How to build a customer journey map
*being a non-native English speaker, this article may have language mistakes.
Customer Journey Maps can be visually expressed in a wide manner, but all of them are following a base and, on that, you can create more and more, depending which are your needs and can become very complicated. Adam Richardson of Frog Design, writing in Harvard Business Review says:
“A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, or a service, or any combination. The more touchpoints you have, the more complicated — but necessary — such a map becomes. Sometimes customer journey maps are “cradle to grave,” looking at the entire arc of engagement.”
The Must-have components of Customer Journey Maps
- Personas: are visual representations of your key audience or segments. Usually, for better results, they are based both on qualitative and quantitative research.
- Timeline: when you are establishing a timeline that you want to include in your customer journey map, you need to take into consideration two timelines: a finite amount of time (e.g., one week, one month, or one year) or variable phases (e.g., buying process, renewing).
- Emotion: usually, peaks and valleys illustrate what the users are feeling (e.g., anger, happiness, frustration, curiosity, etc.)
- Touchpoints: the interactions and actions of the customer with the product, service, or organization. The complexity of a customer journey map stands in how many touchpoints it has.
- Channels: are representing the location or the context where interactions and action took place.
The process
The customer journey mapping process is based on other tools, as well, this being a shape of different results obtained
1. Review goals: it is essential to establish organizational, service, product goals, and customer journey goals.
2. Gather research: when you decide to go further and use some tools that will help you put head-to-head the information about users, it is mandatory to research them. This research can mean using qualitative or quantitative methods (from surveys to in-depth interviews).
3. Brainstorming around touchpoints and channels: when you refer to touchpoints, you refer to users’ interactions. In this phase, you have a brainstorming session in which you will identify the user’s interactions with your organization, service, or product and the context for them. For example, a touchpoint could be placing an order. The channel associated with it could be placing the order via email or placing it via the website.
4. Build an empathy map. An empathy map is a visual collaboration tool that can help the team to understand better and deeply what the end-user wants and need. The empathy map structure is straightforward, and it is based on reaching how the use is behaving. Through this tool, you can capture one particular user or a group of users.
5. Build an affinity diagram. After you did a lot of brainstorming, you need to gather all your information organized into groups or themes based on their relationships. It is responsible for the affinity diagram, a method used during the design thinking process.
6. Sketch the journey. All the information gathered in the previous stages can be put now in shape. Usually, this sketch is created on a whiteboard (or multiple whiteboards, depending on how complex it is). It is recommended to be sketched on a material that can quickly erase because it will be the moment you will reconsider some things. You will need to erase or modify elements.
7. Refine and digitize. After the sketch is ready and reviewed by the people involved in the whole process, you can start to digitize it. You can use a dedicated tool or a simple Word document or PowerPoint slide to start putting it all together. After that, it is recommended to share the visual representation to the whole people involved in the process, not only (for those from the organization or stakeholders who can interact with the organization, service, or product).
What do you think about customer or user journey maps?
