This CX Mini Masterclass is the second of a 3-part installment on the topic of the customer journey mapping. Show host and CX expert Julia Ahlfeldt shares practical tips and ideas for how to prepare for journey mapping, including planning what data sources you’ll need and how to structure your mapping team. This episode will help you lay the foundation for a successful journey mapping effort that will yield the best possible outcomes.
Set the stage for customer journey mapping
People often want to dive straight into journey mapping, and that enthusiasm is great, but if you want to get the most out of your journey mapping efforts, it’s best to do a bit of preparation. The good news is that this preparation is fairly straightforward, and needn’t be overwhelming. Here are the steps you need to take to prepare for building a great journey map.
Note that these steps assume that you’ve already decided on the type of journey map that you are looking to create. If you haven’t already done that, be sure to go back and check out episode 18, and the show notes, which will help you clarify which type of map is best suited for your needs. Once you’ve sorted that out, you can roll up your sleeves and get planning.
Identify whose journey you are mapping
Journeys are about the experiences of the end user. You want to create a visualization of experiences from the customer’s perspective, not the company’s. To do this, it’s imperative that you identify a user. This could be a fictional representation of the larger customer base or a particular segment. I suggest making this “customer” real and relate-able by developing a customer persona that will remind you and your mapping team whose journey you are mapping.
Bring in the voice of the customer
Since journey mapping is all about looking at the experiences from the customer’s perspective, it’s important to understand that perspective. Unless you have the luxury of bringing real customers into the mapping process (which is great if you can do it, but uncommon in my experience), you’ll need to incorporate their perspective through some sort of proxy. Usually this takes the form of customer data and insights. Here are some suggestions on data sources that are helpful for establishing the voice of the customer:
- Social media – Great for understanding sentiment, attitudes and motivations throughout the journey
- Previous customer research – Helpful for understanding what customers do/don’t like
- Focus groups – Can help clarify opinions about specific aspects of the journey and what customers are thinking/feeling before and after interactions
- Operational activity data – Clarifies how customers navigate various touchpoints (note that this only works for touchpoints that generate a data trail, so it will rarely give you a full picture, but is helpful nonetheless)
You don’t need all of this data to map the journey, but you do need some form of insight from the customer’s perspective. Ideally, enough to make an empathy map, which will give your team guidance on what customers are thinking and feeling throughout the journey.
Click here to download my empathy map template
If you don’t have enough information to build a basic persona and share some insights about the customer’s perspective, go out and gather it before you dive into mapping, or you’ll end up with a very inward-looking map.
Assemble your journey mapping dream team
Once you have your customer insights, it’s time to think about your collaborators for the journey mapping. You’ll want to work with team members who will help you create the best map and be partners when it comes time to socialize the outputs within your organization, so choose carefully. You will probably want team members with firsthand insight into the customer experience, team members who play a major role in defining and delivering experiences, and team members who will be able to help you drive customer-centric change.
If you have plentiful information about the journey and a concise group of journey mapping collaborators in mind, you might be able to structure your journey mapping efforts as a “sprint” workshop with a small group. Set aside a day or two to create your first draft of the map with this small team. If you would like to engage a large group of collaborators, I suggest developing your map as an iterative process. Think about building your draft map on the wall of a boardroom and then inviting teams to contribute individually over the course of a week or two. Both of these approaches work, but are best suited to different scenarios.\n\nOnce you’ve completed this preparation, you’re ready to move on to the actual mapping process. Check out episode 20 for a step-by-step guide to building your journey map.\n
Transcript
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[Intro music] Welcome to Decoding the Customer, a podcast about customer experience and how to realize customer-centric change in today’s dynamic business world. I’m Julia Ahlfeldt, certified customer experience professional, business advisor, and host of this program. Thanks so much for tuning in. This is episode 19, which is the second in a three-part series on journey mapping that I’m doing during the month of December.
As always, episodes of my show are published each Thursday, and today I’m going to cover some of the pre-mapping considerations that will help you set the stage for creating a great journey map. My previous CX mini masterclass looked into the different types of journey maps and how these are used. It’s imperative to understand what type of map you’re aiming for before you get started, as different kinds of maps serve different purposes. So if you haven’t listened to episode 18 already, I’d encourage you to hit the pause button on this one and quickly go back to episode 18.
It’s well worth a listen if you’re planning to do journey mapping. This episode will cover next steps once you’ve decided what type of map you’re going to make… …but before you actually kick off the mapping process. If you’re busy wrapping presents or shoveling snow off the driveway while you listen to this…
…and hear something that you’d like to remember later, don’t worry about writing it down. You can find an overview of the key concepts we’ve covered today in the show notes for this episode, which are on my website, julia-ahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. Just go to the episodes tab and look for episode 19. And for this episode, as a special holiday gift to you, my listener…
…I’ve included a sample template that will help you prepare for journey mapping that you can download on my website. More details on that in just a bit. People often want to dive straight into journey mapping, and while I love that level of enthusiasm, to make the most of your efforts… …I suggest that you take just a little bit of time to prepare for the process.
