CEM (short for customer experience mapping) has been a popular topic for well over 6 years for big companies interested in understanding a customer’s “relationship” with their services and products. However, small to medium companies have just started to notice the importance of having this incorporated into your business process.

Not to mention startups in the “app zone”, whose breakthrough relies mostly on how early-stage users interact and feel about the product/service they are testing or using. Today, we’re going to take note on 3 elements that can be added to the mix when creating a customer experience map.

The Must Have Elements

An experience map is a detailed visualization of your customer’s journey, the opportunities that rise for both your business and products/services to meet customer needs not only on the spot, but also in the long run, and the guiding principles behind actions and behaviors. Questions that can help you understand the processes behind a user’s action, include:

• What are the top reasons why my customers would need my product or service?
• What are the top benefits for using my product/service?
• How does my product/service integrate in the moment, i.e. offering my customers an improved experience online/offline/both ways?
• Does my product/service integrate in the bigger picture, long-term? Why/Why not? If Yes, then How?
• What are customer behavior or mindset patterns which my product/service can cover or respond to?
• Is my customer acting based on pre-defined principles? What are those? Can these be addressed or integrated in my product/service?
• Is my product/service sustainable? Does it allow a connection/bridge between customer experience and customer satisfaction?

You can find more about the anatomy of a customer experience map here, along with clear examples such as Rail Europe’s CEM process. Now, if you follow the best practices of CEM, you can only get so far. Here’s how to take the entire process one step forward.

#1. Monitoring Customer Satisfaction Across All Channels

Customer satisfaction is a key player in designing products or services that solve problems, create a space for customers to enjoy and use, and trigger customer loyalty in the long run. Nowadays, your social media staff and community managers play a bigger role than in the past. Here’s why: customers are humans and there is a certain emotional link between your service or product and their needs. Sometimes, as providers, we fail to completely deliver and meet expectations. And this is human, as well. That is why as businesses, we need processes and human force to handle the failure.

An angry customer will be more understanding if, for example, someone from your staff will patiently listen to his/her worries, complaints, and offer a win-win solution, in a timely manner. Knowing the key principles behind proper damage control can save your company’s future. These are: responsiveness (speed and time), reaction, damage control, patience, protocols and explanations at hand, problem solving procedures, standard and customized processes, call to action, open door policies.

And learn from other brands’ mistakes (such as Pokemon Go’s fiasco, although they managed to recover, to some extent, according to this article).

#2. Monitoring Feedback

Nothing new here, however many businesses ignore customer feedback. Just having a good survey form on your website and a competent community manager that gathers all feedback from customers isn’t enough to gain valuable insights about your products, features, and services, and the way they impact your customers’ lives.

You shouldn’t collect customer feedback at a superficial level.

Many customers tend to forget, or do not have the time, or simply are not used to leaving feedback and stating their mind. That is why you must always pair up with a third-party service to collect more insights, and put them to better use.

Delighted, a feedback monitoring tool, has become very popular among startups, mid-sized companies and Fortune500 brands. Among these, Uber, PeoplePerHour, Tedx, Slack, and others use it to collect instant feedback and rate their products and services. The tool sends out a message to the users, asking them to rate the brand/product/service on a scale from 1 to 10, in the email body. And then opens an additional web page where the user can explain their pick. Feedback is collected and delivered in real time to the brand’s board. Delightful!

#3. Crunching User Website Data to Understand Online Patterns

The customer experience map is strongly related to your website’s functionality and the user’s activity patterns, not just to the human, personal journey aspect. Ideally, you would want to get to know and understand your audience at a deeper level. Besides having a solid website or channel that runs on usability and responsiveness across all devices/environments, you also need access to data related to the user’s online activity prior or post usage of your product or service. It’s way easier in the case of apps, for e.g., to collect user data right from the app itself, analyze it and report findings strictly related to your product. Google offers the option to export data and stats if your app is in the Google App store.

If your products/services do not come in the form of apps, then your website becomes the first environment to facilitate the contact and interaction between them and the customer. They don’t say a website is a company’s business card, for nothing!

While data extracted from your website may fail to directly address all customer experience segments, it will help in predicting certain behaviors or trends in close relation to your service or product. Pivot tables provide a simplified way to gain first hand access to customer patterns and do not require super advanced knowledge of data analysis. If you are not familiar with PowerPivot there are plenty of online articles like this one.

Takeaways

Come what may, we live in a time where businesses need to walk the extra mile to achieve success. In the business world, there is such thing as “competition”, and the only way to win a top spot is to provide something different, better, more functional, more accurate to your customers.

This means gathering data from the inside (starting with your website user data), analyzing it, finding patterns, building your product based on those patterns to meet customers’ expectations.

