Customer Journey Map. What is it? Why Do It?

by | Dec 2, 2020 | Personas & Journey Mapping | 1 comment

A journey map is an important part of creating better customer experiences. I’m glad you are here to learn about what journey mapping is and why it matters to achieve business success. To keep it simple, a journey map is merely a diagram that shows the steps customer(s) go through when interacting with a company. It is common to interact with companies in multiple ways such as shopping online and visiting a retail store. The need for a journey map becomes most important as the number of touchpoints increases and when the customer buying path gets complex. There are many ways to create a journey map. They may look visually different from one organization to another, yet they have a few common components regardless of design.

 

3 Consistent Elements of Every Journey Map:

  1. Personas. Commonly known as specific customer segments. A Journey Map accounts for how target audiences think and feel, their expectations, perceptions, and more.
  2. Touchpoints. Journey maps identify a series of steps that customers go through as they proceed through lifecycle stages and channels. The different phases are often referenced as “LBGUPS,” which stands for Learn, Buy, Get, Use, Pay & Support. If any point is dissatisfying, customers may switch to a competitive brand.
  3. Data. Quantitative and qualitative insights bring the customer to life. it is good to leverage both Internal (i.e. website analytics) and external sources (i.e. social media).

Why Create A Journey Map? 

  1. Enables teams to understand their customers and create desired experiences in support of launches (products, services, websites, etc).
  2. It helps organize information in one place with the ability to identify actionable improvement opportunities.
  3. Enables cross-teams to prioritize decisions together and focus resources on fixing customer pain points.
  4. Serves as a communication tool and effective for employee training. Keeps everyone on the “same page.”
  5. Helps leaders identify operational inefficiencies to ensure employees are spending time on activities that add value for customers.

What a Journey Map Is Not:

Journey mapping is an effective method for understanding your business from a customer’s point of view. On the contrary, it is NOT meant to be designed from internal employee perspectives. Likewise, the end goal of journey mapping is NOT for the sake of creating a pretty document. As Janessa Lantz articulates perfectly, “Every Customer Journey Mapping session should end with clear direction on what is happening next and who is responsible for making that happen. The most value from Customer Journey Mapping is not derived from the Journey Map itself, but from the actions that follow.” 

 

Ways I Can Help You:

  • Teach you  effective techniques and tools  
  • Inform how & when to ask for customer feedback
  • Apply proven tactics to “close the loop.”
  • Measure customer satisfaction, sentiments, and other metrics. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a standard way but not enough alone to get to root causes of customer pain points. 

Check out Stacy Sherman’s Doing CX Right®‬ Podcast Featuring Ian Golding About Customer Journey Mapping and Turning Employees Into Customer Heroes.

Master Your Customer Experience and Service Skills with Stacy Sherman

*All views expressed are Stacys and do not reflect the opinions of or imply the endorsement of employers or other organizations.

1 Comment

  1. Tom Ghoreyeb

    As someone who has practiced this type of investigation with varying terminology around usability investigation for years, it’s good to have standardized labels like “journey-mapping” and “touch-points” articulated. Too often in the past, I have seen narrow business cases written to solve a specific problem or another, without finding commonality in the data, and efficiencies in entire process by zooming out to see the big picture. By providing a standardized articulation of the discovery process, the industry has provided targets for quantifiable value for this type of investigation into solution design and UX. Of course, the true value of a Journey Map is in the efficincies it reveals, but it is a waste of everyone’s time unless you tie it up with clear, evidence-based recommendations linked to business goals.

    Reply

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