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Customer Experience Blueprint –

extended tool
Introduction to the extended version of the tool

Congratulations on joining the Customer Experience Blueprint community!

Here is an introduction of your extended customer experience blueprint
tool. We have used this tool successfully to plan customer strategies for
companies with various size (from one man and a dog up to 40,000
employees). How is that possible? As long as you have customers (or you
plan to serve some), you will need a customer strategy. It doesn’t matter
what is the size of the company. Of course the content and the depth of the
plan various from company to company, but the bare essentials are same,
because It is all about FOCUSING ON the CUSTOMER BENEFITS and
OUTCOMES to create PROFITS!

The figure below shows the extended version on the customer experience
blueprint tool:

Each of these questions is like peeling the onion from the customer
perspective. You want to understand the customer from different
perspectives, so that you can design the customer experience to be exactly
what you want. You need to know all this to be able to focus on doing the
right things and for designing the right way to do those things.

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The “crown jewel” of the customer experience blueprint is the SMARTO

technique, which enables you to know exactly what customers need. You can
then use this information for example as a basis for customer satisfaction
surveys, KPIS and KRIs, incentives, etc. But more on this later in this
document…

Using the Customer Experience Blueprint -tool

Let’s go through the tool first and then we’ll give you an example how to use
it. You will be able to use this tool immediately after you have finished
reading this document. If you need help, then share your questions in the
comment box near the video and we’ll respond to you quickly.

Let’s start with the first question in the customer experience strategy tool
and move on from there:

Who is the target customer?

This is one of the most important questions. You will get the answers to
following questions “wrong”, unless you do this properly. The reason is that
you need to keep this chosen target customer in mind all the time when you
go through the additional steps. And you will need to come back to this
regularly to stay focused. In this document we give you the basic ideas on
how to answer this question (but don’t worry, our customer experience
strategy online coaching program will go much deeper).

Choose who is the target customer that you want to serve with the product
or service you are offering. You cannot serve everyone in the world, so focus!
It is an illusion by too many leaders, that everyone is our customer. People
have so different preferences that you just cannot serve them all. If you
choose to serve them all, then your end result will be a bland mixture a bit of
everything, serving wide audience good (at the best), but not really exciting
anyone. But if you design your product/service to a specific target audience,
then you can create that “wow” in every corner.

Describe the customer using the following questions:

 Traditional demographics, psychographics, etc.
 What kind of people are they?
 What motivates them?
 What makes this outcome enjoyable and easy for them?
 Why they need this service or product?
 Why would they buy?

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There is plenty more that you can do to describe your customers in a lively
way, but to get you started, this is more than a sufficient start.

Where does the journey start and end from customer’s perspective?

This question is important from business perspective. Understanding the

answer to this question will give you opportunities to expand current offering
as well as look into expanding. It is highly likely that your business is serving
the customers only for part of their journey and that creates a great business
opportunity. Airlines such as South West used this question to think how
they could serve their customers better and as a result many of today’s
airlines are offering car rentals, hotels, etc. on top of the flight experience. To
find the relevant additional services you could give to your customers come
from this thinking. In the customer experience innovation online coaching we
give you much more in-depth insight on how to use this for competitive
advantage, but the following questions will help you to get results straight
away on this:

 Where does the journey start for your customer?

 Where does it end for them?
 What is the journey customer thinks they are in?

Remember to think from the customer perspective all the time (it will expand
much wider than your current business).

What does the customer EXPECT that should or could happen?

This question taps into customers’ expectations. You have to understand

those to serve them better. You can use the following questions to aid your
thinking:

 What do customers think SHOULD happen?

What are the Moments of Magic for them?

 What do customers think COULD happen?

What are the Moments of Misery for them?

Customer expectations are a combination of that think that should and could
happen. So it is a bit of positive and negative things mixed together. To get a
deeper understanding of customer expectation, it is useful to have their
emotions linked also.

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What does the customer WANT as part of the end-to-end journey?

This should be the easy one for you. Think all the information you already
have through your customer satisfaction surveys, discussions with
customers, website forms, etc.

