Explore every episode of the podcast Conversations with Masters: How to Better Understand Your Customers

Hear why empathy is crucial in customer journey research. Listen how expanding data – qualitative and quantitative – helps avoid segment bias and gain a comprehensive customer journey view. Listen why aligning customer journey insights with business impact objectives is the perfect recipe for baking the “gift-that-keeps-on-giving”.

Hear why exploring the triad of impacts – business, financial, and personal, is imperative to discern the personal ramifications for stakeholders when business and financial objectives align. Listen how acknowledging personal impact in customer journey mapping and research can transform business influencers into proactive champions, driving investment in research and actionable results. Learn how new companies can pinpoint and leverage customer experience gaps to sway consumers towards their products and services.

Hear what sets customers apart on their buying journeys. Listen how you can better understand your more “silent” customers. Learn where tailored communication can stand out in crafting customer experiences for distinct audiences, sending relevant messages, and adapting to diverse content consumption preferences.

Hear why benchmarking is indispensable in understanding your customer’s journey in relation to competitors, and discerning the experiences that influence their preferences for one company over another. Listen how decision-makers’ preferences for qualitative or quantitative data can be harmonized: recognizing the strengths of both and leveraging a hybrid approach for optimal insights. Learn why it is vital to transform a customer pain point into a tangible financial metric, be it cost leakage or lost revenue, to drive organizational change and action.

Hear what it means to ground the customer experience: a unified framework that fosters the right mechanisms for an effective customer journey. Listen to why it’s important for internal stakeholders to grasp the nuances of “customer experience” and its varied interpretations across different business sectors. Understand when to utilize a “hypothesis setting workshop” as a collaborative approach to identify gaps in customer understanding, successes, and the extent of shared insights across business areas. Learn why research outcomes become more impactful through the lens of customer personas in both B2B and B2C customer journeys, ensuring a cyclical approach.

Hear why it is impossible to have customer-centricity if teams and stakeholders don’t share a unified perspective. Learn how there is no proxy for the customer’s voice; and why it is so crucial to speak with real customers (and prospective customers) when evaluating their journeys with your business. Listen why it is vital to pursue relationship-building with internal stakeholders on the front-end to initiate enthusiasm for the project and to create recognition of their personal impact.

Hear why it’s crucial to align with the business’s objectives before initiating a project to prevent “research silos.” Learn how the customer journey map is an intertwined ecosystem of information rather than a linear thought concept. Listen how journey mapping (when done right) can showcase the correct way to design and build personalized experiences for a customer’s individual situation.

Hear how marketers can initiate positive action in a customer journey project by utilizing AI data to transform “insights” into “foresight.” Learn why managing internal expectations and over-communicating are the pillars of executing a customer journey project successfully. Listen why it is vital for all businesses to have a journey map that highlights their customers’ “”moments of truth”” in their buying journeys.

Hear how customer journey mappers can guide clients on achieving the end business impact that they hope to accomplish. Learn why it is critical for senior leaders to recognize that there is no proxy for the voice-of-the-customer. Listen to what we can do to identify how customers may relate to, and differentiate from, each other.

Hear when evaluating customer journeys, why it is critical to look at both ends of the customer spectrum, from those who bought in and those who did not. Learn how researchers and CX leaders should investigate customer journeys. Listen why expanding the scope of the audience upfront can provide more significant insights into questions and opportunities that are bound to arrive eventually.

Hear what can researchers do to get a deeper level of engagement from internal stakeholders in customer journey mapping projects. Learn why the insights team must have an in-depth understanding of the organization’s mission and its core values prior to investigating the customer journey. Listen to how developing key metrics that track the cadence of research results will benefit the company to a fuller extent in the long term.

Hear why it is vital to investigate what triggers the initiation of the customer journey. Learn how customer loyalty drivers can be uncovered from analyzing their “post-purchase” experiences. Listen to what behavioral techniques (like eye-tracking) can do to help you better understand your customer journeys.

Hear the 3 core elements of customer journey mapping design: clearly understanding the underlying “why” behind the project, “how” it will improve the customer’s experience, and “what” will be its financial impact on the organization. Learn why working closely with internal and external teams is critical to designing journey questions that are unbiased. Listen how you can gain “first mover advantage” by transitioning a partnership from a solely financial transaction to a trusted guide approach.

Hear why it’s essential for insight specialists to focus on the “why” and “how” their customer journey maps will help internal stakeholders in achieving their “business” AND “personal” goals. Listen to how designing a customer journey mapping project for a specific financial impact often leads to an enormous return on investment (ROI). Learn why using a holistic omni-channel research approach when exploring shopper journeys is the key to identifying their hidden purchase triggers.