Doing so will help ensure that you gather the right information and lay the foundation for how your map will be used after it’s created. And today, I’m going to walk you through just how to do this. So, once you’ve decided on what type of journey map you’re making, whether it’s a life-cycle map, a sub-journey map, or a user experience map… …you need to figure out whose journey you’re actually mapping.
In other words, you need to clarify your end user. And this is what makes a journey map different from a process map. A process map is generic and devoid of an individual’s perspective and emotions. But a journey map should integrate how a user perceives the experience and how they feel along the way.
I suggest doing this by creating a sample persona. A persona is a fictitious character that represents your customer… …and becomes the lens through which you see the journey. The persona could represent a customer segment or maybe even a large swath of your customer base.
But the more specific you make your persona, the easier it is to integrate emotions and specific responses into the journey. Your business definitely has more than one customer type, and I’m not saying that you could make one generalized persona for everyone… …but it’s important to pick one for this journey mapping process. Once you’ve identified your user, it’s time to bring his or her voice into the process.
Do this by gathering data about their experience. This will help you clarify who they are, what need of theirs is the focal point of the map, and what are their experiences as they go about fulfilling this need. The more qualitative voice of customer data you can get, the better. But your data sources need to be tailored for the type of map that you’re creating.
To prepare for life-cycle mapping, you’ll want to gather insights about customer sentiment from a really broad range of experiences. Data from social media or previous customer research projects can be helpful resources for this. To prepare for sub-journey or user experience mapping, you still need to understand the voice of the customer and their emotions… …but the scope of the experiences is smaller, so you can dive deeper into the world of insights and feedback.
Beyond consolidating general feedback and existing research resources, you might also want to gather operational data relating to specific touchpoints… …so that you can understand how and when customers interface with a brand. If existing data sources are limited, a little bit of mystery shopping or possibly focus groups can be really helpful in bringing this together and filling gaps. Regardless of which type of map you’re creating, customer insight is definitely a deal breaker for journey mapping.
You have to have some understanding of how customers feel and perceive the experience, otherwise you simply cannot map the journey. Most organizations gather this information through a lot of different sources, so you’re likely to end up piecing together a hodgepodge of data to create your picture. And the picture won’t be perfect and it probably won’t be complete, but you still have to have something. Ideally, you’ll be able to gather enough voice of the customer information to build an empathy map for your persona…
…which is a structured way to present what a customer is thinking, feeling, and doing. This empathy map adds an extra layer of richness to the lens through which you are creating and viewing your journey. An empathy map isn’t a deal breaker, but it can be very helpful. And if you’d like to see a sample empathy map, head on over to my website and look for the show notes for this episode, episode 19.
I’ve included a handy empathy map template that you can download and use. Right, so once you’ve identified whose journey you’re mapping and you’ve gathered enough customer information so that his or her perspective can be represented… …it’s time to switch gears and develop your plan of attack. In other words, how are you going to do the journey mapping…
…and who within your organization is going to be part of your team for this process? Journey mapping is about creating a visualization of the customer experience that organizations can use to inform customer experience strategy… …product development, customer engagement strategy, things like that. But the process of engaging with different stakeholders in your organization is almost as important as the final mapping output.
Customer experience professionals are part problem-solver, part diplomat, and part change-maker. And this is where the latter two come into play. Journey mapping is an opportunity to get people excited about the customer experience… …and help them understand how they impact the journey through their day-to-day responsibilities.
So, think about who has the most context for the customer journey and will be able to provide insight to address your blind spots. Think about which teams are most influential in defining and delivering customer experience. And think about who in your organization will be able to help you drive customer-centric change. You’ll want representation from each of these groups within your mapping team.
Once you’ve identified your stakeholders and your mapping participants, think about the best way to engage with them. If your group is small and you have a lot of really good customer data that you can easily share with your team members… …you might be able to create a journey map through an interactive workshop set out over a couple of days, or kind of like a journey mapping sprint. In this situation, pick your stakeholders carefully, as you’ll need to keep the group small and will want participants who can add insights…
…but will also be collaborative partners as you socialize your journey map once it’s created. If your stakeholder group is quite large and there are gaps in your understanding of the customer experience, you might want to create your map through an iterative process… …that is broadly inclusive and gives a lot of different people an opportunity to provide their input and insight over the course of say a week or two. In this scenario, consider putting the map up on a boardroom wall or in some common area and then inviting teams and individuals to come through and provide their input.
This will allow you to gather information in stages and build the map slowly over time. So, there you have it. Those are my tips for pre-planning your journey mapping exercise. I hope that you enjoyed this CX mini masterclass.
To get a summary of these steps, head on over to my website, julia-ahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com and check out the show notes for this episode, episode 19… …where you can also download the empathy map template that I mentioned earlier. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll be back next week. [Outro music]
Want to keep learning about CX?
If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.
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Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including journey mapping workshops!) or get in touch via email.
