Omni Core · Customer Journey Mapping · Module
Channel handovers
What happens when a customer moves between channels or functions — where context is lost and where the experience most often fails.
The idea
How it works
Within a function the experience is usually competent. Between functions the customer explains themselves again, and repeated explanation is the single most reliably cited source of frustration in service research.
Handovers follow organisational boundaries, which means the fix is usually organisational rather than technical. A system that passes context is useless if the receiving team does not read it.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Count the handovers
Every point where the customer moves between people, teams or channels. The count predicts the effort they experience.
- 02
Record what is lost at each
Context, history, commitments made. What the receiving side does not know is what the customer has to repeat.
- 03
Check whether context is actually read
Passing information and using it are different. Ask the receiving side what they saw.
- 04
Remove handovers before improving them
A handover that does not happen cannot fail. Removing one is usually cheaper than making it work.
One level in
The components of channel handovers
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The context loss
What the receiving side does not know, and what the customer therefore repeats.
Learn
A handover that does not happen cannot fail. Removing one is usually cheaper than making it work.
The other modules in customer journey mapping
Mapping the journey
What the customer actually experiences, in order, from their side — including the waiting, the repetition and the parts the organisation never sees.
LearnMoments that matter
The few points that disproportionately determine how the whole is remembered, identified rather than assumed.
LearnRedesign
Changing the journey deliberately, with the internal changes that requires — the half that makes mapping worth doing.
Learn