Customer journey mapping

Find new opportunities in your customer’s journey and experience

“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.” – Roy H. Williams

Understanding what your customer goes through

A customer journey is a tool used for visualising the customer experience over time, mapping out interactions with the brand from the moment the customer has a need to the moment they disengage with the service – or a relevant slice of that experience. Similarly to a customer persona, it represents the typical customer experience, but not every possible nuance of every single customer.

Considering the customer in business decisions

You will only create a customer journey when you have a persona in hand. Create customer journeys for your main customer personas – those representing the greatest section of your market – so that you can be sure you are spending your time and energy in the right place. The journey places the customer at the centre of businesses considerations, making it easier to design solutions with them in mind.

Improving your customers experience through design thinking

Customer journeys help you understand the customer’s context – tasks they need to get done, views, feelings, questions – and how you can meet their needs at various touchpoints. On another level, journeys help stakeholders in the business to see how customers navigate through the purchasing channels, if there are opportunities to leverage, and how to enhance their experience.

Things to consider when creating a customer journey map

• Research: Your journey should be backed by customer research, as your map must represent real customer challenges, emotions, tasks and questions. This will make the map more useful in guiding business decisions going forward, and help it fulfill its intended purpose.
• Teamwork makes the dream work. This is not an exercise that should be done by one person. Even though you will have the research data, it is important to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to create customer journeys. The input from different stakeholders – including the business’ perspective – will make the journey more accurate and extensive
• Never create without a persona. A journey should be based on a persona (see Customer Personas method) – the two co-exist. You can do a persona without a journey, but not the other way round – personas precede journeys.