Our Guide to Customer Journey Mapping

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1 Our Guide to Customer Journey Mapping

2 Our Guides Our guides are here to help you understand a topic or to provide support for a particular task you might already be working on. Inside you ll find lots of information to help you plan and make better decisions. We re not saying we have all the answers but we believe the stuff inside this guide will help get you started. If you think we ve missed anything or you want to join in the debate then please get in touch. Inside you ll find What is Customer Journey Mapping? How can I use it and what are the benefits? How do I build a Customer Journey Map? What will the end result look like? What do I do next? Rules to remember Other things to consider How we can help

3 What is Customer Journey Mapping Customer journey mapping is synonymous with user and customer experience projects. Everyone from design agencies to six sigma consultants are designing journey maps to help them define customer experiences and deliver continual improvement. The role of the journey map is to outline the end-to-end experience a customer will or may already be going through. The map illustrates all the steps a customer takes from first discovery through to when they decide to stay or leave a business. The map will detail all the touch points where a customer interacts with a business, together with information relating to what happened, how they felt and who may have been involved during the journey. Some maps will also show operational elements to highlight what happens behind the scenes. The best and most useful maps are built in a co-creation and collaborative setting where business stakeholders come together with customers to design the journey and to make sure nothing has been missed. Traditionally a customer journey map is designed as a single 1 page visual diagram, but it s worth exploring and experimenting with video and animation to help bring the experience to life. A typical journey map will include: Content Triggers Persona Scenario Highlights Side Steps Senses Channels Capabilities Explanation Identification of why the customer has made contact or been approached A simple day-in-the-life story of the customer involved in the journey. It illustrates what they re trying to achieve, their expectations, demographics, characteristics, values and behaviours A simple graphical or narrative description of the experience from the customer s point of view Otherwise known as hallmarks or differentiators. They Identify ways in which the business will exceed its customers expectations Examples of where a customer might not act as anticipated Outlines how the customer feels. You will want to design experiences that create an emotional connection with the customer. You may want to consider how the customer is feeling before any interaction are they nervous or worried? You may want to include the channels your customer might engage with. Your customer may cross several channels in completing their journey Internal capabilities that are needed to deliver the ideal experience in a real world environment. This may include basic infrastructure or certain skills that your employees need

4 Fig 1.0 An example journey map by Orange (UK) How can I use it? What are the benefits? A quick search on Google and you ll be able to find dozens of colourful, simple, complex, wordy and visually stunning examples of journey mapping. This guide will give you a short overview on how you can go about building your own. Journey maps are traditionally used for two reasons: To design a new product or service experience from the very beginning (concept stage) To design an improved product or service experience as part of a continual improvement initiative or project Benefits of journey mapping: Improve an existing product or service experience Understanding the current experience customers are engaging with. Seeing and hearing for yourself the realties of dealing with your business Being able to highlight where and how you want to differentiate as a business Improving your understanding of customer behaviour, motivation, perception and expectation Improving internal collaboration and alignment by bringing disparate and silo teams together Prioritising where to invest your resources in making changes and improvements

5 How do I build a Customer Journey Map? Building a journey map can be fraught with political and logistical problems. You re likely to meet people who don t understand the benefits or who believe a narrative map rather than a visual one will suffice. You may even have to encourage colleagues to move beyond internal process mapping or those wedded to Microsoft Visio. Follow the steps below and you ll soon be on your way to designing something that will really get people thinking. 1. Build a case Write up an engagement plan outlining the purpose of journey mapping and how it will benefit the wider business. Think about the people you will need help from. Ensure your engagement plan has messages which will appeal to them. Try to anticipate questions they may have and write messages from their perspective. You can probably already imagine the barriers you will face. 2. People finder Map out all the people you need involved in the mapping exercise. Don t make the common mistake of only involving friendly colleagues and those who agree with your way of doing things. You ll need to involve participants from sales, marketing, ordering, fulfilment, customer services and some behind the scenes functions such as HR, IT, commercial and legal. Don t forget to also include customers. Use your engagement plan to start spreading the word and securing support. 3. Research Speak to those in charge of managing, storing and analysing customer data. Ask them to provide you with as much relevant customer verbatim and insight as possible. It s always a good idea to have this to hand during any future workshop. It can help to generate conversation and debate. 4. Build a set of customer personas You will probably already have some form of customer segmentation from which you can start to pull together a customer persona. The persona should outline a typical customer s life and their engagement with your business. Don t forget to include details on their behaviours, likes, dislikes, hopes, aspirations, emotions, expectations as well as their desired outcome from the journey 5. Get interviewing Speak to the people who you identified earlier. Ask them how they see the journey working, not working and what needs improving. This qualitative research will help you create a draft journey which can be used during future design sessions.

