Customer Journey Mapping

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps customers take when they interact with a product, service, or brand. It's a helpful tool for understanding what customers go through during their interactions with a company. By creating a map of the customer's journey, a company can identify pain points, areas for improvement, and opportunities to make things even better for their customers.^[1]

Creating a customer journey map involves gathering information about the customer's experience at each stage of their journey. Begin with understanding the touchpoints, actions, and emotions that customers experience by collecting data through various methods, such as:

• Customer interviews
• Surveys
• Observational studies
• Data analysis from customer feedback, reviews, and social media

Customer journey mapping is an ongoing process that should be done regularly to ensure that a company is meeting the needs and expectations of its customers. How often a company decides to do customer journey mapping might depend on the industry, how complicated the customer experience is, and how fast things change in the market. It's usually a good idea to do customer journey mapping at least once a year or whenever there's a big change in the customer experience. This could happen if the company introduces a new product or service, if customer behavior shifts, or if there's a change in the competition.

The main actor of a customer journey map is the customer persona. This is a made-up version of a typical customer of your service based on what you know about their goals, behaviors, attitudes, and motivations.

By putting yourself in the customer's shoes, you can better understand their needs and pain points and find ways to improve their experience.

In cases where a service caters to multiple customer personas, it may be tempting to include them all in a single customer journey map.

However, this can become overwhelming and make gaining insights into each persona's unique experience difficult. Therefore, it is advisable to create separate journey maps for each persona, allowing for a more tailored approach to improving their experience.

A customer journey map is composed of different phases that represent the stages customers go through when interacting with a product or service. Each phase highlights a specific aspect of the customer experience, such as their thoughts, feelings, and actions, and is crucial in identifying areas where improvements can be made.^[2] To define the phases on a customer journey map, it is necessary to break down the customer's experience into distinct stages that reflect their typical behavior and expectations.

Some common phases that may be included in a customer journey map are:

• Awareness: Customers become aware of a product or service at this stage
• Consideration: During this stage, customers evaluate whether the product or service is suitable for their needs
• Purchase: Customers decide to purchase the product or service
• Onboarding: Customers learn how to use the product or service and get started with it
• Engagement: Customers use the product or service regularly
• Support: Customers may require help or support with the product or service
• Loyalty: Customers become loyal fans of the product or service and may recommend it to others

Defining the phases of a customer journey map requires a comprehensive understanding of the customer's experience, which can be obtained through research, feedback, and data analysis. Once the phases are clearly defined, they can be utilized to guide the design and optimization of the customer experience, ultimately resulting in improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Actions on a customer journey map reflect the specific behaviors, tasks, or interactions that customers undertake during each stage of their journey. These actions can be physical (like clicking a button or filling out a form) or emotional (such as feeling satisfied or frustrated with a product or service).

By mapping out the customer's actions at each phase, businesses can understand how customers engage with their service and identify potential pain points or challenges. This information can then be used to improve the customer experience by developing solutions that address these issues.

For example, during the consideration phase, customers may perform online research, compare various products, read reviews, and seek recommendations. By understanding these actions, businesses can ensure that their product or service is easy to discover online, provide comprehensive and accurate product information, and offer social proof to foster trust and confidence in their brand.

Storyboards in customer journey maps are visual representations of a customer's experience at each stage of their journey. They use illustrations or images to depict the various touchpoints, actions, and emotions that customers encounter throughout their journey. In doing so, they provide a clear and engaging way to convey the customer experience, which can help generate buy-in for customer-centric initiatives and foster a deeper understanding of the customer's perspective.

What makes storyboards so effective? People enjoy listening to stories, and storyboards are a wonderful tool to evoke empathy toward other people’s experiences, making it easier to relate to their needs and desires.^[3]

While the focus of storyboards should be on the content rather than the quality of the artwork, polished and professional-looking illustrations may be appropriate for high-level presentations or stakeholder meetings.

Emotions are a fundamental part of the customer experience. Understanding how customers feel at each stage of their journey can help us understand their needs, motivations, and pain points. These emotions can be positive, negative, or neutral, and they can significantly impact the overall customer experience.

The most common factors that might influence the emotions of customers include:

• Interaction with service employees
• Service quality
• Service design
• External factors like the time of day, weather, or the customer's personal circumstances

The emotional journey is depicted on a customer journey map as a single line that spans across the different phases, representing the highs and lows of the customer's experience.