Customers can tell you their wants over and over again! Research has shown
that customers are really good in expressing their wants, but when you
would like to know their needs, it gets much more complicated. To proof this
point, think about Apple and the iPad. When it first came to market, general
public and analysts said that it will fail because it is too big to be a phone and
too small to be a computer. How wrong they were! But that is
understandable, because most of the world functions in the “customer
wants” space without any sensible way to handle needs. And why does it
matter? Think about it for a while… There are so many things in this world
that you want, but don’t really need. If you don’t get them, that’s fine. But
what about those things you really need? Don’t you do pretty much anything
it takes to get them? That is what Apple understood. Business people needed
a mobile platform with decent side screen but lighter than computer. The
secret was in the hundreds of thousands of applications they already had in
store when they brought the actual device on the market. People needed
those apps, but they didn’t know to want them!

The SMARTO™ Customer Needs

Use the following technique to identify the SMARTO needs for your business:

It is amazing how hard especially the first point – S – is for business leaders
to get. You can’t just say that they need “better air-conditioning” or whatever.

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You need to be very specific: “Customers need to control the air between the
temperatures of 18-21C°”. Is that a SMARTO™ need? It is very specific. We
know it happens when the temperate stays as specified. Is it possible? Sure!
Do we want it? Sure! When can it be done? (Answer depends on the context.)
Is it customer-centric? Yes (though may depend on the context).

What can our company do to ensure customer’s success?

This is where we start to plan our actions based on what we know about the
customer. So far we have figured out what do they need, want and expect.
You should keep in mind that delivering customer needs is crucial for your
business. Also understanding and responding to customer expectations is
important. But customer wants are something that are not crucial, yet we
need to think about fulfilling some of them as part of the customer
experience.

Here we ask, what can you do as a company to directly impact the customer
success based on the information you have about your customer? We do not
make decision here yet, just ideas what we can do. Write down all the ideas,
because it is easier to get rid of the ones that won’t work than to generate
more new ones. Let your imagination flow regardless of limitations of current
realistic world. We are brainstorming here; so do not limit your innovation!

What can we do through partners?

Partnerships are today very common way to extend customer experience

outside own company’s core expertise. Let’s take some examples:
 Airlines joining up with car rentals & hotels
 Insurance companies joining up with gyms, weight watchers, food
stores, etc.
 Software companies complementing their services together with
consulting and training companies
The point of all these partnerships is to respond to the question “where
does the journey start and end for the customer?” in more fuller way. The
opportunity to grow our business hides in those parts of the customer
journey that we are not serving yet. Still, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to
expand your business to those uncovered areas, but to fulfill them through
win-win partnership. So, what can we do through our partners to serve our
customers better?

How technology could enable us to serve the customer better?

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This Customer Experience Blueprint question has a little bit same purpose as
the partnership question. We want to explore the explore the opportunities
technology creates for us. The two important questions are: What technology
already exists that we could leverage to serve the customer better? And what
technological advancements would help us to serve the customer better?
Then we need to find out how could we acquire it. If it is something that we
can create easily, then let’s do it (if it makes sense), but if not, then we need
to figure when is that technology realistically available?

For example, who do you think is the biggest investor in teleportation

technology? What kind of company? Think about it…

It’s an elevator company! They already move people from one place to
another both vertically and horizontally. So, it is only logical to be at the
forefront of developing such technologies to improve their business in
future. However, that technology is not realistic to acquire in near future, so
they have other technological plans in place also.

What we want to do here with this technology question is to understand how

we could apply technology to improve our customer experiences.

Our business statement based on the Customer Experience Blueprint

This is the final piece of this extended Customer Experience Blueprint. This is
also very challenging and rewarding thing to think about!

You need to write a statement that explains what business you are in!

You can ask that what we are doing here for our customers to help your
thinking. This is very important because it will shape the way you perceive
your business.

