Editorial
The Gist
- Map mastery. Effective journey maps integrate visual narratives with critical user insights for superior design strategies.
- Empathy engine. Fostering empathy through journey mapping enhances customer relationships and service satisfaction.
- Collaboration catalyst. Journey maps act as bridges, enhancing cross-departmental collaboration and aligning stakeholder goals.
In the landscape of user-centered design, customer journey maps are indispensable tools. First appearing in the mid-1980s, they outline the journey of customers and users as they engage with products or services to accomplish their objectives.
From the first touchpoint to the final interaction, journey maps illuminate the highs, lows, and pivotal moments, fostering a deeper understanding of user behavior and preferences.
User-Centered Design: Elements of a Customer Journey Map
A customer journey map serves as a visual narrative, capturing the essence of experiences through a combination of key elements. At its core, a journey map typically comprises various stages, actions, touchpoints, customer emotions and opportunities for improvement. These elements coalesce to form a comprehensive depiction of the user journey, offering stakeholders a nuanced perspective on user interactions and sentiments.
Each stage of the customer journey map delineates a distinct phase of the customer experience. Within these stages lie user actions, representing pivotal moments of engagement between the user and the product or service. Each action comprises touchpoints to the organization, such as its website or its support staff.
The touchpoints serve as critical junctures where user satisfaction and loyalty are shaped as each one is associated with customer emotions — positive, neutral, negative. By systematically auditing, analyzing and optimizing all touchpoints in a journey map, organizations can incrementally tailor experiences that both effectively enable customers to accomplish their objectives, and at the same time resonate on an emotional level.
Related Article: Nuances, Differences: Service Design vs. Experience Design in Customer Experience
Relevance of Journey Maps
In an era defined by hyper-competition and high customer demands, customer journey maps are invaluable tools for organizations seeking to deliver exceptional user-centered design and experiences. By combining their various elements into one easy to digest artifact, journey maps provide a holistic and comprehensive view.
For example, in a former project of mine, we were mapping the journey of new employees of a company being provisioned with smartphones as part of their onboarding process. Through the journey map a crucial pain point became readily apparent. When the phone order was entered, the new employees received a confirmation email with technical instructions, including a temporary password. Many stages later, this information was required again to set up the phone.
At that point, users couldn’t find that initial email anymore because in the busy first few days and weeks of their new jobs, they received many emails, and that particular email was lost.
Another reason why customer journey maps are relevant regarding user-centered design is that they are highly effective communication tools, serving as catalysts for cross-functional collaboration, bridging silos within organizations and fostering alignment around a shared understanding of customer needs and goals. Because they are easy to understand, they can literally bring stakeholders onto the same page.
In another project we were analyzing the internship program of an organization. The whole flow was lengthy, involving many different departments. Rather than presenting the journey map in a PowerPoint, which would have necessitated several slides, we plotted it out on a large canvas and mounted it on a rollable whiteboard that we took across the building to the various departments involved. That allowed everyone involved to see the whole picture at once, understanding the interconnectedness of its various elements.
Related Article: Are UX and CX One and the Same?
Misconceptions About Journey Maps
What's often said about journey maps that doesn't necessarily ring true?
- Journey maps exhaustively show everything that’s known about the customer experience. This is not accurate. To be effective and provide a holistic view, not all details and nuances can be covered. The example above when we mounted a large plot on a movable whiteboard was the attempt to balance a one-page view experience with sufficient details in the plot. Obviously, this is not a feasible solution when stakeholders are not in the same location. Therefore, it should be acknowledged that journey maps can oversimplify the customer experience.
- Journey maps are means in and of themselves. This is not true. Instead, journey maps are part of a process which implies two things. Number one, they need to be planned. Resources must be made available to do the research and analysis going into the journey maps. Number two, the results must be properly communicated with the right stakeholders, and actions need to be derived. Also, once created and communicated, the journey maps don’t stop being relevant. They need to be referred to, be updated, and be discussed long after their creation.
- Journey maps are artifacts describing sales funnels or marketing strategies designed to drive upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Journey maps actually focus on understanding and improving the customer experience, prioritizing empathy and prioritizing user-centeredness over promotional objectives.
Related Article: Is Your Customer Journey Map Inside Out?
Exploring Different Perspectives
Journey maps can show different perspectives on a canvas. One way to do this is to use the time dimension and show how things are now and how they could be in the future.
A current state customer journey map provides a snapshot of the user's existing journey, offering insights into their current actions, touchpoints and emotions.
In contrast, a future state journey map envisions an idealized user journey, highlighting opportunities for innovation, optimization and an enhanced user experience. It’s important to understand that a future state journey map is hypothesis only. It may be well-informed, but eventually only users can attest to the quality of their experience — not the creators of the journey map.
Furthermore, journey maps can illustrate not just the customer experience, but also the perspective of the organization providing the product or service, thus offering a dual view of service design. This approach, often referred to as a service blueprint, encompasses both the front stage where customer interactions take place and the back stage where internal processes and operations occur.
This perspective basically looks at what is required to provide the customer experience. By mapping both the front and back stages of service delivery, organizations can develop a thorough understanding of the entire service ecosystem. This enables them to pinpoint inefficiencies, streamline processes, and ultimately deliver seamless experiences for both customers and employees.
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Related Article: Surviving the Journey of Customer Journey Mapping
Conclusion
As organizations continue to embrace the principles of user-centered design, customer journey maps will remain indispensable tools, guiding their quest to deliver exceptional experiences in an increasingly competitive landscape. By exploring the flavors and perspectives of journey maps, organizations can unlock new insights, foster innovation, and forge deeper connections with their users, paving the way for sustained business success.
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