The Value of Customer Journey Mapping

“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” This quote is often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, but while no known source can be found to verify the attribution, it is still highly relevant to customer journey mapping.

One of the best means of showing your customer how much you care is to “walk a mile in their shoes.” Today’s buzzword in knowing your customer is “engagement.” Engagement is far more than measuring likes, clicks, or even transactions. Engagement is properly measured by understanding how customers relate to a product, brand, or company.

Yes, data mining (searches, CTR, transactions, etc.) is a fundamental process for understanding trends and mechanisms in your business and can be easily automated and analyzed. However, to really know a customer requires actually interacting with them in a face-to-face personal engagement, and is critical for the personalization consumers are demanding today.

One of the best processes for such personalized engagement with your customers involves using a tool known as a customer journey map.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is more than just research; it is a story of how various customers engage with your products and business (or brand) over time. And while no two journeys are any more identical than customers are, there are segments that can be represented by individuals to provide insight into various “typical” journeys.

Though regularly used by UX design and marketing departments, they actually work well for sales and operations teams looking for better insight in serving their customers. They can also be used effectively to educate company executives, and other stakeholders, in how the company and its brand are perceived.

Preparing to Map Customer Journeys

UX design processes have multiple tools for tracking, measuring, and analyzing how a product or business interacts with consumers and customers. Some of these should already be in place before creating a customer journey map, and include the next five elements.

First establish the company’s goals for this mapping exercise. What business needs are you attempting to meet? Is this strictly focused on customer satisfaction, or do you intend to measure ROI?

If not already identified, you will need to create user-personas. These are fictional users, but based on real user research as part of the design process. The character, skills, priorities, and goals of this persona are used as key reference points through the journey mapping process.

Next, choose the timeframe (week, month, year, lifetime, etc.) over which you need to map the journey for proper understanding and calibration.

You will also need to research and breakout customer touchpoints. For instance, a customer who uses your product needs to be happy with its result, but the person responsible for paying the bills may not be the user and their needs must be satisfied as well. Customer touchpoints answers the questions of what are your customers doing with your business and how are they doing it?

Most companies use multiple channels (places where customers interact with the business) to market and distribute their products. It is critical that you understand which actions take place in each channel before beginning your customer journey mapping.

Finally, it is good to consider what other influences exist that can alter the customer experience (family, friends, colleagues, social media, etc.)

Creating a Customer Journey Map

Using the previously discussed preparation you are ready to proceed with the next four steps.

• Create an Empathy Map. An empathy map examines how the customer feels during each interaction – you want to concentrate on how the customer feels and thinks as well as what they will say, do, hear, etc. in any given situation.
• Build an affinity diagram. This is done by first brainstorming each concept you’ve identified, and then creating a diagram which ties all these concepts, feelings, etc. together. Grouping ideas in categories and labeling them is the best way to achieve this. You can eliminate concepts which don’t seem to have any impact on customer experience at this stage, too.

• Sketch the customer journey. Processes for this vary depending on preferences and training. Some build a timeline map that brings together the journey over the course of a determined duration. More visual people tend to display ideas in a video or an audio clip. The idea is simply to show the motion of a customer through touchpoints and channels across your time frame and how that customer feels about each interaction on that journey. The map should include the outputs of your empathy map and affinity diagram. For those in need of an existing template to follow, the Interaction Design Foundation provides one free of charge as long as you give them full credit and leave their logo footer on the template.
• Iterate and produce. Then, take your sketches and make them into something useful; keep refining the content and then produce something that is visually appealing and useful to stakeholders, team members, etc. Don’t be afraid to rope in a graphic designer at this stage if you’re not good at making things look awesome.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, a customer journey map benefits many stakeholders throughout the company, so distribute it freely. No only does it help those who will incorporate it into their customer engagements and KPIs, you will usually receive additional feedback that you can use for iteration.

An accurate map is critical, but it doesn’t have to involve massive amounts of manpower or time. With the proper preparation, and a company ideology of hands-on customer engagement targeted at excellence through iterative customer experiences, most journeys can be mapped in less than a day.

Mapping customer journeys is a formalized, documented process of what many companies already do—care passionately about their customers. Formalizing doesn’t replace the customer with data, instead it provides a story that all company employees can understand and identify with.

After all, most everyone loves a great story!