Case Study: Customer Journey Map - follow up story
Adding operating principles
What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.
This week’s backstory is about using your customer journey map:
What Prompted this Article?
My product’s CX lead glanced at my requirements summary and said, “These requirements do not change the service design.”
What? The requirements are for a change in quoting and pricing of my service. How can a change in the quoting process not affect the service design?
After more discussion, I realized I never required operating principles in the service design. Sales and delivery were negotiating operating principles for every customer.
This meant the set-up fees and expansion fees were different for every customer. This is bad news for a service business that needs to grow—it is inefficient to negotiate unique terms for each customer.
I summarized the benefits of operating principles:
Operating principles empower independent work: teams operate in the same context in terms of customer milestones, expansions, and business risks
Relationships matter: documented principles provide a stable foundation for teams to work together
Controlled customization is best: optimize subject matter expert time by escalating special requests to them
I worked on the operating principles after publishing this article.