Effective

Customer
Journey Maps
Journey Maps are a popular and important method in customer and user experience
optimization. Here are some best practices for creating Journey Maps that will be
effective in transforming your customer’s experience.

www.tandemseven.com

What is a Journey Map?

Journey Maps tell the story of your customer’s experience. They identify your
customer’s key interactions with your product or service, including their
motivations, goals, and expectations. Journey Maps visualize what it is like to
be your customer quickly and efficiently.

Why create a Journey Map?

Understand Customer Communicate and Align Create Internal Visibility

Experience Internal Business Units and Accountability
Understand your Customer Experience The Journey Map provides an efficient Map people and processes to
(CX) across touchpoints, channels, and document for communicating and discrete elements of the customer
relationship stages. aligning around the customer’s experience to show what internal
perceptions of the experience. groups are accountable.

Strategize and Activate Measure and Govern Visualize the Future

Identify and prioritize customer Define methods to measure progress Create a future state journey map to
experience (CX) and user experience and govern changes to CX and UX. generate ideas. Then, create a vision
(UX) issues and pinpoint opportunities Use map as a CX dashboard. for the future and make it happen.
to redesign your product or service.

Journey Mapping Process

Here are the high level steps to create a Customer Journey Map.

Define
Define objectives, target customers, and scope of
the journey you wish to understand. Gather existing
quantitative and qualitative data to review.

Research
Observe and listen to your customers in their natural
habitat. Contextual Inquiry provides deep insight
into behaviors, emotions, motivations and
expectations as well as understanding the customer’s
path. Validate with quantitative research.

Personas
Based on the research, create personas that represent
your customer’s key roles. These personas will allow
you to visualize the journey through their eyes.

Journey Map
Facilitate a workshop to review all the research and
map out a hypothesis and/or current state journey
map. Then, follow the same process to create a future
state journey map to show your ideal customer
journey.

Activate
Identify opportunities and problems to fix. Cultivate
recommendations and solutions, then prioritize
them according to customer and business value.
Create a roadmap and assign teams to projects.
Measure your progress and watch your customer
experience improve!

Key Attributes of a Journey Map

From the Customer’s Point Create Journey Across
of View Touchpoints
Customer Journeys are outside in. They are from your Create a holistic view of the Customer Experience by
customer’s perspective, rather than your internal creating a journey across channels (web, mobile,
processes or systems. phone, in store, etc.) and touchpoints (every interaction
they have with your company).

Visualize Customer’s Include Qualitative

Perceptions of the Experience and Quantitative Metrics
Include the actions the customer takes as well as their Use Contextual Inquiry to get deep, qualitative under-
goals, motivations, expections and emotions about the standing of the customer’s journey. Then, validate with
experience. quantitative metrics, like VOC data from your call center,
customer satisfaction surveys, or web analytics.

Incorporate Actionable Tailor Map to Engage

Insights and Metrics Business Stakeholders
Identify key moments that matter, pain points and Include information in your maps that is specific to
opportunities for improvement and innovation. Use business stakeholders, or create multiple maps for each
metrics to measure the health of your customer division. For executives, include Key Performance
experience. Indicators. For other teams, a “behind the scenes” view
helps to tie the customer’s experience to business
processes.

Types of Journey Maps & their Business Value

There are many types of Journey Maps, and each have their purpose.
Here are a few examples and the business value they bring. These types are not
mutually exclusive, different elemetns of each can be combined into one map.

Emotional Journey Channel Map

Retain &
Attract
Customers

Visually illustrate your customer’s A channel map focuses on the interactions

emotions as they interact with your within and across channels, i.e. your
product or service. Focuses on the website, call center, or physical store. Use
emotional satisfaction and triggers that these to help improve consistency and
drive customer loyalty and decision streamline operations across channels.
making. Operational
Efficiency

Front State / Back Stage Service BluePrint

Save Money
Align the internal operational processes & Increase The Service Blueprint portrays the
(back stage) with the customer’s journey Revenue customer’s journey with a service along
(front stage). Highlights internal processes with all the interactions that make that
that may be causing a disconnected or service possible. These can be current
inconsistent customer experience. state, or future state to envision new or
enhanced services.

Customer Lifecycle Heat Map

Innovation &
Differentiation

The customer lifecycle follows the A Heat Map uses color to quickly
customer throughout the phases of highlight and prioritize issues to invest
their relationship with your company. in and fix. This map can be combined
It is high level and can follow the with other maps to provide the
customer over many years. These can necessary background or justification
be useful for marketing and sales to Lead the to address the highlighted issues.
target their efforts. Competition

Anatomy of a Journey Map

Journey Maps can include many elements and can be customized to
fit the needs of your organization. Here are the basic elements of an
example current state map for a frequent business traveler.

Persona Goals
Identify the customer Stages Include the customer’s Actions
embarking on the journey. Organize the journey into goals and expectations. Define what the customer
the major stages. is doing, also include their
interaction points.

Shannon “I travel frequently, so the little things matter.”

Frequent Business Traveler

Research Book Flight Pre-Travel Travel: Board Travel: In Flight

Goals
Find 1 stop flights with
best time and price.
Book quickly and easily. Check in early and Hassle free check-in, bag Have a relaxing and
Expect flight and payment automatically. Receive check and premium flying experience.
preferences to be electronic boarding pass on boarding experience.
remembered. her phone.

Doing

Search for 1 stop flights Select flight on her laptop Receive check-in email. Check in and go through Watch a movie. Pay for
by times and price. and book. Check in online. security. Board flight. food and drinks with my
Compare airlines. Save Send itinerary and receive Boarding pass saved to Gate check bag, no credit card.
options on her phone. confirmation. phone. overhead bin space.

Thinking and Feeling

Impressed
Frustrated
Impressed I’m surprised the movies
The cross-sell Frustrated
Littlewing’s flights are Unsure are free, this personal
Hopeful promotions make the
priced well and the Joining loyalty program Will I find a spot in the monitor and movie
I hope I can find a conve- booking process take
times are convenient. looks like too much effort overhead bin for my bag? system is great.
nient flight at a good too long.
for the reward.
price.

Positive 10
Customer 9
Satisfaction 8
8
Ratings 7
7 6
Neutral 5 5
4
3 3
2
2
Negative 1

Opportunities
Leverage positive
customer reviews to
build brand awareness
and customer loyalty.
Evaluate and optimize the Evaluate ways to increase Conduct deep dive of the Monitor customer
create account, join loyalty incentives for first time first flight experience to experience feedback via
program, and upsell ux on flyers to download app and identify opportunities to social media sources.
the website. join loyalty program. improve travel experience.

Pain Points Moment of Truth

Thoughts and Feelings Opportunities

Include the customer’s thoughts and Identify opportunities for
feelings in the different phases of the
Metrics improvement and innovation, or
Map quantitative data onto the that require more research to
journey to empathize with them.
journey to show the relationship to create a future state journey.
the qualitative information.

Learn how you can create and share journey maps, www.tandemseven.com
personas and more using UX360.

Created by: Katrina Berlin Benco, Principal User Experience Architect Copyright 2015 Tandemseven