How telcos are organizing their customer journeys
What we’ve learned from looking at other telcos and at what consultants are recommending
At Swisscom, we are currently organizing our customer journeys into an all-encompassing structure.
To prepare, we’ve researched how other telecommunications are doing this, and how some consulting firms see the topic. For each approach, I’ll quickly share what makes them unique.
Maybe the overview can help you with your own design to structure those customer journeys (and maps) you’re working with.
Telco A
This telco has a straightforward structure for its journeys, following mostly a model customer life-cycle. Since there are three journeys connected to purchasing and installation, there’s a clear focus on customer acquisition.
The simplicity of the structure surely helps with communication.
If you’re wondering about the color-coding: it’s simply an attempt to make the different structures comparable.
Telco B
This telco has a shorter journey structure that mostly follows the same logic. There’s no box for the I use journey because it’s seen as a module.
These modules work in addition to the journeys whenever experiences are used across several micro journeys.
Unique for this approach is that Non-commercial communication is mentioned as a module. While all other telcos have this kind of communication (think order confirmation e-mail), none have raised it to be part of the journey structure.
Telco C
The journey structure of this company is more elaborate than the previous examples. This is also why they’ve introduced groups.
Two things that stand out:
- Apart from the Buy journey, there’s a Buy more journey putting a focus on increasing the average revenue per user from the start of the customer experience
- In addition to the I change journey, this telco has changes that are telco-initiated. To give an example, these could be changes to the telco’s product which requires customers to give up their old and change to a new product — even though they might not want to.
Gartner’s view
Gartner’s view is similar to the telcos above but more generalized. This is because it’s taken from a consulting result that’s not telco-specific per se.
The direct contrast to the telco’s structures shows that telcos seem to lift out specific journeys they want to focus on, e.g. the Moving house journey.
The duplicate Buy group exists due to the original structure being a circular visualization that ‘re-starts’ the buying journey after customers leave.
Bain’s view
Bain’s structure is taken from a telco-specific article, which is reflected in the Connect journey. It mixes in a single group, Service.
Apart from that, there’s nothing special in Bain’s approach and I liked that. It became the basis of our adaptation.
Conclusion
From a customer perspective, these telcos work more or less the same. Thus, the journey structures do differ, but their similarities predominate.
With your own structure, you can and should thus focus on what’s important to your company. If you own only a small share of the market, maybe flesh out the journeys for discovery and purchase. If you expect churn to be your major problem over the next 18 months, make that a top-level journey.
What making a journey visible consequentially means, is that you put money and resources into it. Naturally, this should be chosen wisely, but ultimately can be adjusted.
So as always: find a structure that’s good enough to start, and then start.
This article is about my work at Swisscom and written in my personal capacity.
Thanks go out to my colleague Kirsten, who has substantially contributed to the content.
