Transport volumes are very low right now, but this isn't just bad news

We live in a business world now driven by Digital Transformation. It seems that every media outlet wants to be "the next Netflix" and every takeaway restaurant thinks they should be "the next Deliveroo" Note: This is despite Deliveroo actually losing over £200million last year, a fact that hasn't been lost on the UK stock market in the week

2020 will be remembered as the pandemic being the catalyst for a huge shift to digital. Digital working processes, Digital meetings, Digital retailing, etc. 

It will also be remembered as the year there was a huge reduction in the overall use of transport, as:

- those working were strongly encouraged to work from home, where possible

- lockdowns prevented a significant amount of personal & business travel 

- tourism was stopped

- people were furloughed from work  

Photo credit : https://unsplash.com/@thenightstxlker

But, as vaccines are rolled-out and restrictions are lifted, we are likely to see a significant "bounce-back" in the transport & mobility sector over the next few months, as staff return to the city and the office (although perhaps not to pre-pandemic levels for a long while / if ever). 

So now it is high time for transport operators (and their suppliers) to fully embrace digital transformation and modernize their legacy business processes & systems. The current situation of low passenger volumes may mean reduced revenue, but also means less risk when making significant technology and data changes. 

In short, if you are going to implement a new process or technology solution across the transport sector... now is probably the best time to do it.

Customer Journey Catherine Wheel

In an earlier post I explained how the Customer Journey for an organisation should not be a linear progression, but a cycle. To illustrate this I used a simple piece of ready-made clip art from PowerPoint and quickly inserted this into my content.

However, given a bit more time, I have now pulled together a better diagram to illustrate what I mean.

In this diagram I have used the same 5 segments to show the cyclical path a user takes (Awareness, Interest/Desire, Action, Experience and Advocacy). But I have also added an inner section that represents the running of Internal Process and an outer ring that represents the tasks that customers perform.

I've used various and more specific versions of this diagram in previous consulting work for clients, but I think this diagram represents a more generic approach which can be adapted as the need arise.
The only real problem I now have is… what do I call it?

For the time being, I think I'm going to use the term Customer Journey Catherine Wheel. A diagrammatic version of the popular firework that hopefully explains the round and spinning nature of both this model and the physical namesake.

What do you think? Is it a silly name? Can you come up with a better one?

Make Customer Experience Management easy for real people

It seems like the world has suddenly woken up to the concept of "the customer journey", the idea that users have specific processes and tasks that they go through to achieve their goals via multiple touch-points & channels.
I must have heard the phrase more in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years. It's like every middle manager thinks they have only just invented the term... But that's OK, these people can catch-up with the online industry. We've been using: personas, customer process flows and transactional funnels for over a decade, with great success.

But now things have changed in that time. The idea that the user follows a linear journey is a simplistic model that takes no account for the multiple user types, needs, loyalty, etc. There's also a lot more data available via analytics now can be interpreted, analysed and even processed in real-time to create a dynamic site experience (e.g. product recommendations and multivariate testing) and automate various marketing processes (retargeting, etc.).

However, for all the fancy integration and mathematics behind the scenes, these complex systems still need a non-technical person to manage the experience day-to-day. Normal humans (not rocket scientists) are needed to change assets, conduct conversion experiments and approve content updates. In short, the very person who has now got excited about the improved user experience, now needs a simple way to manage the data-driven customer experience.

Businesses need to get strategic with digital

Oh for heavens sake, can every company that talks about creating a digital strategy actually mean it?

 

In the last few months I've had a bunch of meetings and calls with business prospects who claim "we want a digital strategy" when all they really want is either:

1. A document that bolts online stuff into existing processes or technologies
2. A presentation that just scares the exec board and therefore gives certain people permission to ask for more budget or grab power

However, these aren't strategic digital aims, they are either tactical online plans to try and push digital into the current way of working or political manoeuvring to better specific careers.

 

A digital strategy is neither of these. Instead it is a plan of how your organisation is going to enable and optimise its digital ecosystem

 

the corporate layers - an idea developed

In a recent post I started to work through my thoughts around the development of McKinsey's company software layer concept. I mentioned that I thought there was at least one obvious omission (e.g. web services) and that a single layer to explain it all was too simple.

So now I find myself putting forward an evolved version of this idea, unashamedly taking McKinsey's model as the basis of it.

Corporate layers

View more PowerPoint from Hayden Sutherland

As you can see from my embedded presentation there are now five proposed layers rather than just two.

1. Core business processes
2. Web services & API’s
3. Owned media such as website(s), Apps, Kiosks, etc.
4. Paid media such as online advertising (PPC, etc.)
5. Earned media such as Social, Word-of-mouth, etc.

Although I believe the lines between owned, paid and earned are now becoming increasingly blurred, there is a place for each of the different communication media in my new model.