Remember that feedback isn’t just “active listening”, as everyone talks about, but also input collection and implementation to meet customer satisfaction. Happy customer experience mapping!

Image source: Pixabay

The cruel fact of life is that nobody can have the entire cake and eat it. You’ll always have paperwork in your in-tray, the car will always need a wash and your kids will always need help with their homework. There will always be something that needs doing.

As demotivating as that may be, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have most of the cake and eat it too. The sooner you accept that you won’t ever get everything done when you’re a Mom and entrepreneur, the quicker you’ll get to the top, achieving true happiness.

As a Mom running your own business, you’ll be constantly juggling your priorities and tasks, trying to find a balance between family life, business commitments and a bit of time for yourself too. Unfortunately for some, the latter often gets neglected, but we’re going to give you some tips on how to find equilibrium, without being overwhelmed, and keep it…

Tip #1. Prioritize

Your first port of call should be to identify the tasks and activities that are essential. That might be making your kid’s packed lunches, answering your emails, spending a chunk of time on projects and taking the dog for a half hour walk. Keep them in mind, and schedule the rest of your day around those essentials that will make the biggest impact upon your life (or will cause the greatest problems if they’re left).

Tip #2. Use Free Services

Starting a mom business is an investment too and with kids and out of work, you are unlikely to have some extra money to spare. Tje good news is, there are lots of free or almost free services to use online:

• Email is free. Here’s how to set up a free Gmail account that also comes with free document management tools, calendar, free webinars (Yotube live and more)
• There are lot of free and almost free hosting options here
• WordPress is free and here’s a good list of free resources to learn to use it
• There are many more marketing resources that will turn useful, so bookmark the page.

Overall, here’s the budget you are looking at.

Tip #3. Divide Your Day

Instead of just tackling each workday as one large block of time, divide it into different types of work. Schedule a bit of time for phone calls, a bit of time for e-mails and a big chunk of time to get projects done.

Your day should be divided into three main categories:

Your Family
Your Work
Yourself.

Identify the essential tasks within those categories, and then spread out your other commitments/rewards between them. This will give you the balance you need to stay happy and on top of things.

Tip #4. Don’t Get Distracted

It’s far too easy to get swayed by things you want to do rather than things you need to do, or working late so that you can finish that project a day early. It seems like a good idea at the time, but you’ll end up mentally exhausted and unable to enjoy that special day off you worked so hard towards. It’s better to have an enjoyable evening off rather than a whole day when you’re tired and rgumpy.

Tip #5. Make Lists

If you do find yourself getting distracted, you need to write down exactly what you should be doing in a list. Remember you are juggling three different priorities, so you’ll need three lists (one for work, one for family, and one for yourself).

Lists needn’t be long, but simply write down your essentials. Tick them off as you complete them, and you’ll find your stress levels fall considerably, and your confidence rises. It’s incredible how much of a boost just writing these things down can give you. Use whatever tools help you to get organized – flash cards, highlighters, a white board, whatever.

Tip #6. Honor Your Schedule

A white lie here and there isn’t going to do any harm. If you’ve planned a baking day with your kids, but a client wants you to work on something that day, tell them you’re already booked with another client instead. The same goes for the other way around – if your kids want you to take them out, when you’ve planned to go to the coffee shop with your friends, make it clear that Mommy needs time for herself too.

Take away all distractions possible when you’re in ‘work mode’ or ‘mommy mode’ too. I.e. turn off your work phone when you’re with the kids, and ban your kids from the office when you’re working.

Try to think of yourself as an office worker rather than someone who is self-employed. When you go out to work you don’t have your kids pestering you, so why should that be okay when you’re working at home? When you leave the office your clients don’t come home with you, so why should you be talking to them when you’re relaxing with your partner? Perspective is important.

Tip #7. Hold Onto Your Sense of Humor

Things are going to get hairy and you will run out of time occasionally. So, when it happens, don’t panic. Laugh it off and catch up – your schedule won’t crumble to pieces if you’re just one day behind!

Image source: justfunnies.com

Even the easiest and most enjoyable job can get stressful at times.

If you take a few minutes to de-stress, however, it will make your job easier to handle, and also will prevent you from suffering the ill effects of continued stress.

Here are 11 stress relievers for inter-office relaxation you can exercise at your desk.

1. Do relaxing exercises while sitting in your chair. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, release it, and concentrate on relaxing your whole body from your toes to your head. This is something you can do on your break, perhaps in the employee lounge or somewhere else other than your desk, so you can put all thoughts of work out of your mind for a few minutes.

2. If your job is particularly stressful, ask your supervisor if you can take shorter but more frequent breaks, instead of one long lunch and two extended breaks. Offer to shorten your lunch hour in exchange for them. The more frequent breaks may leave you feeling more refreshed than long ones. If you get permission, take those opportunities to do a few stretching exercises.

