Customer Journey Mapping

The Customer Journey Map is central to understanding and optimizing the customer experience.   The purpose of the customer journey map is to visualize the interactions a customer has with a product, service, or organization.  The customer journey map can be used to evaluate smooth and rough spots in the journey, and is powerful when generated in team brainstorming sessions through the end customer's perspective. 

As I have been gearing up on the customer experience assessment approach, I scoured for great examples of what the customer journey map should look like.  I was surprised that there seems to be no standard way to create the journey map.

While everybody seems to agree that the journey should include phases in a customer lifecycle.  What the phases are called vary, and how many there are vary.

Some journey maps call out the interaction or touch points.  Some journey maps take that a step further and also list out the channels supporting each touch point.  Some journey maps ignore those, and instead focus on summarizing the customer activities, motivations, questions, and barriers per phase. 

For the shape of the map, some journey maps are shown as a line that could cycle, while other maps are shown as a circle.  Some maps are jagged lines sketched in pencil. 

We decided to take components of many examples above to come up with our journey map visualization.  In my experience, the critical pieces of information to reflect in a customer journey map include:

1. Qualify which journey the map is meant to represent.  Is the journey for a specific product or service, or is the journey similar across product and service lines?  Who is the "customer" whose perspective was reflected in the journey?  Was the customer an end buyer/user, a partner?  Does the customer represented have preferences that are important?

2. List all interactions the customer has on their journey not only with your organization, but also with your competitors.  This is especially critical to uncover during the discovery/brand awareness phases, as your customer may interact with your competitors in a way your organization currently cannot support.  Remember that from the customer's perspective, they are trying to accomplish something regardless of how you are able or want to deliver the experience.  

3. Identify the channels (i.e. mobile, web, phone, retail location) you have in place to support the interactions.  It is important to understand that one interaction point may result in very different experiences depending upon the channel used to support it. 

4. Identify interactions which may result in a moment of truth, or emotional decision point, that will move the customer to the next phase in the journey. 

5. Apply health measures to each interaction point to understand whether the overall experience the customer has while interacting is consistently good, inconsistent, or consistently bad.

6. Keep the people, processes, and technologies that are the backbone of each interaction as a companion to the journey map.  These should be invisible to the customer on their journey.

The biggest challenge I ran into in creating a compelling and engaging customer journey map is to take a mountain of pertinent information and deliver it in a concise and readable format.    Error on the side of simplicity.   Speaking as one who loves technology, while it pains me to say so, I also recommend sticking with a whiteboard or pen and paper for the initial brainstorming.  Don't get hung up on electronic visualization at first - be sure you can focus on capturing the spirit of the journey.

Customer Experience - More Than Just Hype

I have been working and playing in the technology space as a consultant for over a decade.  I love technology.  I especially love using technology to solve problems - business problems, personnel problems., communication problems - you name it.

I grew up in technology by writing software and one thing I appreciate about technology is the logic of it all.  Things are ordered and make sense in the database, and in code.

Enter customer experience. 

Over the past year, I have been challenged to change my perspective.  Where I used to analyze internal processes to find duplication, redundancy, and inconsistency, I have been asked to rather solve for duplication, redundancy, and inconsistency from the end customer's perspective.  

At first, the vocabulary of the customer experience was uncomfortable to me.  Optimal customer experience as a term felt like a gray, fuzzy, nebulous idea.   Evaluating the customer experience felt like something a sales or marketing manager should do, not something where a technology strategist should be involved. 

However, as I read everything on the topic I can get my hands on and work through Customer Experience Optimization assessments, it all makes sense to me.  It makes sense to me because I am a customer.  I abhor a company who makes it difficult for me to buy from them or use their products or services.  I love a company who lets me quickly accomplish what I set out to do, all while I am wearing my pajamas and sitting in bed because my baby and toddler are finally asleep. 

I am a raving fan of some companies, and a loud critic of others - largely based on a few experiences.  And for me, that engagement style of choice generally involves some combination of technology and people.  I want to use the web/my iPad/my phone to do what I need to do.  However, if I need to call in, I want to talk to a human being who will solve my problem as quickly as possible.  

In the world where customer experience is king, technology should enable a customer and business to connect on the customer's terms, while helping the business understand, track, and anticipate the customer's preferences and goals.  The customer experience trend is about businesses realizing that if their customer experience is not stellar, they cannot compete. 

I think this is an exciting time to be a customer, and an even more very exciting time to be somebody who loves solving business problems with the support of technology.