Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
An emotional journey can graphically visualize how a positive or negative customer perceives
each single touchpoint. Likewise, a dramatic arc can represent how much tension a customer
experiences at each touchpoint. A swimlane diagram can exemplify on which communication
or distribution channel (e.g. company website, social media, face-2-face, shop, etc.) each
touchpoint takes place.
A customer journey map can be quickly done with sticky notes in a workshop setting
together with respective customers or by a design team based on prior customer research.
Typically, ethnographic methods like observation, shadowing and contextual interviews are used
to gather such insights into real customer journeys. Detailed and well-visualized customer
journey maps are usually plotted on A0 paper and can be easily several metres long. Such a map
provides a high-level overview of factors infl uencing the customer experience, which enables a
design team to identify both strength and weaknesses and thus areas and opportunities for
innovation. This structured visual representation makes it possible to compare several customer
experiences in the same visual language, and also facilitates quick and easy comparisons between
a service and its competitors.
Conclusions
Holidays are of superior value for leisure tourists regarding both the temporarily limited time
period per year and the investment of fi nancial resources long before the actual tourism product
is consumed. Hence, tourism products are always a matter of trust and the purchase decision
highly depends on the expectations raised in the pre-service period. These expectations build on
different sources, both directly from tourism companies as well as indirectly from (electronic)
word-of-mouth by other customers. Discrepancies between these sources cause mistrust, while
convergence evokes trust. The congruence of expectations infl uenced by both online reviews
and corporate communications with the actual experiences increasingly becomes the deciding
factor determining the success of tourism products. Great customer experiences and satisfi ed
customers are the best advertisement any brand, product or service can have.
The tourism industry is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. Although they are
confronted with competitive disadvantages, their offer of authentic customer experiences can
lead to positive online reviews. Considering that the purchase decision increasingly depends on
online reviews, such small and medium-sized tourism enterprises can even compete with large
and even multi-national competitors, as competition increasingly depends on customer
experiences and not marketing budgets (Stickdorn and Zehrer 2009). Service design offers an
easy-to-grasp toolset which is also applicable by small enterprises. Such companies should adopt
and incorporate these tools in their daily work and continuously check and iterate their service
concepts from their customer's perspective. An entrepreneurial mindset and motivation is crucial
to apply service design methods on this level. Bigger tourism companies and destinations can
apply service design to better understand their customers, develop tourism products together
with customers and not only for them, and differentiate themselves through unique customer
experiences. The methods help to analyse the whole service ecosystem in which they operate
and thereby identify potential strategic partnerships (Stickdorn and Frischhut 2012).
There are some tourism-specifi c factors which can make or break service design projects
(Sukowski and Amersdorffer 2012):
1
put the customer in the centre of all refl ections;
2
consider everything as a service;
3
increase cooperation and mutual understanding of stakeholders;
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