Strategic mapTM — а tool for building a working CX Strategy

As a consulting firm, we help companies with various CX tasks. One of the typical questions we get asked regularly is how to build a customer experience strategy that will actually be implemented in the company — with minimal resistance and a good chance of survival.

We’ve been researching this topic for several years, experimenting with different frameworks, and have come to the conclusion that the answer lies beyond the traditional array of CX tools.

STRATEGIC MAPTM is a unique CX tool developed by Integria to help companies develop effective customer experience strategies. It is based on an integral approach originally developed by Ken Wilber. The Integral Approach is a philosophy that views everything from a holistic point of view — recognizing that there is a visible and an invisible part of any event or entity, as well as individual and collective components that describe that object’s relationship to an external world.

You can read more about using integral approach to CX in the book Customer Experience 5 in the chapter written by Olga Guseva, Managing Partner of Integria Consult.

Below is a list of questions to help you fill out the Strategic Map for your organization. You can use it as a guide to create your As Is Strategic Map, and then move on to create the To Be map, which describes the desired state of things. By using the integral approach, you can be confident that you are not leaving any blind spots and that you are paying attention to all the areas that are critical to the success of your CX strategy.

Strategic map — а tool for building a working CX Strategy

Customers: personal focus/feelings

  • What are my clients thinking right now?
  • How motivated are they?
  • How do they feel?
  • What are they missing?
  • How much do customers trust the company/product?
  • What is their level of loyalty to the company/product?
  • What emotions do they experience?
  • What are the customers’ values, what is important to them?
  • How high or low is the customers’ level of knowledge about the product or service, their level of skill in using the product or service?
  • How much do they trust the product/company/brand?
Customers: actions/behavior/description

  • What are customers doing/saying today (their actions/behavior)?
  • How do they use the company’s services?
  • When, in what situations do they interact with the company?
  • How do they interact with the company, through which channels?
  • How do they order products/services?
  • Who are my actual customers, whom do I target now? Gender, age, income level, lifestyle?
  • How homogeneous/diverse is the target audience? What are the key segments?
Company: culture/relationship with customers

  • What is the current relationship between the customer and the company? How does the company treat customers, how do customers treat the company? Do they value the relationship?
  • What brand image is there in the customer community today?
  • What meanings and values are customers hearing now? What resonates with customers, what doesn’t so much?
  • What are the unspoken rules of engagement between the company/brand and customers?
  • Are there any memes/opinions about the company/brand that are popular among customers?
Company: the system through the eyes of customers

  • How does the customer see the product and the company?
  • What is the product line? How wide it is? What are our key products?
  • What is the pricing level?
  • What does the customer experience look like compared to competing and alternative products/services?
  • How high is the level of service?
  • How is the customer interaction system looks like from the customer’s point of view? What tools/technologies are used?
  • What does the company tell customers/do for customers?
  • Does the client see the presence / absence of service standards?
  • Are there formal / formulated rules of interaction between the company and customers?
  • What messages does the company broadcast to customers through advertising/communication tools?
Company: corporate culture

  • What kind of relationships are there between employees of the company; do they influence the customers? What do they depend on, in what situation do they manifest themselves?
  • What brand image is there today among employees?
  • What meanings, values, brand promises are employees hearing now? What resonates with employees, what doesn’t?
  • What are the unspoken rules of how employees interact with each other?
  • Are there any memes/opinions about the company/brand that are popular among employees?
Company: internal system/business processes

  • Company goals: what do we want to achieve, what are the current challenges the company is facing?
  • What is the impact of the competitive environment for us as a company?
  • Are there customer service standards and what are they?
  • Are there standards/rules for interaction between employees? To what extent are they observed?
  • Business processes: what are the key business processes related to customer in the company?
  • Is there/how does the customer experience management system work?
  •  Is there/how does the system for dealing with feedback work?
  • What CX metrics/measures are used, what are their values: NPS, CSAT, CXI, VoC, LTV, ROI, Return Rate, Churn Rate, average check, cross-sale, redemption rate…
  • How does the customer experience look like from the company’s eyes compared to competing and alternative products/services?
  • What tools do we use to monitor the quality of customer experience?
  • Is there a CX strategy?
  • Is there an action plan, how does it look like, to what extent is it followed by?
  • Chief Customer Officer/CX lead role: is there a dedicated responsible person with authority, what are the areas of responsibility of each employee involved in CX and interaction with customers?
  • What kind of communication does the company broadcast to employees in relation to customers?
Employees: personal focus/feelings

  • What are our employees thinking right now?
  • What are the employees’ goals, what is key for them?
  • How motivated are they?
  • How do they feel?
  • What is their level of loyalty to the company?
  • What are they missing?
  • What emotions do they experience?
  • What are their values, what is important to them?
  • How high or low is their level of knowledge of the product or service, their level of skill in using the product or service?
  • How much experience do employees have?
  • How developed is their level of empathy/emotional intelligence?
  • What are the resources and limitations of the employees?
  • How much trust do they have in the employer’s product/company/brand?
Стратегия. Видение и Action Plan

  • Who are my employees? Gender, age, income level, education level, lifestyle?
  • What are key employee segments/levels (from regional/functional/hierarchical perspective)
  • What are employees doing/saying today (actions/behavior) in regards to customers? At different levels of management? In different functional departments?
  • How do they provide services to the customers?
  • Which tools do they use?
  • How do they interact with customers, through which channels? How often?
  • How homogeneous/diverse are the employees?
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