Everything You Need to Learn About Customer Journey Mapping

2.3 Getting Value From Your Customer Journey Map

Hello, and welcome back to this introduction to Customer Journey Mapping. In my previous videos, I introduced the idea of customer journey mapping, and how to go about running your first customer journey mapping workshop. But if that's all that you do, then you're not getting the full value from it. That's because only the people in the workshop have spent any time thinking about the customer. There are probably a lot more people in your organization that could do with being more user centric. Even if all the key players were in the room, they're going to quickly forget, move on to the next thing on their agenda. They need to take what they've learned and apply it. And we need to take what we've learned from the customer journey mapping and make it accessible to everybody in a form that constantly reminds them of the importance of user experience. But before we can do that, first of all we need to validate what we learned in the customer journey workshop. The problem with a workshop like that, which is made up purely of internal stakeholders, is that it tends to be biased. It has a biased view of what the customer journey actually involves. Often the reality is far more chaotic and often more unflattering. That's why it's important to validate that map that you created in the workshop with real users. Now, there are lots of ways that could be done. For example, you could run a second workshop where users go through the same exercise, and you see if they come up with similar results. Of course, the downside of this approach is that you have to find users willing to give up the best part of a day of their time to go through the exercise. This is pretty hard to do in many situations. And also the users might have very different experiences as individuals. An alternative approach would be to organize a series of interviews where you take users through the map that you've created and get them to comment on it. This is more likely to flush out any potential issues and identify things that you may have missed. If there are specific areas of the map that you feel are weak or that you've got questions about, then you could create something like an online survey to help clarify things. Because the next step is to simplify the map that you've created. You'll have a whole sheet full of hundreds of Post-It notes with lots of different information. And that's just too chaotic. It's too chaotic to turn into something that somebody else is gonna understand. You're going to have to simplify it. And if you were involved in running that initial workshop, you're gonna find that a painful process because you're gonna feel like you're throwing out a lot of information that you added. The problem is is that if you don't simplify that journey, then it's gonna become unreadable by anybody who didn't attend the workshop. Remember, the aim is to get colleagues thinking about the customer journey, rather than identifying all of its nuances. Most customer journeys are far too varied and complex to be represented accurately in the form of a customer journey map. Validating your map with real users will help identify less important elements that could be removed in order to simplify the picture. This will enable you to create something that's more visually appealing and also easier to understand by colleagues without the need for detailed explanation. As I said in the first video, there's no shortage of ways that you can visually represent your customer journey map. Although some form of infographic is the most common, it's not the only option. A customer journey map could be shown as a storyboard or a presentation or even a video like this one. The reason an infographic is often chosen is because it can be displayed on the walls of an office. This means that when colleagues look up from their desks, they're constantly reminded about the user experience, which has to be a good thing. Whatever form you decide, there are two important factors to remember. First, don't allow your customer journey map to be consigned to a drawer. And second, ensure that it's visually attractive as possible. Too many customer journey maps fail to fulfill their potential because following the workshop, they're rarely referenced really. By turning them into a poster for the wall or putting them prominently in some other place, you ensure they're not forgotten. By getting a designer to make them visually appealing, we encourage colleagues to look at them often and ensure that they're simple enough to be easily understood, but don't stop there. I would encourage you to actively promote your customer journey map across the organization. For a start, make sure that you make the workshop attendees aware that you've published the final map. Encourage them to share it with their own colleagues, and if they're senior management, encourage them to share it with the entire organization. It's also worth putting together a presentation around customer journey mapping and give it to as many people as possible. If that's not an option, consider recording a video like this one, explaining the role of customer journey mapping and how you created the one that you're then gonna show them. It's also good practice to associate your promotion of the customer journey map with some other form of call to action. For example, you may wish to start running monthly usability testing that you invite any colleague to attend. You could use the customer journey map as a way of promoting these events. Alternatively, you might add to the customer journey map infographic a link, a link to a blog where you share user experience best practice and offer a newsletter sign up. In short, what I'm driving at is that a customer journey map is most effective in getting colleagues to think about user experience if it's part of a bigger promotional effort. You need to be running almost an internal comms campaign to get people on board with customer experience. So, there you go, an introduction to customer journey mapping. It's important to remember that there's no right or wrong way to do this kind of mapping. Feel free to change anything that I have suggested to better suit your organization. This isn't a rigid methodology, but rather something that you can use and tailor to your situation in order to get your colleagues thinking about the user's need. Whatever approach you take, I would encourage you to get stuck in and begin promoting user experience best practice within your organization. But for now, thanks for watching, and the best of luck.