Omnichannel
How to create a customer journey map
Two top experts offer tips, advice, knowledge and two examples when it comes to crafting the much needed, and highly important, customer journey map.
October 15, 2024 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
The customer journey map is a critical aspect to a brand and retailer's success as it provides a visual story of how customers are engaging with the brand, services and with products.
It should be a living document constantly given attention due to all the many changes taking place within a retail strategy. The customer journey map should provide an comprehensive look from the consumer's view and serve as a valuable tool for understanding the consumer, anticipating the customer's needs and for predicting consumer behavior.
It should provide deep understanding of the customer experience which is key to enhancing the experience at each and every customer touch point.
As Simon Fraser shared with readers in a blog post, it is crucial brands understand how customers like to shop, what their preferences are, and, most of all, how to identify the points of success.
While crafting a customer journey map may sound like a very doable project, experts point out there are more than a few do's and don'ts and a bit work research involved.
RetailCustomerExperience.com reached out via email interviews to two top experts to provide tips, advice and knowledge on how to develop a customer journey map.
Eric Karofsky is the founder and CEO of VectorHX, a human experience agency aligning customer, user, and employee experiences with clients business strategy.
Jon Picoult if founder and principal of Watermark Consulting, a customer experience advisory firm.
Q. What is the biggest challenge when crafting a customer journey map and what's the best approach to overcoming that challenge?
Karofsky: Understanding the complete customer experience is essential. Accurately capturing customer perspective across all touch points while maintaining actionable insights for the business — that's hard and an ongoing challenge for brands. Brands must capture all customer emotions, expectations, and behaviors, especially in the complex retail environment where physical and digital interactions intersect.
Those who focus on customer journeys typically address 80% of common CX challenges and view them holistically rather than considering specific personas. It's crucial to examine high-value personas and their critical needs, which may actually fall within the remaining 20% of CX challenges. The journey map must reflect this approach and drive tangible improvements, especially for these high-value personas.
Picoult: The biggest challenge is ensuring that the map reflects the customer's view rather than the company's view of the experience. That's a challenge because, frankly, it's a lot easier to just get a bunch of employees in a room and have them draft a journey map. It takes a lot more time and effort to actually incorporate the customer's perspective into that map, be it by surveying them, interviewing them, or perhaps even including some of them in the mapping exercise.
It's critical to take that extra step, however, because otherwise, the journey mapping task becomes nothing more than a navel-gazing exercise – internal folks discussing and debating the highs and lows of the customer experience, without regard for the actual voice of the customer. A journey map constructed in that manner will inevitably fall victim to blind spots, and be disconnected from the real nuances of the customer experience.
Q. What tips or advice would you give a retailer just setting on developing a customer journey map?
Picoult: First, don't develop the map in a vacuum. It must be informed by actual customer feedback – ideally a combination of quantitative and qualitative data (such as customer surveys as well as in-depth customer interviews). Second, make sure you're building a journey map, not a process map. The key difference? Your customer's experience may involve tasks and activities with which your company doesn't (currently) have any involvement. That doesn't matter with an internally-focused business process map — but it's critical to a journey map, and can help reveal opportunities for new products and services that address customers' unmet or unarticulated needs.
And, third, remember that a journey map is just a starting point, because it provides a 30,000-foot view of the customer experience. In truth, however, customers' hearts and minds are won through experiential details that they may not even consciously notice (e.g., the layout of a checkout queue, the smell and lighting of a store, the design and placement of navigational signage). A robust customer experience improvement effort requires a deeper dive than is possible through a journey map. You have to evaluate the most minute details of the experience, and that requires a level of analysis that goes beyond what traditional journey maps offer.
Karofsky: Here are my do's and don'ts.
Do's:
- Start with research. Ensure you are designing for the right personas by conducting thorough qualitative and quantitative research.
- Identify moments of truth. Define the critical moments where customer perceptions are shaped, and focus on optimizing these interactions.
- Socialize internally. Share the journey map with multiple internal teams like marketing, sales, and support to get diverse perspectives and identify gaps.
- Use AI to analyze large datasets for sentiment, themes, and behavior patterns.
Don'ts:
- Don't ask NPS or CSAT at the beginning of journeys. Too often these are sent out too early when people haven't yet lived the experience.
- Don't rely only on the "Happy Path." Map out alternate paths, including scenarios where things go wrong, to proactively address potential pain points.
- Avoid creating a single journey map for all customers. Different personas have unique needs and behaviors—address these with tailored journey maps.
- Start simple and add detail over time. An overly complex initial map can overwhelm teams and reduce its utility.
- Avoid creating the journey map in isolation. Engage cross-functional teams for input so the map is comprehensive and grounded in diverse insights.
- Don't forget to involve customer support. Often they have valuable insights that don't show up in other areas of research
Q. What is the best maintenance/update approach for a customer journey map. Does it have to be updated on any set time frame?
Picoult: It should surely be a living, breathing document — one that is updated as new products, services, and experiences are rolled out. In addition, it should be updated as customers' needs, expectations and aspirations evolve (or if new customer segments are being targeted by the retailer). So, the right time frame for updating a journey map is driven less by the calendar and more by what's changing in and around your business.
Karofsky: When new customer interactions occur — such as product launches, website updates, or store layout changes — consider how these affect the experience and the associated journey. Similarly, when corporate strategy shifts or significant market fluctuations happen, evaluate their impact on customer journeys.
Data is paramount here and must be built to quickly identify emerging trends or pain points. Metrics provide a real-time feedback loop to monitor the effectiveness of each stage of the customer journey. Review customer segments and personas annually (or more frequently if significant changes are observed) as customer behaviors and expectations may evolve, requiring updates to their specific journey paths.
Karofsky provided these two following examples of a customer journey map.
Retail customer journey [confidential, changed /removed some items]
Software customer journey [confidential, changed /removed some items].
This is more focused on the steps to accomplish a task and the insight on the entire journey. It also includes future steps.
About Judy Mottl
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