Emotional journeys help businesses not only to identify potential pain points but also to show areas where the service meets the needs of customers effectively. To capitalize on this positive experience, the company could consider introducing new features that further motivate users, which can increase user engagement and loyalty. This, in turn, can lead to improved user retention and positive reviews.

Channels on a customer journey map refer to the various touchpoints or mediums through which customers interact with a product or service at each stage of their journey.

Some common channels that can be included on a customer journey map are:

• Website: An interaction between customers and a business's website, including browsing, searching, and completing forms
• Social media: An interaction between customers and a business's social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram
• Email: An interaction between customers and a business's email campaigns, including newsletters, promotions, or transactional emails
• In-person interactions: An interaction between customers and a business's physical location, such as a store or office
• Phone: An interaction between customers and a business's call center or customer service representatives
• Mobile: An interaction between customers and a business's mobile app or website
• Advertising: An interaction between customers and a business's advertising campaigns, such as online ads or billboards
• Customer support: various support options like in-app help centers, email, phone support, or live chat to assist customers with their queries or issues

By mapping out the customer journey across all these channels, businesses can understand the customer experience better and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Stakeholders are individuals or groups who have an interest or stake in the customer journey and its outcomes. This includes both internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders may include employees from different departments within the company, such as:

• Customer service
• Marketing
• Sales
• Product development
• Operations

Their role is to collaborate and share insights to improve the customer experience at each stage of the journey. External stakeholders may include:

• Customers
• Partners
• Suppliers
• Regulatory agencies

Their role is to provide feedback and insights to the company about the customer journey and their experience with the service, as well as to hold the company accountable for providing a high-quality experience.

Overall, the role of stakeholders on a CJM is to work together to improve the customer experience, identify pain points, and find opportunities to improve and innovate the service. Knowing the stakeholders helps you identify potential key participants that should be included in the research, prototyping, and implementation stages.

Backstage processes on a customer journey map are the processes that occur behind the scenes of a service that customers may not be aware of but are crucial to delivering a high-quality experience. Employees or automated systems often carry out these processes to ensure the service is delivered efficiently and effectively. Examples of backstage processes may include:

• Order processing: Tasks such as inventory management, order fulfillment, and shipping
• Customer service: Handling customer inquiries and complaints and providing technical support
• Quality control: Monitoring service quality, identifying areas for improvement, and implementing changes
• Payment processing: Processing payments, issuing refunds, and handling billing inquiries
• Data management: Collecting and analyzing data, managing customer profiles, and using data to improve the service

Mapping backstage processes helps identify areas where improvements can be made to ensure that the service is delivered smoothly and efficiently. It also helps ensure that the service is aligned with the needs and expectations of customers, even if they are not aware of the specific processes that occur behind the scenes.

The "What if?" lane on a customer journey map is a hypothetical lane that considers what could go wrong during the customer journey and how to prevent or address it. It is a useful tool for anticipating potential issues or roadblocks that may arise during the customer journey and brainstorming solutions to address them.

The "What if?" lane can help companies identify and address potential pain points, improve the customer experience, and reduce the risk of negative reviews or customer churn. It can also help anticipate the needs of customers and provide proactive solutions to address any potential issues before they arise.

For example, in the "What if?" lane, a company may consider scenarios such as a customer experiencing a technical issue or having difficulty finding the information they need. By anticipating these scenarios and developing solutions in advance, the company can ensure the customer journey is smooth and seamless, leading to a positive experience and increased customer satisfaction.

Jobs to be done (JTBD) is a framework that focuses on understanding the underlying motivations and needs of customers when they "hire" a product or service to accomplish a specific job or task. JTBD offers several benefits in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs. Firstly, it provides a more prescriptive approach by explicitly defining users' tasks and how they will accomplish them. This specificity allows for a clearer understanding of customer requirements and desired outcomes.

Jobs to be done are typically expressed in a sentence format, highlighting the task users need to perform and providing key contextual information, such as the reasons or locations for performing it. Furthermore, a JTBD description often includes both functional success criteria, which outline the objective and clear requirements for the job to be successful, and emotional success criteria. The emotional criteria may include individual considerations and social factors, such as how users imagine they will be perceived by others.^[4]

For example, consider the JTBD for a user of a ride-sharing service like Uber: "When I need to get to the airport quickly and reliably, I want to hire a ride-sharing service that can pick me up at my location, provide a comfortable and safe ride, and ensure I reach the airport on time."

Combining the JTBD framework with customer journey mapping can help you gain a deeper understanding of customer needs, motivations, and pain points. This understanding enables you to design better experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.