A Report on Customer Experience and Journey at Marks and Spencer

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the customer journey at Marks and Spencer, examining the stages from awareness to decision-making. It identifies key customer pain points, including financial, process, support, and productivity issues. The report suggests practical solutions, such as leveraging technology through AI-powered tools like chatbots, providing employee training, and optimizing pricing strategies. It also explores the application of UX and CX theoretical frameworks to improve customer experience, considering touchpoints like social media, company events, and the website. The report emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs, gathering feedback, and integrating efforts across departments to enhance overall satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately offering actionable recommendations for Marks and Spencer to refine its customer-centric approach and improve business outcomes.

ASSESSMENT 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Identification of the pain points of the customer during the customer journey...........................3
Presentation and justification of the suggestions in order to improve the pain points ...............4
Annotations .................................................................................................................................5
Consideration of the UX of individual touchpoints as appropriate.............................................6
Recommendations on the basis of UX and CX theoretical framework ......................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
The customer experience journey defines the overall sum of the interactions that the
customer acquires from the Marks and Spencer, starting to the end, from the discovery of brand
to the purchase and experience after the purchasing. The customer experience journey benefits
the Marks and Spencer in maintaining the understanding, efficiency, loyalty of the brand and the
rate of marketing investment.
MAIN BODY
Stages that the customer travels through on their customer journey to achieve their desired goal
Awareness
The primary goal of the customer life cycle is the phase of self-awareness. The customer can find
the business in many ways such as such they can use the search engine known as Google, other
common ways of exploring are to come across an advertisement of the business or through social
media or word of mouth and getting a referral. All the customers begins with the stage of
awareness. The maximization of awareness can take place by collecting the data which can
simply be done by asking the customer how they came to know about the business and by using
various tactics or methods to gain new customers (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020). The awareness
stage includes the whitepaper, detailed guide, free e-book, practical checklist, educational videos
and the deep articles with contents from the experts
Consideration
At this stage, the consumer has discovered the business and is now gathering the information to
measure the benefits and disadvantages of the offerings. The consumers will utilize the
information on the business website as the important means to decide whether to buy or not. This
will also evaluate the review sites of the consumer, social media or can even contact the business
to gather the answers that they could not get from anywhere else (Jesus, and Alves, 2020). At the
consideration stage, it includes the free webinars, case studies, free samples, specification sheets
and the catalogues as the content can assist in converting a greater number of people from the
consideration to the decision-making stage of the buyer's journey.
Decision
This stage is the final stage of the journey of the customer where the potential consumer come to
the conclusion based on their research. At this stage, the targeted person is retained to the

business and thus it should be used for more promotion. The journey stage questions must be
answered such as what do the consumers encourages about the business, the number of people
involved in the decision-making process, factors influencing the decisions. (Cui, and et. al 2022).
Schematic Diagram of Customer Journey Mapping
Phases 1 2 3 4 5
Activities
performed
Wants to
purchase a
product
Search the
product
After
searching,
clicking on the
first ad
available
Opens the
website
Paying for the
product
Emotions Happy and
excited
Happy
because of
the available
options
Disappointed
because of the
product
Very happy
because of
the
availability of
different
websites
Disappointed
because the
company only
supports
online
payment but
then satisfied
because of the
credit card
option.
Experience Good Good Bad Good Good
Customer
expectation
Easily
available
website,
discount and
the product
Easy to use
website
search engine
and make the
process of
searching
easy.
No
advertisements
in the top
search results
Website with
an intuitive
interface
High quality
products in
the top
category

Identification of the pain points of the customer during the customer journey
The customer pain points can be described as the problems experienced by customers
during their customer journey. The major pain points that affects the operations of a business are
referred to as business pain points. The different types of pain points of a customer are as
follows:
Financial pain points
The financial pain points of a customer refer to the feeling an individual get that they are
being charged too much with respect to a product or a service. The customers face a financial
pain when their expenditure increase due to an increase in the price of the products and services
offered to them (Díaz-Oreiro, and et.al 2019). Therefore, it is essential for the organization to
make sure they provide the products and services to their customers at nominal and reasonable
prices.
Process pain points
Process pain points refers to the road blocks that the customer faces during their customer
journey. These roadblocks affect an organization by creating problems for the customers of the
company as well as the support team of the organization. For instance, many a times the
customer faces issues with refunds and processing of their orders. They have been found
contacting different departments of an organization because of the issues faced by them. This
leads the process pain to the customers.
Support pain points
Support pain points can be described as those problems faced by the customers because
of the existing organizational issues within an organization. The internal issues of an
organization restrict the business from effectively resolving the issues faced by the customers
within the organization (Schrepp, and Thomaschewski, 2019.). These issues are completely
avoidable, however , the customers are forced to face them. Therefore, it is essential for the
organization to enhance their customer support system in order to ensure great customer
satisfaction and experience.
Productivity pain points
Another kind of pain points faced by the customers during their customer journey is the
productivity pain points. The productivity pain points can be explained as the all those pain
points of a customer with respect to the productivity of the workforce of the company. The

