Fundamental for the constant improvement of the Customer Experience, the Customer Journey Map combines two powerful tools: Storytelling and Visualization, in order to help organizations better understand and address the needs of their customers.
There are several Customer Journey Map templates, depending on the context and business objectives, however there are generally common elements. Below is a guide for you to follow the instructions and use the elements correctly.
How can the Customer Journey Map boost my company’s Customer Experience?
First of all, what is a Customer Journey Map?
Since this is a common question, let’s start with a straightforward answer:
Definition: The Customer Journey Map is an overview of the process that a person goes through to achieve a goal. It is used to understand and meet the needs of customers and their “pains”.
Journey mapping begins by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton. Then, the skeleton is developed with users’ thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative.
Finally, this narrative is condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform design processes.
The Customer Journey combines two powerful tools: Storytelling and Process Visualization
Storytelling and visualization are essential features of the Customer Journey because they are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise, and creates a shared vision.
Fragmented understanding is chronic in organizations where KPIs are assigned and measured by individual department or group, because many organizations never bring the entire experience together from the user’s point of view, that is, they do not usually have a macro view of Customer Experience.
This shared vision is a critical goal of journey mapping because without it, agreement on how to improve the customer experience will never occur.
The Customer Journey Map creates a holistic view of Customer Experience. This process of gathering and visualizing different results in the customer’s interactions with the brand can end up involving those responsible for other areas that were previously uninterested and stimulate conversations and collaborative changes.
Elements of a Customer Journey Map
Zone A: The map header provides constraints for the map, assigning a person (“who”) (1), the scenario to be examined (“what”) (2), and goal that this persona must achieve (3).
Zone B: The heart of the map is where we visualize the experience, usually aligned in “Phases of the journey” (4), “Actions” (5), “Thoughts” (6) and the “Emotional user experience” (7) throughout the journey that can be complemented with quotes or videos from the NPS survey (read about NPS by clicking here).
Zone C: In this area we have the output data (results) that will vary according to the commercial objective that the map offers. Here it is possible to describe points of view, “pains” discovered, opportunities for improvement in the process (8) that we should prioritize, as well as the area or internal responsible(9).
Why do you need a Customer Journey Map for Customer Experience analytics and when should you have one?
Journey maps should always be created to achieve a known business objective. Maps that do not align with a business objective will not result in applicable insights.
The goal could be an external issue, such as learning about a specific person’s buying behaviors, or an internal issue, such as addressing a lack of ownership over certain parts of the customer experience. The potential business objectives that journey mapping can apply to are listed below.
Change the perspective of a company that thinks from the “inside out” to one that thinks from the “outside in”.
Because the map creates a view of the entire customer journey, they become a tool for creating cross-departmental conversations and collaboration.
Journey mapping can be the first step in building an organization-wide action plan to invest in Customer Experience, as it helps answer the question, “Where do we start?” Highlighting areas of contact with customers.
Assign key touchpoint owners to internal departments.
Often, areas of inconsistencies and failures in the customer journey exist simply because no internal team has been appointed responsible for that process.
The journey map can provide greater clarity so that departments can more easily align when assigning those responsible for improvements at each stage or interaction (touchpoints) in the customer journey.
Target specific customers.
Journey maps help teams focus on specific people or customers, so that means understanding differences or similarities in various people’s journeys, prioritizing a “high-value” persona, or exploring ways to target a new type of customer.
Understand the quantitative data.
If you’re aware, through analytics or other quantitative data, that something specific is happening – perhaps online sales are leveling off or an online tool is being underutilized – journey mapping can help you figure out the whys.
However, do not limit yourself to analyzing only the digital environment. If you have a physical store, it is essential to analyze your Customer Experience data as well.
Key elements of Customer Journey Maps for your Customer Experience
While journey maps can (and should) come in a wide variety of forms, some elements often repeat:
Point of view.
First of all, choose the “actor” of the story. Whose Buying Journey is it? For example, a university might choose students or faculty members, which would result in very different journeys. The “actors” are usually the personas of your business, they are those who experience your company’s Customer Experience.
