CX Documents of the Triangle Offense Framework (Part Two)
Like basketball, The Triangle Offense framework always looks for opportunities to score and put points on the board. The CX documents offer your organization that same capability. More chances to improve the customer experience where it counts
CX Documentation: The Key to Successful VOC Data Gathering and CX Strategy Creation
You need to gather customer feedback and insights across your entire organization, which requires: a) that the general business teams, product teams, and GTM teams all understand the end-to-end customer journey with which they interact, b) that they can collect customer feedback and link it to a customer journey stage, c) that they review the opportunity backlog across the entire customer journey, d) that they pipe the critical opportunities to the Executive Experience Map, and e) that they review the opportunity in the opportunity portfolio, assess the economic data, and decide whether to invest in
improving the customer experience.
Customer Journey Map (CJM)
The Customer Journey Map (CJM) aims to communicate customers’ experiences as they interact with your business product or service. The CJM is divided into stage gates (shown here) to group customer interactions, and those interactions lead to a key moment or moment of truth that defines how a customer values the service you've provided. Those moments also capture the customers’ feelings and emotions as they interact with your business.
Each stage gate can be made up of one or more key moments. Showing the customer experience in a CJM is essential because you need to ask yourself what the customers are saying about the key moment. Is it living up to their expectations? If not, what do they think your business should do to fix it?
As a CX practitioner, you should ask the question: What customer behavior do I want to change and why? You start by capturing key moment boosters and blockers, which become opportunities you need to log in an opportunity backlog.
Opportunity Backlog
The opportunity backlog is linked to a specific CJM. It communicates each CJM stage gate’s boosters and blockers and its associated key moments. Each booster and blocker is wrapped in an opportunity value card (OVC), which communicates the opportunity in a standardized way the general business, product, and GTM teams can understand and review.
The opportunity backlog communicates any state of dissatisfaction customers might be experiencing. It also shows the organization where the opportunities originate in the CJM and whether other teams are receiving similar customer feedback regarding the same unmet expectations.
An opportunity backlog is crucial because it powers VOC data-gathering across the entire organization and gives teams one central place to log VOC data. For example, GTM teams use CRMs such as Salesforce to log customer interactions. They can log VOC data and tag the correct CJM stage gate, so it shows up in the stage within the opportunity backlog.
Shifting to the product team, a product team member may learn of a customer’s painful experience in their conversations, but logging VOC should be no problem since they tag their VOC data with the correct CJM stage gate. If all team members correctly tag their CJM stage gates, all the VOC data ends up in the centralized opportunity backlog.
The opportunity backlog helps the business collect VOC data across the general business, product, and GTM teams and deposit that data in one centralized location. Then, a pipeline opportunity team will start reviewing the opportunities that should be prioritized and sent to the executive experience map.
Opportunity Pipeline
The opportunity pipeline comprises a series of review meetings and workshops that determine which opportunities should be considered as investments in the organization’s broader CX strategy. Once those opportunities have been identified, they are sent to the Executive Experience Map (EEM) and eventually presented to senior leaders and the executive team for additional consideration.
The opportunity pipeline sifts through the VOC data across the entire customer experience through its review processes and pumps the most valuable data to the Executive Experience Map.
The senior leadership and executive team want to know which opportunities are eligible for CX strategy investment. The opportunity pipeline provides CX leaders with clarity about future investments, so they can start planning how to make those investments a reality.
Executive Experience Map (EEM)
The Executive Experience Map, or EEM, is tailored to senior leaders and executive teams. The EEM is a simplified version of the CJM and aims to communicate customer experience opportunities that warrant your business’s investment consideration.
Executives and senior leaders must be presented with the most pressing customer problems. They need to see which key moments in the customer experience fall short of customers' expectations and therefore damage the business.
Conversely, economic data needs to be packaged into the opportunity when presented in the EEM, so executives understand the presented opportunities’ financial implications.
Opportunity Portfolio
Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan created the opportunity portfolio and have written extensively about this topic in their book Discovery-Driven Growth. An opportunity portfolio is a mapping tool for executive teams to see the CX investments they make across their organization.
Following is a description of the opportunity portfolio from their book:
“An opportunity portfolio is a visual map of major initiatives going on in your organization. It brings together in one place the critical information that allows the executive team to see whether the investments it has established are effectively aligned and effectively resourced.”
All business investments end up in an opportunity portfolio, although your organization might call it something else. CX investments are no different and should also be represented in an opportunity portfolio.
The opportunity portfolio is vital to The Triangle Offense framework because it allows CX leadership to execute the new opportunities discovery process.
Typically, a CX investment that requires different discovery processes falls outside the core enhancement bucket in the opportunity portfolio. Product teams must revise their roadmaps when executing CX investments with higher-risk profiles because they require long-term planning and additional resources.
Summary
With the right CX documentation, your organization will run like a well-oiled machine. You’ll be able to:
- Effectively gather VOC data.
- Tag the VOC data to the correct part of the customer experience.
- Assess which VOC opportunities are candidates for the executive team’s investment review.
- Execute those investments, knowing exactly where the customer problem originated and the approximate ROI on that investment.
I’m not recommending you overhaul your entire way of working. With adaptive change management, you can start making small changes in the CX documentation you build to understand the customer's problems better. The Triangle Offense is a framework with many paths to understanding your customer experience flash points.
Like basketball, the Triangle Offense framework always looks for opportunities to score and put points on the board, and the CX documents offer your organization that same capability. They give you more chances to improve the customer experience where it counts because you’ll have an end-to-end picture of your customers’ experience.
Written by Leo Vroegindewey, B2B CX Consultant
Get in touch to improve your customer experience and increase sales. Let's talk about how I can help your business grow. Email me.