3. Keep a book of short devotionals, jokes, poems, or similar subjects at your desk. Take a few minutes to read one after you have finished one project and before you start on another one.

4. Diversify your snacks. Prepare some healthy, yet delicious snacks that have proven to give you joy. Mine is fruit and berries. I love doing some fun stuff with fruit (salads, smoothies, etc.) and enjoy it as snacks.

BucknBear Knives has a great infographic teaching you cut fruit in various creative ways. Steal the idea!

5. Play “trashcan basketball” by simply wadding up paper and aiming for the wastebasket. Just remember to pick up the ones that missed! You can do this on one of your frequent breaks or on your lunch hour.

6. Ask your supervisor if you can set up a basketball goal for quick lunchtime games during nice weather. In cold weather, ask if you can bring in portable exercise or indoor game equipment and borrow some empty space. If you can’t think of any type of indoor game equipment, remember this: A ping-pong net stretched across a couple of unused tables will work perfectly. Just add paddles, balls, and players.

7. Play trivia games during downtime. Use online or hard copy materials, or the Trivial Pursuit game. Challenge co-workers to compete against you.

8. Work puzzles during downtime. Keep an actual puzzle book at your desk instead of using online puzzles, unless you have received permission to use online resources for this.

9. Take a walk during your lunch break. On nice days, get outside. On the days with bad weather, walk around the different floors. Not only will you be getting exercise, you may even meet new people.

10.Video games (played only on your personal time, of course) can be a great way to clear your mind. Find someone to play a game that requires two people and get a game going during your lunch break.

Teksocial lists some free meditation apps to help relieve stress.

11. If the stress is getting too bad, take advantage of employee-sponsored counseling services. Confidentiality is observed, so nothing you say will get back to anyone.

Don’t be afraid to use de-stressing techniques while at work. Your physical and mental health is more important than any project will ever be. If you’re too stressed to perform at work to your peak capacity, then everyone, yourself included, will be affected.

It is so easy to become frantic when you are in the middle of a busy workday. Even when you are making good time, the sheer amount of items on your to-do list can start to play with your mind. How will you get it all completed in time? How will you keep your energy up? Before you know it, you find yourself lagging and your productivity dropping.

This is something that happens to everyone. For that reason, one of the most common suggestions for productivity is taking frequent breaks through the day. But should we really stop there? Being relaxed through the day will help keep you focused and on track, without the panic.

What you need is to learn the art of relaxed productivity. Luckily, all that takes is a couple of tips.

Hang Out on Social Media

Yes social media can be distracting and you may be rolling eyes seeing it mentioned in the article about productivity but it all depends on how you use it.

Social media is ideal for making connections in the first place that work well for your personal and career growth. Primal has a great guide on using Twitter to build useful relationships. Social media can offer you a few minutes to relax while doing something useful for your personal growth!

Read a Book

Nothing is quite as relaxing as curling up with a good book. Schedule a couple of minutes out of your day every few hours to read a couple of pages. Not only will it calm you down, but it is a great way to find time to tackle that book list.

It’s not easy to find some time for reading but social media driven motivation can help a lot! Try Goodreads – it’s like a reading community that’s always with you!

Go For a Walk

Another favorite of the fitness crowd, walks do more than burn calories. They slow your mind down, release endorphins and improve your mood.

This is a great ace up the sleeve for those especially stressful days.

Sneak In a Workout

You might think that exercise is the last thing you want to do at the office. After all, you don’t want to get sweaty. Well, you don’t have to.

There are some great, simple toning and relaxation inducing exercises that you can find all over the we. Sparkpeople has several dedicated to at-desk workouts, and some that don’t make you sweat at all. YouTube is another good place to search.

Get Quirky With The Furniture

I am a firm believer in the power of an environment to affect someone’s mood, in both a negative and positive way.

When it comes to remaining relaxed and cheerful, having some good furniture can really help. A comfy chair is fine, but why not go with something a bit more energizing and fun? Like a bean bag chair, for example.

Office Depot is great for that, especially with their Office MaxPerks Rewards Program. I use this site to track new deals and programs including the one from Office Depot. It’s very inspiring!

Have a Snack

Hunger is a killer of productivity and calm alike. You should always be prepared with a snack, and not something that comes out of a vending machine.

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins are nuts are perfect to boost your energy and leave you feeling more relaxed and focused.

Try a Breathing Exercise

Calm.com… that is a site everyone should have bookmarked. It has short, medium and long breathing meditations, including tiny ones that last only a few minutes. Y

You would be amazed by how much difference those few minutes will make.

Do you have some tips for relaxed productivity? Let us know in the comments.