6 6. Host a design workshop Invite participants to a design workshop. Put your draft journey on the wall. Ask people what they think. Provoke debate and ask for comments and feedback. Have a set of activities planned out to get people thinking and contributing. Don t forget the fuel you ll need to keep everyone going (fruit, biscuits and chocolate). 6. Stress test, re-fresh and validate After the session share your discoveries with everyone. Update the work taking into account everyone s comments and critique. Keep on validating with participants until everyone is happy. Remember work is often about compromise. Fig 2.0. An example journey mapping workshop What will the end result look like? That s entirely up to you. It depends on the culture of your business. Some colleagues may prefer a visual or narrative journey map whilst others may be open to more experimental formats. The main thing to remember is that customer journey mapping may not be popular with every colleague you come across. Mapping is often something that works for some but not for others. Persevere and you ll have some great maps which can really help visualise the change you want to deliver. Fig 3.0 An example journey map mixing visual and narrative elements

7 A great example by Lego of using visual simplicity to outline a customer s end to end journey. The use of icons helps to ensure the map isn t overly wordy and unnecessarily complicated. Fig 4.0 Lego adopts the simple approach What do I do next? One of the common mistakes in journey mapping is that once the design is complete it sits on a SharePoint site. How you decide to use the map depends on what you ve set out to achieve. If you re designing a new product or service experience you ll need to be involved throughout the product or service lifecycle. You ll need to become an active part of the team in preparing the experience for launch. You will also need to conduct a series of additional tasks such as service prototyping and operational assessments (we ve got lots more about this on our site so don t worry). If you re looking to improve an existing product or service experience you can use the map to drive improvement planning. Improvement teams should be using the map as a vision, highlighting what they re trying to achieve. Rules to Remember Keep it simple Keep everything simple. Don t confuse people with complex language, taxonomy or the over use of adjectives. Sometimes calling a customer journey stage buy rather than discover really helps everyone stay on the same page. Get everyone involved Don t just ask for help from your colleagues and internal allies. Reach out and engage with senior management, data owners, operational managers, front line teams and most importantly customers.

8 Bring it to life Consider new ways of showcasing and sharing your journey map across your business. You don t necessarily have to use a single A3 page. You could even commission a role play theatrical performance or even an animation if budget allows. Keep it alive Continue to update your journey map as things change. Share your updates with everyone that was involved and any new colleagues you come across. Make sure others adopt your work and use it in their improvement planning or design activities. Your design should act as a framework for others and help to accelerate design and improvement work. Keep going No doubt you ve got several other product or service experiences that exist or are about to launch. Get involved in helping other teams. Speak to other stakeholders across the business. Make them aware of what you ve achieved and how you can help them. Other things to consider Operational Readiness Assessments A full live observation assessment of a defined customer experience in real time. How will it work? Who will answer the phone? How do we log an order? Product / Service Walkthrough A theoretical walkthrough of an end-to-end customer experience, acting out internal roles, activities and outcomes. Can it really work? Process Mapping The creation of process maps to design business operations and define business reactions. Do you have a process for managing a customer complaint? How we can help Whether it s advising you on customer journey mapping or designing one, we re the right people for the task. We ve done several of these before and can help you deliver a methodical, robust and valuable journey map that will stoke debate and deliver real value. There s plenty more content on our site but if you want to discuss this or anything else relating to customer experience then please give us a shout. Our details are on the next page.

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