Milkymap invented a new operating model

The Milkymap Life Cycle Model

Simply connect the dots

A revolutionary operating model for Customer Centricity

To improve customers’ experience, you need to understand their needs, expectations and behaviour. The translation of that understanding into insights and improvements in organisations is more and more a top priority in boardrooms. Stepping in the customers’ shoes, diving into the world of the customer and looking from an outside-in perspective is the key to becoming more customer-centric. Customer Journey Management as the methodology helps to visualise, analyse and improve customers’ experience.

About five years ago, Customer Journey Management was still out of scope for many organisations. But that has changed dramatically in recent years. Not only commercial organisations but also non-profit organisations in healthcare, education and government have entered a new maturity phase in which Customer Journey Management is increasingly turning from (just) a ‘method’ to the central proposition and even to an organising principle.

However, this also presents new challenges. Because if Customer Journeys are promoted to an organising principle, then (certainly in large organisations) there will soon be many Customer Journeys. All those Journeys also differ significantly in size, scope and complexity. After all, various qualitative and quantitative data are used, measurements are taken multiple times in different channels, and so on. All this means that the maps of all those Customer Journeys – often dozens, sometimes even more than a hundred in an organisation – cannot be adequately compared or prioritised. And because these maps are not mutually congruent, they cannot be used well as a management tool, for example, to improve the overall NPS score. Organisations started to ask Milkymap to find a solution connecting different data sources, give meaning to reports from a Customer Journey perspective, and simplify the CX data modelling in the organisation.

Milkymap has developed the revolutionary Life Cycle Model with twelve unique design principles that function as a framework for all Customer Journeys in the organisation. But this model is also an operating model and serves as a basis for reports because an organisation can attach (measurement) data to it: how many customers use a particular channel, how many complaints occur in which segment, what costs are involved, which are the back-office processes are used and so on. Data also enables the use of dashboards with CX data/operational data/customer conversations, based on which organisations can set priorities, for example, which Customer Journeys do we start with first, which channels have the most impact on the customer experience, which customer processes should we tackle first, etc. In short, data makes it possible to optimise the management of Customer Journeys at the management level. Therefore, it also refers to data-driven Customer Journey Management, Milkymap’s speciality and why organisations want to work with Milkymap.

How does it work? According to Milkymap’s standard, 60 to 80 contact reasons are entered. These are part of different phases, and those phases belong to stages. A stage is, for example, ‘Become a customer, where the ‘Onboarding’ phase contains the contact reasons for which the customer has contact with the organisation, such as ‘I install the product’ or ‘I read the instruction’. By linking customers’ activities in a unique Customer Journey to one contact reason in the Life Cycle Model, it is possible to gain insights. This framework then helps to create understanding and overview. It also enables setting immediate priorities and managing the real-time customer experience.

In recent years, Milkymap has developed and implemented Life Cycle Models for organisations such as a.s.r, APG, ABN AMRO, Vattenfall and KPN. These organisations are pleased with the results: gaining insight, having a future-proof scalable model to become customer-centric and experiencing how easy cross-functional collaboration works.

With the industry standards, Milkymap has, their ambitious team supports organisations at a large scale with the transition to customer-centricity.

Milkymap created and delivers a model that will make every department in an organisation eager to be involved so that they can easily use and experience the power within months. It is an operating model that every department in their organisation can and will use. The model can be managed in the SaaS software of Milkymap, and data connections are available and will be continually developed through /via API’s.

At the beginning of 2023, Milkymap will publish the Life Cycle Model book to share this game-changing way of working with the broader business community. Milkymap’s Life Cycle Model book will be available to corporate leaders, customer experience professionals, organisation designers and anyone with a passion for customer centricity. Not only will the book present readers with a strong (theoretical) background for the model, but it will also offer a guide to the practical application of this new and revolutionary operating model. Milkymap’s Life Cycle Model book will be available to corporate leaders, customer experience professionals, organisation designers and anyone with a passion for customer centricity. Not only will the book present readers with a strong (theoretical) background for the model, but it will also offer a guide to the practical application of this new and revolutionary operating model.

Request a demo here or download the e-book.

For more information or an interview, please contact co-founder Danny Peters at danny.peters@milkymap.com.

Industry standard of the Life Cycle Model of a Telco organisation.

Example of a Customer Journey linked to different stages in the Life Cycle Model.