All right. Let's walk through a simplified example of
this whole thing where maybe the needs we have
for the customer relationships and the channels we use to
deliver them change over the course of the customer journey.
Let's say, I buy a new washing machine.
I decide that I need a new washing machine,
the old one breaks.
And probably, at least I think for me the first thing I would do is go online.
This is me looking at my phone maybe and this is our kind of attention.
Step I do a Google search,
best washing machine or something like that and maybe I read
some blogs by third parties about which washing machine is good.
Maybe I see some material or an ad in that context that engages my interest.
I have this desire to just get this done,
but do a good job so I don't disappoint my wife.
And what happens then?
Probably, at least in my case,
I want to go see these things in person.
I just need to kind of look at- I can get the dimensions, but I want to see it work.
I maybe want to talk to somebody about it so I go to, let's say,
Sears, that's a kind of big box retailer in the United States.
And I ask the sales rep about the washing machine.
This is the sales rep policy,
they have spiky hair and he or she is explaining the washing machine to me.
This is, I would say,
where the action happens,
I don't know why I pluralize that.
Action, where I'm hopefully going to make a decision and buy this washing machine.
And so from a channel's perspective,
what we're seeing here is that this is sort of,
the Web, you know,
maybe third parties or some kind of content strategy is the channel through
which we're delivering this because the relation is a little bit of backward looking.
Honestly it should really go this way,
but the type of relationship we're going to have here is,
I would say, from the standpoint of the person who makes the washing machine interact.
And over here, I would say it is personal service.
Meaning that there is a person involved because that's what happens at the retailer.
And that's what we need here at the action step.
And then let's say I buy one of these,
someone is going to bring it to me and probably install
it and which I think is the case for most people.
And so what kind of relationship would that be?
I would also say personal service or maybe even I kind of
know who's coming so I can arrange a time with them,
which would be dedicated personal service in the sense that,
I know who this person is in advance.
And the channel is sort of authorized
service people who maybe are third party contractors.
And so this third party contractor takes
a washing machine and let's say this is the pipe they deal with.
You know, sorting it out and putting it in and making sure it's tested and okay.
And then what happens for parcel service.
Maybe I can call the manufacturer or maybe there's
even another step somewhere here where I go on the Web to register my washing machine.
So I go back to more of a kind of relationship like this.
But perhaps there's also a call center because we feel
that people have questions and we want to be able to answer them as the manufacturer.
That would be the relationship type.
There would be personal service and the channel would be the manufacturer's call center.
And if we don't really think about this,
if we don't think about it in advance and we don't think about
how we'll test whether this is really working or not,
we can potentially deliver a customer journey.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't work well.
And a bunch of stuff in the canvas that obviously is going to be equally pointless.
So how does this work for Enable Quiz?
Well, the customer relationships they think they're going to
have are dedicated personal service for the large accounts.
There's a typo here.
And for small accounts,
they're just going to sell over the Web.
And this is a hypothesis because Enable Quiz is new
and they haven't reached really the customer creation stage yet let's say.
But that's okay.
Whatever your working idea is get done on the canvas so everybody knows what you're
trying to test and can look at how everything hangs together and whether it makes sense.
Now for promotion, they might use Google AdWords
or we saw them hoping for kind of a viral engine with LinkedIn,
people sharing about the service.
And then for sales,
they will use Direct Sales and maybe sign contracts with
big companies and the smaller accounts will go over the Web.
And then what happens after sales, well,
they're going to use their Internal Support team and they will maybe,
and that's hence the question marks here.
Maybe use LMS Partners or Consultancies.
LMS stands for learning management system.
This is a piece of enterprise software that deals
with the general process of learning and skills management.
And maybe Enable Quzz finds that it works well to go
in with one of these places that's handling sort of
the bigger question of skills management.
And maybe they find some consultancies that have a scope driven business model,
where they go in and help the customers with their overall skills assessment program.
Those are just some hypotheses about
this for Enable Quiz and why they think they might make sense.
And you can see this recorded on the canvas.
We have customer relationships recorded here and channels recorded over here.
What I would do is record these on your canvas and make sure you can link this back to
the customer journeys that you've either tested or at least
kind of hypothesized through storyboarding to see if it makes sense.
Really step through the whole journey and make sure that the customer relationships
that you need are being well serviced by the channels that you select.
Alex CowanFaculty & Batten Fellow