As a guideline, when creating a Customer Journey Map, use one point of view per map to provide a strong and clear narrative of your entire Customer Experience.
Scenario.
Next, determine the specific experience to map. This could be an existing journey, where the mapping will uncover positive and negative moments within that current experience, or an “to be” experience, where the mapper is designing a journey to a product or service that doesn’t exist yet.
Make sure to clarify the user’s goal during this Customer Experience. Journey mapping is best in scenarios that describe a sequence of events, such as purchase behavior or taking a trip.
Actions, mindsets and emotions.
The heart of a customer journey map narrative is what the user is doing, thinking, and feeling during the journey. These data points should be based on qualitative research, such as the Likes and Dislikes of the SoluCX survey or the NPS open-ended question.
Touchpoints and channels.
The mapping should align touchpoints (moments when the actor on the map actually interacts with the company) and channels (methods of communication or service delivery, such as the website or the physical store) with the user’s goals and actions. These elements deserve special emphasis because they’re where brands often discover inconsistencies and disconnected experiences.
Insights and accountability.
The goal of the customer journey mapping process is to uncover gaps in the user experience (which are particularly common in omnichannel journeys) and then take action to optimize the experience. Information and accountability are critical elements that are often overlooked.
Any information that arises from the journey mapping must be explicitly listed. If politically possible, also assign responsibility to different parts of the journey map, so that it is clear who is responsible for which aspect of the customer journey.
Without an owner, no one has the responsibility or empowerment to change anything.
Even with all of the critical elements listed above, two customer journey maps may look completely different, but both are perfectly suited to the context in which they were designed.
Obligations in scope, focus, and breadth versus depth are necessary when deciding which elements to include. To make informed decisions about these trade-offs, consider the following:
- What level of detail is needed to tell the full story?
- What elements (such as equipment, channel, content encountered) are also needed to provide the truest narrative?
- Is the purpose of this customer journey map to diagnose problems with your current Customer Experience or to design a new experience?
- What is the balance between external actions (on the client side) and internal actions (on the organization side)?
- Who will use this Customer Journey Map?
Rules for creating a successful Customer Journey Map
Successful customer journey maps require more than just the inclusion of the “right” elements. Journey mapping should be a collaborative process with well-defined goals built from research.
This requires hard work to keep the process on track for every organization to buy into the idea in order to evangelize the insights the map provides. Below are some tips to ensure that the process gets started and stays in the right direction:
Establish the “why” and the “what.”
First, identify the business objective that the journey map will support. Make sure there are clear answers to the basic key questions before you start the process:
- What is the business objective of this Customer Journey Map?
- Who will use it?
- Who is the Customer (Persona) and what is their experience?
- How will it be shared?
Base it on the truth of your Customer Experience.
Journey maps should result in true narratives, not “fairy tales.” Start by bringing together any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative research process.
While quantitative data can help support, validate, or help convince stakeholders who may see qualitative data as “fuzzy.”
Collaborate with others.
The activity of mapping the customer journey (not the outcome itself) is often the most valuable part of the process, so as to involve others. Therefore, pull back the curtain and invite stakeholders from various groups or departments to be part of compiling the data and building the map.
Don’t jump into the visual early.
The temptation to create an aesthetic graphic or jump into design can lead to beautiful, yet imperfect, journey maps. Make sure your data synthesis is complete and well understood before moving on to creating the visual.
Involve others in the creation of the final product.
Don’t expect everyone to buy into the idea and promote it on your Customer Journey Map simply because you’ve sent a lovely graphic as an email attachment.
Create an interactive document that people can be a part of.
Bring your story into meetings and conversations so that you can foster a narrative that others believe and start referencing.
One idea is to create a journey mapping display room where anyone who isn’t on the direct team can experience the process and the resulting artifacts.
The idea is always to add value by uniting different information and points of view after research and our own opinion, but when we have a perfect description for what we want to explain, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.
The above is a translated reproduction from the Nielsen Norman Group publication, written by Kate Kaplan.
