to focus on the customer. In addition, it is engaging and fun to work with the tangibles, Tanja concludes.