customers want to received efficient services from the company and wants to receive an
enhanced outcome for the same.
Presentation and justification of the suggestions in order to improve the pain points
In order to improve and eliminate the pain points faced by the customers of Marks and
Spencer’s, the company should take certain steps, they are:
 First of all, for the purpose of solving the issues faced by the customers with respect to
the support pain points, the Marks and Spencer should help the customers by increasing
the use of technology within the organization by launching certain features on their
website and provide the customer with a specific application (Kim, Rhiu, and Yun,
2020.). The Marks and Spencer should increase the use of artificial intelligence and
provide the customers with chatbots, live chat and co browsing. The use of these tools
will help the company in solving the issues of support pain points within the company.
 For the purpose of solving the issues faced by customers during their customer journey
with respect to the productivity, the Marks and Spencer should provide the employees
with training and development programmes that could help them in increasing the
efficiency and productivity of the employees. The Marks and Spencer should enhance
their business processes through which the time and cost of the company can be reduced
as well as the help the company in enhancing the productivity of employees through
which customer experience can be improved.
 Lastly, in order to solve the issues in relation to the financial pain points of the customers,
the Marks and Spencer’s should take steps through which the cost of products and
services can be reduced within the organization (McColl-Kennedy, and et.al 2019.). The
Marks and Spencer’s should source the raw materials of the company from places from
where the raw material can be acquired at lower prices. This will help the company in
offering the products to the customers at reasonable prices.
 There are times when the data of the consumer that is stored within the organization gets
leak which can create a lot of problems of the customers. Therefore, the organization
should adopt the strategies which could help them in saving the data of the customers
within the company and implementing the use of ethical standards so that they cannot use
the data of the consumers within the company.

Annotations
The present report discusses in detail about how a customer travels their customer
journey. The steps of customer journey include three major steps, namely awareness,
consideration and the decision. Under the first step the customer gets the information about a
particular brand or a product in the market, in the second step, the customer considers the
product, tries to extract the relevant information for the same, compares and contrast the same
product from different brands and lastly, the customer makes a decision whether he wants to
purchase the product or not. The present report also includes several pain points with respect to
the customers of the Marks and Spencer’s. It has been identified that the customers of the Marks
and Spencer faces the issues or pain points with respect to the finances, support, productivity and
process within the organization. In order to improve the same, the present reports include certain
ways through which the problems faced by the customers can be solved. In order to reduce the
issue of finances, the Marks and Spencer should source the raw material from those suppliers
which can provide the raw material to the company at decreased prices.
Similarly, the Marks and Spencer’s should also increase the use of technology in order to
enhance the customer experience within the company and develop different departments which
can help the company in enhancing their support processes within the company (Hoyer, and et.al
2020). Moreover, the present report states that the how CX and UX helps an organization in
increasing their efficiency and productiveness in order to provide the customers with enhanced
and satisfactory services to the company. The current report also discusses about the different
touchpoints of the customers with respect to the Marks ad Spencer’s.
Consideration of the UX of individual touchpoints as appropriate
The individual touch points with reference to the Marks and Spencer’s has been
explained below:
Social Media
Social media is one of the major touch point of the customers of the Marks and
Spencer’s. There are various ads available on the Instagram that the use or the customer comes
across within a day (Knaak, 2019). This influences the customers in visiting the page of the
organization or visiting its app or application in order to checks the products offered.
Company events

The sales and marketing team of the Marks and Spencer’s organizes various events which
help the company in increasing their sales and engaging the audience towards the brand. This
provides the customers with an opportunity to interact with the company in order to make a
purchase.
Website
In order to make a purchase, the customers of the company also visit the website of the
company. This helps the customers into checking out the products on the website and also help
the company in increasing their customer engagement as well as profitability.
Recommendations on the basis of UX and CX theoretical framework
 CX theoretical framework refers to the use of certain tools and techniques in order to
improve the customer experience towards a brand. In order to provide enhanced customer
experience, it is essential for Marks and Spencer to think from the customer’s point of
view and determine their needs (Becker, and Jaakkola, 2020). Then provide them with
such products and services that could help them in careering to the needs of the
customers and collaborate the efforts of different departments in order to provide better
outcome.
 Similarly, the UX framework can be described as a framework that includes all the
aspects of the customer’s experience with the products and services offered by the
company. In order to improve the same, the Marks and Spencer should opt the culture of
taking feedbacks from the customers as well as the internal management of the
organization. The feedbacks will help the company in determining the ways which could
be used to improve the user experience.
CONCLUSION
The above summarized the stages and the pain points of the customer journey,
suggestions for the improvement, granular approach for the consideration to the UX, applying of
the CX and the UX theoretical frameworks on the overall module. The importance of the
customer experience journey is to be in the shoes of the customer while they have an interaction
with the organization using various touchpoints.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Becker, L. and Jaakkola, E., 2020. Customer experience: fundamental premises and implications
for research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(4), pp.630-648.
Hoyer, W.D., and et.al 2020. Transforming the customer experience through new
technologies. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 51, pp.57-71.
McColl-Kennedy, J.R., and et.al 2019. Gaining customer experience insights that
matter. Journal of Service Research, 22(1), pp.8-26.
Kim, Y.M., Rhiu, I. and Yun, M.H., 2020. A systematic review of a virtual reality system from
the perspective of user experience. International Journal of Human–Computer
Interaction, 36(10), pp.893-910.
Díaz-Oreiro, I., and et.al 2019. Standardized questionnaires for user experience evaluation: A
systematic literature review. Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Proceedings, 31(1), p.14.
Schrepp, M. and Thomaschewski, J., 2019. Design and Validation of a Framework for the
Creation of User Experience Questionnaires. International Journal of Interactive
Multimedia & Artificial Intelligence, 5(7).
Cui, X., and et. al 2022. Understanding the omnichannel customer journey: The effect of online
and offline channel interactivity on consumer value co-creation behavior. Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services, 65, p.102869.
Knaak, M., 2019. Innovating the Customer Journey: Implications for Managing the Customer
Experience, Customer-Company Interactions, and Trust (Doctoral dissertation,
Universität St. Gallen).
Jesus, C. and Alves, H., 2020. A customer journey approach. The Routledge Handbook of
Service Research Insights and Ideas. p.344.
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