FIGURE 1.7 Multiple channels can deliver a confirmation message. Which channels are used by a customer depends upon their needs, context, and the capabilities of their mobile device.
Viewing channels as serving customer moments can empower you and your team to work backward from customer needs to which channel(s) will best facilitate meeting those needs. Instead of starting with one channel—digital—start with your customers’ needs, context, and journey. What role could print, mobile, web, environment, voice, or people play to support those needs? Can you combine channels in interesting ways? Can you build bridges between channels that help customers move forward easily?
And, most importantly, how do these channels support great customer moments?
Changing the Channel-Centric Mindset
Evaluating your channels in this way creates the opportunity to rethink the relationship of the individual channels and how they may work together. You can readdress how they are defined or what each channel’s role could be in a customer’s end-to-end experience. At a minimum, you will shift your vantage point from channels as destinations to channels as moment enablers. This conceptual foundation is an important first step in changing the channel-centric mindset.
As discussed, this mindset creates barriers—both conceptual and organizational—that make defining and designing good end-to-end experiences difficult. Changing how your institution organizes people around channels and functions (rather than customers and journeys) is a long game. However, as shown in Figure 1.8, you can begin engaging your colleagues immediately by turning your world 90 degrees and looking at it from a customer’s perspective.
FIGURE 1.8 The framework on the bottom positions channels as enablers of an end-to-end experience, not parallel worlds.
Customers do not contain their actions to one single channel. Stating this to your colleagues will not set off fireworks, but showing it will flip on light bulbs. The next chapter will go into greater depth about how to use a simple framework—a touchpoint inventory—to inventory and visualize how customers interact with your product or service over time. To get ready to create your inventory, you will need to define your channels first.
Codify Your Channels
Your organization likely has some recognizable customer channels, such as websites, mobile apps, call centers, physical stores, and so on. A specific product or service may leverage all or only some of these channels. You also may have a greater or lesser presence in different channels. Here are some approaches to get you started. In general, remember to keep in mind the three facets discussed previously: interaction, information, and context.
1. Start with the obvious. What are the major channels you support or where you interact with customers? For example, a customer setting up, placing, picking up, and refilling prescriptions at a CVS Pharmacy at Target may interact with multiple channels owned by the two companies (see Table 1.2).
TABLE 1.2 COMPARISON OF CHANNELS
| Target | CVS |
| Target.com: Pharmacy | CVS.com: Target |
| Store—Main Line | Pharmacy—Direct Line |
| Physical Environment (Parking, Signage, Displays, etc). | Physical Environment (Signage, Displays, etc). SMS/Messaging |
| Target Mobile App | CVS Mobile App Direct Mail Email |
2. Choose the right granularity. As you identify channels, go beyond broad categories such as “web” or “print.” A finer granularity will help you think more strategically about how to use specific channels and to identify where new channels are needed. If you have State Farm insurance, for example, the mobile channel has multiple native applications (see Figure 1.9). Differentiating each of these as separate channels helps clarify the current and future roles of each application in supporting different customer needs and contexts.
FIGURE 1.9 In larger, more fragmented product and service ecosystems, a more granular definition of your channels can help reframe what each subchannel really offers customers and how they relate to other subchannels.
3. Be specific. In some cases, you may be delivering different experiences based on the technological affordances of different devices. If your website has different features or touchpoints on larger screens than smaller screens that are assumed to be mobile, define those separately. For example, “Standard main website” and “Mobile main website.” This will help you parse and reimagine how to design for varying intersections of technological affordances and customer context.
4. Note who owns each channel. As you take stock of relevant channels, you should note which groups and accountable executives own them. In some cases—as in the CVS pharmacy at Target example—you also want to determine what external vendors or partners make decisions related to specific channels. As later chapters will reveal, you will need to reach out and actively collaborate with these people in the future.
5. Be ready to adapt. You will probably discover new channels as you and your team go beyond the obvious. Over time, you will also see your channel mix change—either through your efforts or others. Just get a good foundation, start your digging, and adjust as needed.
Build the Orchestra
A helpful analogy for understanding and explaining to others this shift from channels as destinations to enablers of end-to-end experiences is an orchestra (unsurprising, given the title of this book).
What About Research?
Start exploring new frameworks by doing discovery alone or with colleagues. Doing so will help you get a feel for how to define your channels and identify the touchpoints within them.
However, this is merely a prelude to your first movement of work: engaging directly with the customers and other participants. Chapter 5, “Mapping Experiences,” will cover the importance of performing qualitative research as a team to understand the needs of people and how they interact—or could interact better—with your organization.
In an orchestra, you have many instruments playing in concert with one another. The conductor determines (working from sheet music) which kinds of instruments will help bring the piece to life. What does each instrument need to play? When do they play solo? Where do they harmonize with other instruments?