Imagine a customer journey…
Imagine.
I go into a store and a salesperson helpfully shows me the product, but I’m not yet ready to commit. She offers me a great deal, I’m tempted, but I want to check it out on the web. She says “great!” scans the products and prints me of a personal card with a short unique identifier and a unique website URL. I search the competitors, the salesperson was right, she was offering me a really good deal. So I got to their online shop and enter the URL and there is the tailored deal that the salesperson told me about. It has even got her name on it (so I know he’s going to get some credit for the sale). I get through to the checkout screen. I enter my personal details and I’m just about to buy, but I’ve got a question about the terms and conditions so I take a pause in filling out the form. There’s a number on the website and I get through to the call centre. I don’t have broadband so I loose my connection. The voice at the end of the phone knows who I am and where I am up to. I’m ready to commit… but she apologises, she doesn’t have any in stock. I’ll have to wait seven days. But I could pick it up from the store tomorrow if I want (or even a store close to where I work) or I can get the store to deliver if that would be more convenient. I’m delighted. The next day I go to the store and it is waiting to me. The sales person smiles. She didn’t take my money, but she ultimately made the sale and she’ll be rewarded for it.
Fantasy? It shouldn’t be. Thinking in terms of the customer experience and the customer journey is only the first baby step. The giant leap is to get IT bought into it and implement a solution that is not going to cost the earth and take years to (not) deliver.
And that’s where ThoughtWorks comes in. We thrive on getting everybody together and using creative, collaborative and highly visual techniques we quickly get everybody to consensus on the vision we want to move forward on. Because we are an IT company, we understand the opportunities and constraints with technology. But most importantly because we use lean and agile techniques to delivering technical solutions we are responsive to change, flexible with emerging requirements and can focus on getting things done – the baby steps – whilst working towards the giant leap that will win lifetime value for customers. Hmmmm. That’s beginning to sound like marketing blurb.