Alexa Schirtzinger, VP of Product Marketing at Box, shares with us how traditional processes still play a vital role in journey mapping development in partnership with technology. She provides key insights in the most effective ways of achieving maximum lead generation while meeting the needs of customers and gaining buy-in from internal stakeholders.
Read how she and her team effectively manage different aspects of the customer funnel.
Overview:
- Journey Mapping and Collaboration in Organizations
- Prioritizing Key Data Points and Tracking
- Using a Tiger Team to Fix an Issue or Change Direction
- Working with Internal Teams
- Journey Mapping and Metrics
- Technology Used for Customer Journey Mapping
- Cross-Functional Partners and Executive Sponsorships
Journey Mapping and Collaboration in Organizations
Our journey mapping sits in a lot of different places. We’re rearranging our mapping right now because we have several different teams collaborating that share different pieces of the journey and we are constantly adding new tools, more inputs, and getting new access to data.
We’ve structured a tiger team, a group of cross-functional experts brought together to solve a specific problem or critical issue that pulls from various teams and meets every week to map a cohesive customer strategy.
It can be tempting to go down different paths and pursue different data points which tell us much more about the customer than we used to know, but that doesn’t always lead us in the right direction, and it makes it difficult to focus. One of the big dangers of journey mapping is scope creep into too many areas or directions.
Using a Tiger Team to Fix an Issue or Change Direction
If we encounter an issue, it’s critical to find out how fast can you go in a different direction or fix it and constantly reprioritize, not get distracted, and have enough discipline so the work can have an impact.
We are less focused on matters such as correcting something on the website; we have other people who can fix those things. You have to be ruthless about it because all of these journeys are valuable. Our process revolves around narrowing our work to one prospect.
Don’t let the rest of your organization expect you to reinvent the customer journey and then roll it out with a big launch, it’s too complex. To be effective, you have to bite things off into smaller pieces which means you’re more likely to get something more impactful out the door and secure buy-in.
Working with Internal Teams
By being a tiger team, we are naturally cross-functional and it’s helpful because a lot of teams already have buy-in or skin in the game. However, getting approval can be a little tricky because a lot of people have strongly held opinions about which part of the journey we should prioritize and what we want to achieve.
You should always have continuous education going on internally and make sure you have a piece of collateral that captures the customer journey. From there you can disseminate throughout the organization so you’re not operating the funnel in a silo.
Engage every line of business that contributes from product marketing to business analytics, and other lines of business to ensure people are communicating, and on the same page. It’s about having the ability to work together across teams to achieve a single outcome.
It’s essential to keep the emphasis on the customer having a great experience.
Journey Mapping and Metrics
We have two North Star metrics to keep it as simple as possible by securing quality leads and increasing lead volume, and then we look at the leading indicator KPI which is an equally important execution metric. It’s crucial to have a piece of collateral that captures that journey to disseminate through the organization that proves all of the work is connected to itself, and not a bunch of random A/B tests and experiments.
Technology Used for Customer Journey Mapping
We use Google Slides and various tools, but we’re not currently using a dedicated journey mapping tool.
You can do journey mapping without any kind of fancy technology. A lot of the process is thinking through what it should look like, talking to customers, figuring out what’s broken and what’s working, and making sure each team is doing its piece of the funnel, so the work is cohesive and achieves a single outcome.
Cross-Functional Partners and Executive Sponsorships
Our CMO is the executive sponsor, and the rest of our executive team is also aware of the work that’s happening. In terms of working with cross-functional teams, we’re engaging with every team across marketing.
The teams that are most heavily involved are product marketing performance, digital marketing, and the business analytics team which is critical to help us get the data, analyze it correctly, and involve sales and customer success.
About Alexa Schirtzinger, VP of Product Marketing, Box: Alexa leads a team of talented product and solutions marketers, which spans corporate messaging and positioning, product launches, competitive intelligence, and pricing among other responsibilities.
She is an experienced leader with a track record of building and growing marketing teams in high-growth technology companies. Alexa believes in the power of technology to improve the world and in taking time to unplug and enjoy the great outdoors.
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