Annette Franz (Gleneicki)

I originally wrote today’s post for Forbes. It appeared on Forbes on March 5, 2019.

“Customers are connected.” “Customers are more-informed than ever.” “Customers trust each other more than brands.” “Customers have the power.” “Customers are in control.”

I write about organizational culture and core values quite often. One of my most recent articles on this topic was about whether or not employees believe in their companies’ core values. In that post, I shared this statistic from Gallup: only 23% of U.S. employees believe that they can apply the core values to their work, while only 27% believe in the values. That’s pretty dismal, and I think I know why that’s the case.

It all starts with CEO commitment.

Customer experience professionals got an early Christmas present last week in the form of a revised statement on the “purpose of a corporation.” Well, it was a revision for the CEOs at the Business Roundtable, but many of us already know what the purpose of a business is.

Are you using journey mapping to design a better future-state experience and to deliver new value for your customers – with your customers?

With whom and how do you socialize customer insights?

You’re listening to customers. You’re combining their feedback with those bread crumbs of data that they leave with every transaction and interaction with your brand. You’ve developed customer personas to better understand who they are, what problems they are trying to solve, and what jobs they need to get done. You’ve mapped their journeys to understand their experience today and their expectations for a better experience tomorrow.

Are you making this mistake when journey mapping?
We already know that people are making mistakes when they’re journey mapping. I’ve outlined several of them in past posts:

5 Myths of Journey Mapping, in which I wrote about:

I originally wrote this post for Forbes.com. It appeared on the Forbes site on November 14, 2018.

I originally wrote today's post for Forbes. It appeared on the Forbes site on October 18, 2018. I've made some slight modifications since then, as it turned into a two-part series.

Do you know the difference between means and outcomes? Between the journey and the destination?

I know. I know. Those are silly questions to ask.

Of course everyone knows the difference between means and outcomes. Of course everyone knows the difference between the means to an end and the end.

Or do they?

As I was driving to an appointment the other day, I saw a sticker on the back of a construction truck that read, in big red letters: Safety is the goal.

So, let me throw out some definitions here.