Hear how business leakages and failures in connecting with customers can be uncovered by embarking on customer journey work. Learn why organizations should never proxy the “voice-of-the-customer” in the journey mapping process. Listen to how research leaders can design the activation of insights to achieve the full benefits of customer journey efforts.

Hear how insights specialists can help their teams stay connected with the voice-of-the-customer. Learn why it’s so important for each research project to be designed for a specific financial impact. Listen to how researchers can guide their organizations to not loose focus during the research planning and execution stages.

Hear how data without insights is just overhead; there must be actionable steps to utilize. Learn how to not fall prey to shiny gizmos but to remain focused on the original business impact that the project was designed for. Listen to why prioritizing key objectives when initiating customer journey mapping is critical to project development.

Hear why a happy employee experience has a positive ripple-effect in the customer’s journey. Learn how to convert a negative moment-of-truth into a peak point that elevates the customer’s experience. Listen to why talking to customers in real-time can provide helpful insights beyond standard data research.

Hear how she measures the impact of marketing at the brand level. Learn the benefits of deep-diving into the customer journey, from initial trigger to purchase, to create a relevant presence at each critical decision step. Listen how the customer journey research often opens various avenues of opportunities, knowledge, and dialogue that foster innovation.

Hear why customer journey mapping, when done right, is often responsible for outcomes that have a measurable impact on the business. Learn how journey mapping can help optimize customer experiences. Listen to what business leaders need to keep in mind when trying to solve their customers journey challenges.

Hear how she uses customer journey mapping and ethnographic research to better understand how consumers are engaging with her brands. Learn the importance of planning and designing every research project for a specific business impact and outcome. Listen to how she guides her internal stakeholders to leverage research in more strategic (and not just tactical) ways.

Hear how he leverages customer journey mapping and research to identify key touch-points that optimize customer experiences and drive business growth. Learn why it’s so important to test and validate internal hypothesis around the customer’s needs and expectations, especially before making key business changes. Listen to the benefits of mapping employee experiences in parallel with customer experiences.

Hear how Michael develops customer personas and evaluates their business journeys. Learn his best practices for increasing the adoption, and implementation, of research recommendations across different internal departments. Listen to why it’s a good idea to always “design-for-success” when planning customer journey mapping and research projects. 

Hear how Brian drove organizational change by focusing on removing key pain-points that were present in the different customer journey stages. Learn how to leverage customer journey mapping to help different departments better understand consumer behaviors and their underlying unmet needs. Listen to the improved customer experiences with innovative changes that he researched and tested rigorously for impact.

Hear how customer journey mapping and how it has helped many direct selling organizations become more “customer-centric”, and achieve hyper-growth. Listen to the important roles that trust, care, and impact play in making a deeper connection with customers. Learn how the end consumer experience can be optimized, and why prioritizing this is so critical for the direct selling industry.

Hear how she uses customer journey mapping and research to validate internal hypothesis and decision making. Listen to how she leverages the gaps between what customers need, and what they are being offered, to strengthen her company’s offerings. Learn how to help leaders better understand how their plans and decisions will impact customers

Hear her own journey in better understanding her customers. Listen how she leveraged journey mapping to optimize customer experiences at the Albuquerque International Sunport. Learn a deep understanding of key customer journey touch-points, and their impact, that prevented her from replacing airport parking attendants with high-tech solutions.

Hear how Billie Jo leveraged journey mapping to help different departments understand the entire customer experience from start-to-finish. Listen to the benefits from incorporating the voice-of-the-customer in each stage of her journey maps. Learn how to drive organizational change by uncovering key customer experience improvements.

Hear about the different techniques and tools that Andy deploys to better understand his customers. Listen to how an evaluation of key customer journey moments led to an incredible innovation that sky-rocketed sales. Learn why it’s so important to keep an open mind when collecting and evaluating customer journey data.

Hear how she uses customer journey data to guide the C-Suite from “insight” to “foresight.” Listen to the innovative methods she has used to bring customer personas to life for the entire organization. She goes deeper by explaining the effectiveness of story-telling and how emotions drive action.

Hear how Erik Vogel, Global Vice President, CX, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is driving change internally while staying focused on the customer’s experience. He explains how his key pillars ensure that all CX improvement efforts are in alignment with customer expectations. Listen to real-world examples of how customer journey mapping and personas can help align and unify different teams to a common goal and vision.

Hear how Jessica Bolger, Head of insights, VOC, Drinkworks, discusses how she maintains a constant pulse of her customers, while generating actionable insights by focusing on the “moments-of-truth” and triggers in the usage stage of her customers’ journeys. Listen to how she mapped key insights for a product that had minimal data (as it had just launched).

Hear Yogesh Chavda shares how he leveraged customer insights during the pandemic to bring advertisers back. He also gives us the “aha” moments customer journey research can uncover even for everyday commodity products, as well as what is “Death-by-Data,” and how you can avoid it.