Customer Journey Maps: Benefits, Elements and Helpful Links
Note: I struggle with explaining the value of methods that I appreciate.
Classic example of “communication gap”. My background — where my whole working life was already about basing business decisions on understanding people at the receiving end of a service — makes it especially hard for me to see things from the perspective of people who don’t naturally do that.
This is a problem I continuously try to work on.
One of the ways is by continually studying how other people explain what I do (the other thing, of course, should be to practice empathy and put myself in others’ shoes).
These were some of the practical, and practically helpful explanations I’ve seen about Customer Journey Maps.
1. The Top 10 Requirements of Customer Journey Maps
I like how they framed it — as “requirements”.
Highlights (Saved You A Click version)
- Represent your service as how your customer sees it. Technically, a no-brainer — but just don’t be surprised at how necessary this reminder is.
- Do research. Don’t rely on perceptions of internal staff.
- Represent markedly different journeys for different personas.
- Include goals and emotions.
- Include external touchpoints (Touchpoints that the brand/company may not necessarily have control over).
- Highlight “Moments of Truth”: What point in the journey has the potential to taint the entire perception of the experience?
- Measure time: Not something I thought was required; but I’ll keep this in mind from now on. I do get asked this question by clients a lot — especially in the service industry.
- Don’t use Powerpoint: Another interesting thing to explore — perhaps this is why I find it so hard to fit everything into a Keynote slide.
- Include non-customers: He mentioned that this wasn’t a requirement, but I would argue that it is.
- Overlay with other sources of customer data: Again tricky thing to follow if you do your customer journey map on a Keynote slide.
2. Smashing Magazine’s hyperbolic “All You Need To Know About Customer Journey Mapping”
Highlights (Saved You A Click version)
- That the primary benefit of having a customer journey map is to figure out when the experience is “disjointed or painful”: Gaps between devices, departments or channels (as customers move from one step to another)
- And, that the main objective of making one is to “put the customer front and center” in the minds of the organization’s members. Which is why I consider the exercise a failure, if it didn’t actually do that.
- They also note the trickiest part about making a Customer Journey Map: that fortunately or unfortunately, there is no one way of making one. Just that the goal of any format is to make the user’s experience front and center. (Doesn’t seem incredibly actionable, but their emphasis is well-meaning), and that it should contain both statistical and anecdotal evidence.
3.
Contains more of the same as the previous two articles, but with clear, neat journey map samples.
4. When and How To Create Customer Journey Maps
Probably one of my favorite resources: Nielsen Norman Group.
“In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton. Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in in order to create a narrative.”
What I most appreciate about their article is (not only that clear definition in pull quotes above, but) their definition of “zones” that a Customer Journey Map needs to have.
Oftentimes, people will dictate what Customer Journeys need to contain, but explaining it this way shows the role of each element in the total map (Lens, Visualized Experience and Business-based Output — opportunities and ownership).
They also don’t focus on one primary benefit, but a list of five different goals a customer journey map should achieve:
1. Shifting a company’s perspective to outside in: Reiterated by Smashing Magazine, the first objective is to view the company’s service in the eyes of an outsider.
2. Break down silos.
3. Assign ownership.
4. Target specific customers.
5. Understand quantitative data patterns.
Bonus: These slides from Livework studio do an amazing job of communicating the greater context of Customer Journey Maps — by contrasting it (as a Customer Experience deliverable) to the other spheres of experience that a human being “journeys” through.
Next challenge: How to foster prolonged and active buy-in into a customer journey mapping exercise?