As an example think about a car service company. What business are they in?
The typical answer is that they are in the business of fixing or servicing cars.
WRONG! That is not what the customers think about it. No one wants to
service or fix their car for just the sake of fixing it. Why do customers then
service their cars? They want to make sure that their car works and is
reliable. And if that is the reason why customers deal with our car service
business, then we need to build our business around that idea. We are in the
business of trouble-free travelling.

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What else can you include in the customer experience strategy?

Congratulations! You have now walked through the light edition of the
customer experience strategy tool. Just take the tool and go out there to find
the answers!

In the long run you need more information to make your customer
experience strategy more detailed. There are several things both in scientific
research and practical world that have been found to be very important for
the strategy succeed. Here is a list of some of the things we’ll be covering in
the Customer Experience Strategy Online Coaching program:

 Emotions, attitudes and psychology of customer experiences

 Customer personas to excite employees
 Outcome-based customer segmenting
 Customer-centric marketing
 Communication plans
 Involving customers into customer experience innovation

We really appreciate that you have taken your valuable time to learn these
new things to create a kick-ass customer experience strategy. And do you
know what… Your customers will appreciate your efforts even more, go
ahead and try!

Example: breakdown service of the future?

This example is based on the video presented on the Customer Experience
Blueprint – Lesson 1 page. If you haven’t seen the video yet and you got this
far, then maybe you want to watch the video first to understand the context
of this example a bit better. The example presented here is one of the many
ways to describe customer experience strategy (you could use mind maps or
our FREE online tool to describe these also for instance). Now, let’s get
started!

First, Read The Story

A middle-aged man is driving from his office to client’s. He needs to be able

to continue his work while travelling, because he is really busy and doesn’t
want to waste any time. On his way, the car breaks down in the middle of
nowhere and he is in real trouble. He needs to get the car services as soon
as possible to continue his journey to customer’s offices.

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Customer Experience Blueprint

Who is the target customer?

 Middle-aged man, whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
 They are on the road a lot.
 They need service in case something goes wrong on the road.
 They have no knowledge or will to fix problems themselves.

Where does the journey start and end from customer’s perspective?
 The customer journey starts when they think about leaving for a trip
with a car.
 The car service process instantiates, when something goes wrong on
the road. The journey instance ends when a car ride continues
normally.
 The overall journey ends for the customer when they have visited their
destination and are happily back home.
 The customers are in ‘a care-free travelling with a car’ business.

What does the customer EXPECT that should or could happen?

SHOULD:
 Get a quick repair.
 I may proceed moving to the destination soon.
 It may take some time with paper work on the shop.

COULD:
 Difficult to find a repair shop close by.
 I will get stress over getting the car to a service before it leaves me on
the road.
 I miss lots of time because of the car service.

What does the customer WANT as part of the end-to-end journey?

 Help in distress.
 Quick resolution.
 Remain moving to the destination.

The SMARTO Customer Needs?

 Find service location within 3 miles.
 The car fixed in 15 minutes.
 The fix does not cost more than 10% of the total value of the car.
 Only suitable/matching parts are used in the service.

What can our company do to ensure customer’s success?

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 We can inform the customer if there’s a problem in the car.

 We can determine the easiest and fastest way for the customer to get
help.

What can we do through partners?

 We can have a wide network of service garages.
 Partnership with GPS tracking services will enable us to know where
the customer is and where is the nearest help.
 Telco operators can help with the Internet connection to provide help.

How technology could enable us to serve the customer better?

 Tracking technology to know where the customer is.
 Semantic search to find the nearest, best service garage.
 Fault management technology in the car to alert driver with potential
problems.
 Screen project technology to show information on the windshield.
 Voice recognition technology to control the system without hands.

Now, we are sure that you know enough to get started with your own
Customer Experience Blueprints. Make one Blueprint for each different
customer type / segment. That way different customer types stay
documented separately. You can’t tread them as one, so why to document
them as such (don’t take us wrong, they can be in the same file, but still keep
them clearly separated from each other).

Download the Customer Experience Blueprint template and start working!

You can contact us for help on the website through the comments or email
us to [email protected]

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“The secret of success is not in predicting the future, it is in creating a company that
will thrive in a future that cannot be predicted.“ –Michael Hammer

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