The value of journey mapping

Being clear on what you want to achieve

What is the point in mapping a customers journey?

Surprisingly, this question is seldom asked.  Often teams workshop the journey because it feels like the right thing to do, or just that someone has asked them to it.  However, unless you understand what you trying to achieve or what problems you are trying to fix you’ll just record a set of information but gain little insight.

Knowing the ‘why’ is the key to making them worthwhile. 

There are many different factors that could be recorded when journey mapping; time, resource, ease, moments of truth, costs, revenue opportunities and so on.  However, you can’t record everything because it then either looks a mess or so complicated that people can’t understand it.

So, you have to find out the ‘why’.  This is usually a blend of ‘what the customer wants’ and the aims of the organisations.  How the two blend together is often tricky; their aims are seldom aligned.  The most important thing is to put the customers’ needs first, from that come the organisational objectives. Obvious, but, frequently it’s done the other way around so everything becomes contorted.  The customers priorities are usually, ease, ‘trust’ or speed or reliability.  When understood in proportion to each other they can guide the journey map as it gives a clear rationale for what you are doing and what information you want to use.

“Before undertaking a mapping exercise it is really important to understand why you are doing it - what you are hoping to change as consequence” 

Using personas is vital. Without them the organisation will typically assume a best case example when validating the map. The journey is only really tested when an example is created to test the assumptions. Better still, a real-life complaint. This is an ideal time to ensure the journey is fully inclusive.

The map then needs to ‘live’ in the culture.  Either to be kept permanently on a wall, in management reporting, on a single side of A4 in presentations or, better still, as a means of communication between different departments when undergoing continuous improvement.

One last thought. We find that most companies find it difficult to write down what actually happens, and instead write down what they think happens.  Consequently, you can easily end-up fixing the wrong things.