Update (April 2017): A new version of the Customer Experience Strategy Canvas has been released. You can find details of Version 2 here.

About a month ago I had a conversation with a Customer Experience Director I had just met at a corporate lunch. She asked me if I had a good one-page template for helping define and document a company’s customer experience strategy, as she couldn’t find one. My initial response was “Yes, of course I do” as I use a number of good frameworks myself to help my clients define their strategy.

However, when I got back to my office and reviewed these frameworks I realised that whilst they helped define various components needed in a strategy they weren’t actually great for helping a company document its customer experience strategy in a way that made sense and was clear to everyone.

I did some more research online and realised that there wasn’t actually anything I could find that fulfilled the need to define a thorough customer experience strategy easily and in an understandable way.

I thus decided I needed to create my own way to capture any company's customer experience strategy in one page and thus the Customer Experience Strategy Canvas v0.1 was born*!

See below for a detailed explanation of the Canvas, and click here for a downloadable version.

Aim Of The Canvas

The aim of this canvas is to help any company define its customer experience strategy in a way that is thorough but also easy to understand and share.

What Are Its Parts

The Canvas consists of a number of different sections, with multiple blocks in each area.

1. The Canvas is split into Pre-Sales on the left of the canvas, and Post-Sales on the right of the Canvas. In some cases similar blocks appear on each side, and in some cases they are different.

2. At the centre of the Canvas is the Customer section. The blocks in this section help define the experience your customer is after, including

Who your customer is
Their Needs (pre and post-sales)
Key Activities - Key Activities undertaken by the customer (once again pre and post sales)
Interaction Preferences (how they like to deal with your company)

3. The outside of the canvas consists of the Business section. In this section, you define how the business provides the customer experience through the following sections

Goals – Your company goals in relation to customer experience (split pre and post sales)
Culture – The culture applied in the company to reflect and promote the desired customer experience
Key Activities - Key customer focussed activities undertaken by the business (split pre and post sales)
Channels – The pre and post sales customer channels that the business will support (pre and post sales)
Metrics – The key customer experience metrics for the company (pre and post sales)
Sales Model – The principles you will incorporate into the experience of selling to your customers
Service Model – The principles behind the way you will address customer questions, issues and complaints
Awareness / Engagement Plan – The way you will engage and make customers aware of your business and product / services (pre-sales)
Retention Plan – The customer experience you will put in place to retain customers and their loyalty

How Do You Complete It?

The best (and really only) way to complete the Canvas is to start at the centre and move outwards. It is important to define the customer view of the world first, and then define how the business will deliver that experience. The diagram below shows the order of completion for the sections in the Canvas.

An Example

To help illustrate how to use the Canvas below is a completed example for a fictional company, FurnCo, and company that sells furniture through their website and some retail outlets. Hopefully this gives you some inspiration in using the Canvas for yourself.

What's Next?

This is the first version of the Canvas and I plan to improve it based on feedback and usage in the wild as time goes along. Any feedback you may have in how it could be improved would be greatly appreciated.

For a downloadable version of the Canvas, click here.

* - In building this Canvas I took inspiration from a number of other Canvas and specifically the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya along with the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder. There are also a number of other easy to use Canvas available online depending on your specific need.