Evolving How the Customer's Journey Is Managed – Surviving and Thriving in a Federated-Service Environment – Inventory Process

Inventory Process

• “Follow Me Home” visits with key teams that operate the product line
• For every interaction with a system/service on behalf of a customer, record the following data:
  • System/Service Name
  • Business Leader
  • Technical Leader
  • Business Function (List of functions in support of product line)
  • Business Impact (Critical, Supportive, or Redundant)
  • Customer Impact (All Customers, Most Customers, Some Customers, or Few Customers)
  • Approx. Number of Customers Impacted Annually
  • Implementation Profile (Licensed Service, Licensed System, Custom System)
  • Integration Profile (Fully-Accessible, Partially-Accessible, or Inaccessible)
  • Product Dependency (Tightly-Coupled, Loosely-Coupled, Uncoupled)

Inventory Participants

• Product Marketing teams
• Product Customer Care teams
• Product Finance teams
• Product Analyitics subject-matter experts
• Product UX subject-matter experts
• Product Architects
• Product Manageers

Scoring Process

Scoring Participants

• Scoring Process Participants
  • Architects
  • Product Management
• Disposition Review Participants
  • Architects
  • Business Leaders from Inventory
  • Technical Leaders from Inventory
  • Product Management

Rationalization Process

• Based on the Business Function content in the Inventory, formulate a basic state chart of the Customer's Journey with the product line
• Determine required meta-content data required for state transition events
• Determine how cross-service identity will be determined and managed

Example Customer Journey

Example Rationalized Data Structure

{
    "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema#",
    "title": "Customer",
    "description": "A customer object defines the rationalized structure that maps events and data points from across the product line and it's support systems into a single structure.",
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
        "_id": {
            "description": "The unique identifier for this customer object.",
            "type": "object",
            "default": {}
        },
        "platformHeader": {
            "description": "The object where platform-specific meta-data is kept such as schema and API version information.",
            "type": "object",
            "default": {}
        },
        "identity": {
            "description": "The object where the customer's identity keys are kept so that this object can be mapped to any internal or external support systems.",
            "type": "object",
            "default": {}
        },
        "profile": {
            "description": "The object where the customer's profile information is kept for convenience and cross-reference with external and internal systems.",
            "type": "object",
            "default": {}
        },
        "events": {
            "description": "The array of objects where various events from the customer's journey with the product are recorded.  Many of these records would have different structures given that the various events would have originated from distinct systems.",
            "type": "array",
            "default": []
        }
    },
    "required": [ "_id", "platformHeader", "identity", "events" ]
}
                        

Rationalization Participants

• Architects
• Engineering Teams
• Product Management

Integration Process

• Decide on the preferred integration strategy -- Highest-Impact/Least-Complexity First or Lowest-Impact/Highest-Complexity First
• Target the service/system with the best score based on the chosen strategy
• Implement pre-requisiste infrastructure for event collection and propagation
• Test integration infrastructure for busy season load
• Integrate target service/system with integration infrastructure
• Integrate at least one dependent system to consume target system events
• Lather, rinse, repeat until all federated-services are either integrated or retired

Example Integration Infrastructure

Integration Notes

• Integrating products and their support systems in the approach can happen as quickly or slowly as the business desires
• Initially, a single part of the customer's journey should be targeted for integration to ensure the integration infrastructure can handle the throughput of the product

Integration Participants

• Architects
• Engineering Teams
• Product Management

Exploration Process

Connect analytic tools and services to data to...

• Find hotspots where customers abandon product
• Identify when customer's path shifts to support-ladden events
• Help marketing identify and target most profitable customers to acquire
• Help product development prioritize product changes to optimize revenue and expense

Exploration Scenario 1

Exploration Scenario 2

Exploration Scenario 3

Exploration Participants

• Product Marketing
• Customer Care
• Finance
• Architects
• Product Management