On-ramps, off-ramps and customer experience ROI: CX Mini Masterclass – E23

This CX Mini Masterclass explains how you can use your customer journey map and understanding of when customers engage or disengage with a brand to demonstrate customer experience ROI. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, will teach you about the power of customer on-ramps and off-ramps, and how you can use these to develop the business case for customer experience management.

The circular journey

At the end of the day consumers have many ongoing needs in their lives. Whether that’s putting food on the table or managing their finances, these needs don’t go away. The more journeys I map, the more I believe that most of our needs are ongoing in some way. That’s why I have become a proponent of circular maps as a way of visualizing the nature of experiences around these continual needs.

One of the added benefits of circular maps is that you can use them to easily show where a consumer decides to engage or disengage with a specific brand. I call these “on-ramps” and “off-ramps”. They represent opportunities to potentially gain or lose customers.

Connection to customer experience ROI

In episode 22, I covered Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), and defined this as the monetary value  – often measured in contribution to profit – that is derived from a customer during the course of that customer’s relationship with the company or organization. Anytime a customer engages with a brand or takes an on-ramp, there is a financial upside, and each time a customer decides to disengage with a brand, the business takes a financial hit. This creates a way to overlay ROI onto the customer journey, and it should make your executive team’s ears perk up.

Using on-ramps and off-ramps

You can use your understanding of on-ramps and off-ramps to build the business case for change:

• Off-ramps – show how many customers leave because of a specific experience or series of experiences, and what this disengagement costs the business. This will help you motivate for fixing pain points along the journey, and give you a framework to evaluate the impact after the fact.
• On-ramps – use your journey map to show when, where and why customers are likely start engaging with your brand during their customer journey, and what these new customers are potentially worth to the business. This will help you motivate for investing in engaging experiences that will attract and retain customers.

This view of on-ramps and off-ramps can help organizations evaluate the impact of business decisions so they can prioritize those which that minimize the risk of losing customers and maximize the potential of gaining new customers. This is also a great way to show the value of the journey map as a way to put your map to good use.

More ways to calculate the ROI of customer experience

If you want to delve deeper into the topic of CX ROI calculations, including an overview of popular methodologies and expert guidance on how to pick the right approach, be sure to check out my Ultimate Guide to the ROI of Customer Experience.

Want to keep learning about CX?

If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.

Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services  (including journey mapping, CX strategy development, experience innovation, leadership workshops and CX ROI measurement) or get in touch via email.