For a few months throughout the year, our Membership Database Administrator was dealing with lot of manual data integrations and delays in processing memberships. This caused a lot of problems with data management that directly impacted our team's email marketing campaigns and communication efforts. Issues with data integrations was also negatively impacting our members' experience—specifically when members try to book tickets online and when receiving email updates.
We surfaced these concerns and found it necessary to analyze the details of how data flows within one system to another—starting from when a customer makes a purchase to how we keep them engaged through email marketing strategies.
To identify gaps and pain points in our internal processes from various business perspectives including IT, finance, and membership marketing, each team put their heads together to map out an ecosystem map based on their respective expertise and business needs.
These are the maps from each of the teams:
Previous iteration of map
From the ecosystem maps that each team presented, we were able to gain a shared understanding of gaps in our internal processes and how each system affects another, consequently affecting the work that we each do on a day to day basis. These maps were vital in finding patterns that we considered roadblocks in our respective workflows, which helped push innovative ideas forward in creating solutions to make our work more efficient and ultimately providing a better membership experience.
We were able able to define the negative impacts upon analyzing how each of the systems work with another. These systems discussions helped surface customer and employee pain points, which was eye opening for everyone involved.
I was then able to define direct impacts of these system inefficiencies in 3 focus areas:
01
Customer Impact
Member profiles are not updated in a timely manner, so members cannot book online tickets right after their purchase
Members don't receive email updates in a timely manner, consequently not enjoying member benefits they're entitled to receive
02
Business Impact
Inconsistencies in email list segmentation, affecting the member email lifecycle strategies
Delays in executing email marketing campaigns and regular email communications
03
Impact on Internal Processing
Managing two database systems
Inefficient data processing
Doubling efforts on manual work to keep two database systems in sync
It was then time to test our solution ideas. The next steps were admittedly scrappy that entailed a lot of trial and error in testing more efficient internal workflows.
Throughout all these discussions, my team and I made sure we advocated for our customers. We made sure to emphasize the negative impacts of these system inefficiencies to the overall customer experience of our most loyal members.
Discussions using the ecosystem map were helpful in two noteworthy ways:
01
Customer-centred decision making
These maps helped stakeholders make strategic decisions with customer needs top of mind. Other teams gained a better understanding of how inefficiencies in our technology impacted customer needs that were important in maintaining good customer relationships and meeting marketing KPI's.
02
Defined requirements for technological enhancements
Bringing to light the impact of system inefficiencies on our customers' experience helped teams realize further technological enhancements that needed to be made within our Point of Sale system, which were eventually communicated to our IT team and necessary changes were implemented.
