Journey maps. Pitfalls, tips and tricks
Over the last 12 months I must have created 30–40 journey maps. Everything from retailers to financial institutions and banks. Each one was designed to a unique specification that myself and the client agreed was necessary for the business use case it would be used for.
So what did I learn along the way?
Journey maps aren’t an end in themselves — it’s easy to spend too long on the look and feel and too little time on using them as a catalyst to drive change. The point of a journey map is to quickly define or design an end-to-end customer experience and then use it to identify opportunities for improvement. Too many businesses pour money into beautiful PDFs only for the maps to stay stuck on a hard drive somewhere. I love strong aesthetic design as much as the next person but there are times when a simple set of post-it notes on brown paper will suffice even as the end product.
There’s no single template to follow — yes you can go on Google and search for journey maps. You’ll find thousands and lots of inspiration but not every client wants or needs the same information. Some will want to show how the customer feels at each stage of the journey, others will want to focus on the channels they interact with. To make them useable I’d advise to keep it simple and visual. Less clutter will make them easier to decipher and understand across the business.
They should never be ‘finished’ — when you get to version 7 and feel tempted to save the map as ‘FINAL’ think twice. Journey maps should be continually updated and not left in aspic. If you’re designing a new banking journey it’s unlikely the experience you launch will stay that way forever. My advice would be to keep them in an editable format that can be adapted over time. If you have space set aside an area where you can regularly bring together cross functional teams to pull apart previous work and iterate new developments and ideas.
Maps cover multiple use cases — you could be designing a new service experience or simply be looking to improve what already exists. Maps can be used for a multitude of reasons. In two recent projects I created maps to drive discussion and debate around what frustrations the client should ‘design-out’ of the customer experience. In another project we designed maps of a future experience we wanted to launch before testing it with real customers.
They don’t work for everyone — there will always be sceptics that don’t get on-board with journey mapping. That’s totally cool and they might not work for all businesses. The biggest push back tends to be in those businesses where people feel it all looks very familiar to previous attempts at improving customer experience. There are also times where people worry that the creation of the journey maps takes up more time than actually improving the experience in the real world. Make sure stakeholders understand the majority of effort will focus on real world improvement efforts.
Start with a strawman — not everyone can think from a blank canvas. In several workshops I’ve pulled together a journey map and then asked attendees and customers to take a red pen to it all. Workshop attendees tend not to hold back and by the end of the session you’ll barely recognise your original design. The great thing about this approach is that future journey mapping becomes more familiar and less daunting.
Start with the user — seems obvious but journey mapping is essentially about mapping out human experiences. A good way to get journey mapping started is to focus on a user and their story. In a recent workshop we used two personas and scenarios to help get attendees thinking user first. We then plotted out the journey and ‘designed-in’ innovative ideas and ‘designed-out’ common frustrations.
Remember the business view — don’t forget to plot out what is happening behind the scenes. If you’re designing a future airline experience it’s important to recognise that what the customer sees and experiences is facilitated by a lot of technology, people and processes backstage.
Get building ASAP — if you’ve designed a new or improved journey that’s only the start of the fun. Now you need to start making things happen on in the real world. Whether it’s developing an app or writing a business case don’t lose momentum. With all your design ideas you’ll want to take things to the next level and start planning out in detail what you’re going to do and how. You’ll need to start thinking about feasibility, prioritisation, impact and resourcing. This is where journey mapping sceptics start to see it’s more about action than designing beautiful looking PDFs.
Journey mapping is a great way to start designing customer centric products and services. At Strategy Activist we help clients design and improve customer experience. To learn more about how we can help your business visit www.strategyactivist.com or call +44 7786063053.
