UX tools series
The ultimate guide to customer journey mapping
Journey mapping may seem complex, especially if you trying to do it in the group workshop. This article will give you a powerful tool and a simple template, that will help you create insightful journey maps and facilitate like a pro.
Why customer journey mapping?
Journey mapping is one of the most powerful and commonly used tools designed to map/describe how users reach their goals. When we combine storytelling and visualization we immerse ourselves into the client experience. When done properly the value of journey mapping is immense:
Understanding process- journey mapping forces us to think about the experience in a much more structured and holistic way, to define the sequence of events, key stages, and transitions between them.
Building empathy-when you relive customer experience in story format you relive emotions and feel the pain and frustration users felt, this helps you understand their motivation.
Define the pain points- this is absolutely crucial, as each product should make users' lives easier. If you have an understanding of pain you are empowered to improve the experience.
Journey maps variations
Maps take a wide variety of forms depending on context and business goals, some elements are generally included and all the rest is left to wild interpretation.
Many templates are overly decorated and complex, they become curios design deliverables rather than an efficient tool to generate insight.
As-is vs To-be journey maps
The as-is state of a process is the “current” state. It’s how the process operates before we make any changes or improvements. The to-be process, on the other hand, is the future state.
User journey vs Customer journey maps
Structure and approach are identical, the difference lies in persona. Sometimes your user can be a customer, and in other cases, customers are a completely different group of people (eq. in enterprise software).
Journey map vs Service blueprint
Where journey mapping focuses on exposing the end-to-end of your customer’s front stage experience, blueprinting focuses on exposing the surface-to-core of the business that makes up the backstage and behind the scenes of how you deliver and operate, and ties that to the customer’s experience. More on this you can find in “The difference between a journey map and a service blueprint” by Megan Erin Miller and Erik Flowers.
The simpler the template, the easier is to fill it in.
There is no such thing as an ideal journey map template, but you need to start somewhere. This template is a result of long testing and trial of different variations, mapped individually, and on workshops(including remote workshops). It's simple enough so everyone gets it's right away, but has all the core data points you would expect and even slightly more. We will look at how to complete this map step by step. You can download the pdf here.
How to fill in the journey map?
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
In the workshop setting
Journey mapping is a great exercise for design thinking workshop. Best to do it in groups(3–5 participants in each) If you have a larger team and multiple personas, it's great to run them in parallel with multiple smaller groups. Depending on the complexity and knowledge of the journey you should be able to complete the map in 1,5 hr. As for stationaries, grab multiple colors of post-it notes, sharpies, and sticky red dots. Before you start, work with the group to explain the process and make sure all are aligned on why, and how.
Set the stage
Here we defining what we will be mapping, whose journey we will be looking at, and what they trying to achieve. This is crucial, not only to make sure all contributors are clear on the scenario but also to get the output that will be useful for your further design work
Actor — Who is this journey map about? A journey map should only have one singular point of view, a persona that is experiencing it.
Scenario and Goals — Describe the situation and circumstances under which the actor operates, adding more context and clarity. Goals, describe persona expectations, and motivations.
As-is / To-be— Clarify the state of the process.
PS: Even if you introducing a completely new offering that never existed before, my recommendation is not to skip As-is mapping. Insight into current ways of doing stuff, pain points, and habits will help you validate your ideas.
Define the phases
Step 2 — is to define the high-level phases(or stages) of the journey. Defining stages first will save you a lot of time and effort. The easiest way to start is to define the first and last stage and start filling once in-between. Don’t create too many phases, break the journey into meaningful chunks.
Doing
Actions are the actual steps and behaviors that were taken by users in a given phase. Don’t try to be too exhaustive and granular, focus on what is essential in order to transition to the next phase.
Thoughts, Feelings, and emotions
Describe users’ thoughts, questions, and feelings that are closely linked to actions users take. Often separated in other templates, I believe merging them is the right choice. People are often struggling to differentiate themselves. Here I wouldn't suggest spending time on emotional curves that are done more for the visual appeal, rather than any other concrete value.
Touchpoints
Here we want to highlight all digital or physical interactions with other tools, people, or services. I believe high-level coverage of touchpoints is super helpful to better fit in user mental models, identify integration opportunities or inconsistencies in the business offering.
If you worked on an empathy map or VPC transfer your progress
If you filling this in the workshop very likely, you with the group already created an Empathy map or Value proposition canvas. No need to recreate the same content multiple times, and annoy your participants. After you snap a photo of previous deliverables feel free to transfer the progress to the map. The same can be said for affinity mapping, sketches, or questions, you can layer all of them on top of your journey.
Fill in phase after phase
Once you completed the first phase(stage) column, move through all further stages one after another.
Identify the pain points
Give each contributor a few red dots, so they can vote on the map. Pain can be associated both with emotion (like fear of providing personal details) or actions (like manually entering all payments details). That’s why it's better not to create a separate row for pain points. Use red post-its if you need to better describe the pain point.
Soothe the pain with improvement ideas
We come to our last stage. After we identified the pain points, we can start generating ideas on how we can soothe or remove the pain from the journey. Improvement ideas are usually features, services, or integrations that we can enable. Embrace wild ideas, this is a space for innovation.
Better done than perfect
It’s very easy to get lost in disputes over small and irrelevant points. Very often I have seen groups stuck on the first stage, debating and failing to finish the map in the time slot. There is no single perfect journey as various users will have different habits, and approach problems from different angles.
So your role as a facilitator is to keep everyone aligned and focused on 80% of key use cases, not all possible edge cases.
Follow for more, and let me know what other UX tools you would like me to cover further in this series, in the response section.
