6 steps for an Effective Customer Journey Mapping
By Dena Sotoudeh
A user journey map is a visual representation of how a user interacts with your product to achieve their goal. It demonstrates the main stages of the journey from the user’s perspective. The main objective of a user journey map is to unite stakeholders’ effort towards an improved user experience by minimizing or altogether removing their pain points. You can build a user journey map for an existing product or use it to inform the design decisions of a new product.
Here are a few strategies to help you build effective user journey maps:
- Create a data-driven user persona: A user journey map, usually, tells the story of customer/product interaction from the perspective of a specific user. Though it is possible to have multiple perspectives/personas included within the narrative of a user journey, the best practice would be to focus on a distinct user type and build a detailed and data-driven persona around them. Gather as much relevant information as you can about this user. Consider:
- demographic information such as age, gender, education level;
- personal information such as their interests, needs, goals, obstacles;
- technical information such as the type of device they typically use and the amount of time they spent on the web.
2. Build an empathy map for your persona: An empathy map helps you and your team better understand the attitude and behaviors of your selected persona. The four-quadrant map tells you what your user says, thinks, does, and feels as they interact with your product through the various stages of their experience.
3. Map out the main stages: Customer journey maps are organized by customer phases. These stages often represent the main steps the user needs to take in order to complete their goal. A best practice here is to include high level decisions your user needs to make before proceeding to the next step of the journey.
4. Ideate around the pain points: Take a step back and look at your customer journey map from a bird’s eye view. At which stages of the journey, are your customers feeling friction/frustration/pain? Where in the journey, is your product falling short of expectation? Highlight these pain points clearly. A good practice here is to summarize your result in a problem statement such as the following: As — — — — (user persona), I need — — — — — (feature) so that I can do — — — — — (goal). Have your team sit together but work individually to create solutions for the problem statement. Agree on a specific time period, say 15 minutes, and number of solutions per participant. Have everyone draw/write their solutions on sticky notes and post them on a wall/board.
5. Use a prioritization grid: Have your team review and evaluate all solutions before you start voting. A good practice here is to utilize a prioritization grid and focus the discussion on items that have mid-feasibility and value to customers.
6. Continue updating the customer journey map: Remember that this is a living document that must be shared with all the relevant stakeholders. Encourage your team to continue updating it as you collect feedback from your users.
Dena is a product manager based in Canada that focuses on UX and CX Journey Mapping. She has been in the education/training sector for the past 10 years, having spent more than 7 years of it as a digital product manager for blended and online learning solutions.
