Streamlining passenger journeys through innovative service design and cross-functional collaboration.
Amtrak faces challenges with siloed journey maps and lack of cohesive customer experience management. The Innovation Team’s Service Design team was in charge of developing a Journey Management Framework, aligning diverse projects for rider (CX) and employee (EX) experiences. Through internal research, stakeholder interviews, and collaborative ideation, the team created a scalable framework and taxonomy. This project aims to improve cross-functional alignment, enhance decision-making capabilities, and a foundation for continuous CX improvement.
Problem
Amtrak's passenger journeys involve multiple teams and departments, resulting in disconnected journey maps stored in isolated SharePoint sites. This fragmentation led to inefficiencies, missed opportunities for improvement, and a lack of holistic understanding of the customer experience. The introduction of Amtrak's first Service Designer by the Innovation Team presented an opportunity to address these issues systematically and create a unified approach to journey management.
Solution
The framework facilitates cross-functional collaboration, improves decision-making processes, and lays the groundwork for continuous CX improvement, enhancing overall passenger satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Things I Can Share
While the world of Service Design and Journey Management has an ethos to be open-sourced, I will restrain the display of final frameworks and visuals of the output. I can, however, share some of the activities and action items I was able to accomplish.
If you want to know more, feel free to reach out to me.
Previous Journey Mapping Inventory
Activities:
- Investigated and collected established journeys other teams were working with
- Reviewed existing documentation and internal investigation on journey status
Outcomes:
- Clarity on stakeholders not previously known
- Understanding of previous CX artifacts and gaps to fill
Create AS-IS Journey Flowchart & Ecosystem
Activities:
- Synthesized insights from all documents and journey maps to ideate on the structure and strategy of holistic journey adoption
- Considered different stakeholders and their use cases when working with the tool
Outcomes:
- Visual arrangement of research data
- Highlighted key players to involve early on for better reception and adoption
Ideate Scalable Journey Management Framework
Activities:
- Several working sessions with Sr. Service Designer to ideate on ideal structure, framework, and taxonomy
- Sessions involved context setting, use cases, strategic future adoption decisions
Outcomes:
- Framework aligns with various CX stakeholders and cross-functional leadership focus
Semi-Structured Validation Workshops
Activities:
- Multiple workshops with CX (eComms) team for hierarchy validation
- Took notes on team concerns and pain points with current journey being used and tools to manage
Outcomes:
- Gathered possible adoption pain points and perceptions
- Identified more key metrics as value proposition for continuous adoption
Experience CoP Shareout
Activities:
- Built out 3 key journeys with the proposed framework as MVP for Experience CoP members
- Inputted insights from other research efforts to showcase the benefits of Journey Management as a practice
Outcomes:
- Key journeys ready to showcase the driving value force that Journey Management can offer for decision making
Takeaways
Embracing Ambiguity
Being on an Innovation team at a company rich in history like Amtrak has allowed me to get comfortable with ambiguity. By asking the right questions
Understanding Project Scope
Everyone does a little bit of everything on the Innovation team, so making sure I understood the landscape and ecosystem before every new project was key in breaking down the problem in my own words. The more I continued to research and learn, the better I’ve gotten at narrowing down the project scope (of course, with a little help from my supervisor!)