Time is linear. Customer journeys are not.

Why we should think in episodes and interaction loops, rather than straight lines and funnels

A balance of art and science

As a service designer, I’m often asked to help map the customer journey of products and services. Most of the time, people want a journey because it’s visual — something they can look at and have a conversation about — especially when it comes to digital products and services.

But I’ve often wondered how useful it really is. While time is linear — it moves in only one direction — we know that no two customers or experiences are the same. They are ever changing with many variables, such as the time of day, how the customer was feeling about the task, the helpfulness of the staff member providing the service, and more.

So if customer journeys aren’t linear, why do we try to map them in a linear fashion? Perhaps because it’s easier to draw straight lines and harder to create something that’s non-linear and digestible.

In my career, I’ve often found that people want a map encompassing the entire customer journey. But one map or artefact can’t do it alone. What we need is many visualisations of experiences and data that combine to build a more dynamic picture of what it might be like to be your customer.

So how do we create tangible, visible and meaningful descriptions of a customer experience?

Under each journey, you’ll find a cluster of touchpoints, a complex series of options. This is similar to a public transport map. Some people take the quickest route to get somewhere, others like the scenic route, but the start and end point are the same.

Funnels aren’t journeys

It may be tempting to map your customer journey using a funnel. But funnels are linear by name and nature. They constrain our view to think sequentially — straight up and down — and most importantly, they focus on the outcome rather than the experience. They’re structured according to our needs, not the customer journey.

To find a better solution, we need to stop doing some things and start doing others when it comes to journey mapping, to try and better understand customers when they don’t behave in predictable, linear ways.

Here are some of the principles I’ve been implementing with my team over the past 12 months.

STOP ✋

Assuming funnel metrics are journeys

Trying to squeeze funnel metrics into a customer journey map is limiting. Metrics measure how well you’re meeting the needs of customers, but a customer journey should be centred around their needs, not your own. Funnels should be used as a lens to view one part of the journey.

Thinking of journeys as linear and time based

Customers don’t all behave the same way. What takes one customer 30 days to achieve, might take another two minutes. Or they may never achieve it, because they don’t want or need to. Some specific interactions may be linear and time based, like a product trial. But the overall journey is unlikely to be.

Wanting to map every possible journey

Customer journeys are ever-changing with an infinite number of possible combinations. Stop trying to map everything and focus on moments that matter (the caveat I have is that you MUST have a hold of your current service at an adequate level).

Mapping for fun

Journey mapping should be created for a purpose — to find pain or friction points and address them with a service transition plan. Don’t create one unless you’ve defined the purpose and the desired outcomes. Whatever you are mapping also needs to be validated by data and customers.

Making journeys pretty artefacts

Unless you have a designer continually reviewing and versioning your map, it’s not a great idea to try and turn it into a static artefact. Even then, it doesn’t really work. What you’re probably looking for is a customer framework based on needs and jobs to be done. That’s often more stable and focused on the customer rather than you. Journey maps need to be living documents.

Relying on journey maps

Journey maps are not the be all and end all of service design. There are many other tools you can use, like service blueprints, empathy mapping, ecosystem maps, storyboarding and simulations, to capture the essence of a customer experience and how it links to your value chain.

START 💫

Defining what words mean

It may sound obvious, but it’s important to start defining what you mean by customer and journey in every conversation. These two words are so overused that everyone has a different understanding of what they mean. If you don’t define them up front, you’ll spend a lot of time going around in circles.

Setting boundaries

Setting boundaries creates a start and stop point for the journey and helps you understand how to measure it. For example, ‘when X need arises, Y task needs completing’ or ‘we know it’s complete when X achieves Y outcome’ and ‘we can validate it using X metric’.

Thinking of journeys as episodes

Start thinking of your customer journeys as episodes. I think of an episode as a section of the experience containing a cluster of related customer activities. Unlike most TV episodes where if you watch them out of order the story doesn’t make sense, each episode must stand on its own. That way, you can skip them if they don’t interest you.

Your service is the culmination of thousands or even millions of human and digital touchpoints. It’s like a big tapestry. There’s no perfect way to get from one end to another — at times there’s order, at times there isn’t (and not always by choice). So stay flexible and design for loops and episodes, rather than straight lines and funnels.

Staff who are creators of the customer journey ultimately need to see themselves as artists weaving a tapestry with their colleagues. If the threads are not joined up thoughtfully, holes will appear.

Creating modular customer frameworks

A framework can create a common language for staff to talk to each other about the customers and journeys they’re working on. It can help them rally around their projects — especially in large and complex companies — and find the team that’s solving the problem related to their episode or loop.

You can find patterns in journeys but each experience is somewhat unique. A framework can be the grid that tries to make sense of all the avenues available.

Frameworks can be as simple as a mindset (I want to feel…) linked to a set of customer actions or goals they want to achieve, with associated tasks and needs to meet each action. Teams can map their projects to the framework and explore problem statements for a collection of needs — helping them collaborate on what can be a complex customer journey.

Understanding your current state at all times

If you don’t know how you currently ship your product or service, you cannot see the impact of changing something in the ecosystem on all the moving parts. Remember, it needs to be accurate and comprehensive, but it doesn’t need to be pretty. A service blueprint or map is a good way to show how everyone works together to deliver the product or service to market.

The best way we’ve found to understand current state is to complete a service blueprint. All teams must come together to build the bigger picture.

A year later, my team and I are now figuring out how to stick to these principles moving forward.

We’re investigating the need for sustainable frameworks that allow everyone to speak a common language, so maps and documents don’t need to be built from scratch.

And we’re realising that focusing on the depth and breadth of customer journeys is something that should be celebrated. 🎉

Perhaps in another year I will be able to support my peers with a number of design tools that reflect the dynamic nature of customer experiences, with a well-established framework that’s extensible and captures the realities of customer behaviour: non-linear, ever-changing and sometimes, completely unpredictable. ✌️