Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping helps you create a single version of the truth of exactly what your customers experience when they interact with your organization.

Periodically it’s important to take a step back to REALLY see things from your customer’s perspective.

What happens to them? Who talks to them and when?

How is information about them shared in your organization and with external partners? How are issues escalated? Who closes the feedback loops and how?

All important questions to answer when analyzing what could be improved or streamlined.

Customer Journey Mapping is an effective change management activity that helps you and your group reach a shared understanding on the key events, touch points, and activities that your customers receive.

Once you have your map you can quickly and easily identify what’s working well (good practice) and not so well (areas for improvement).

It identifies issues, solves problems, is a great team builder and, as long as you complete the process, you get an excellent action plan out at the end.

Objectives

• To create a visual representation or map of how a customer interacts with your service or company.
• The aim is to identify good practices as well as issues and problems.

When Would You Use It?

• If you’re getting feedback from customers that your internal processes aren’t meeting their needs then Customer Journey Mapping will help you with the analysis.
• If you’d like to create a shared understanding within your team / group as to how your customer journey plays out.
• The map focuses on understanding the ‘as is’ situation; thinking about how things could be different will come later.

Are There Any Rules?

• Allocate one swim lane per individual, department or company.
• Always keep the Customer as the central swim lane as a metaphorical reminder they are in the center.

Resources Required

• At least 60 mins depending on the complexity of the journey you are analyzing.
• Up to 15 willing participants.
• Very large piece of plain paper stuck on the wall.
• Lots of space of your participants to move around (HINT: get rid of tables and chairs).
• Lots of different colored Post-Its and pens
• Tack to stick things on the wall.
• Flip-chart and paper.

Process

1. The Facilitator sticks a large piece of paper on the wall and draws the Customer swim lane horizontally down the center.

2. The Participants brainstorm the typical Events that happen to a Customer and add those to the Customer swim lane in chronological order. One Event per Post-It (see example).

3. The Participants brainstorms and agrees the key stakeholders / departments / people / external partners that might be involved the handling of this Customer. TIP: Ensure there are participants who represent these stakeholders in the room (as far as possible).

4. The Facilitator adds these stakeholders as their own swim lanes above and below the Customer.

5. The Facilitator splits the Participants into smaller groups and allocates each group to their own key stakeholder / swim lane.

6. The groups spend 10 mins mapping the activities of each swim lane around each of the ‘Events’ Post-Its in the Customer swim lane.

7. Following the mapping exercise (in swim lanes for different stakeholders), work as a whole group to understand the total picture:

   1. For each swim lane, one person from each group takes no more than 2 minutes to walk everyone through the processes that have been mapped out.
   2. Does everyone agree that is the current situation

8. Analyze the Customer Journey Map as a whole and add:

   1. Green flags – describing where the process is effective.
   2. Red flags – describing where the process is broken.
   3. Quotes – first hand observations from your team.

9. The Facilitator summarizes the findings of the group under the headings “What’s working well?” and “What’s not working so well?”

10. The Facilitator leads a Plenary Discussion using the questions on the next slide as inspiration.

Blank Template

You can download this blank template at the bottom of the page

Finished Template

You can download this blank template at the bottom of the page

Plenary Discussion Questions

• What is this picture telling us about the different Stakeholders and the way they are working?
• What is this picture telling us about the Customer and what they are experiencing?
• Where can the Customer fall through the net and why? Are there any overlaps and/or gaps in customer service?
• Are there any key activities that seem to make a difference?
• What could be done better?
• How is information shared and by who to who? Are there any gaps in information sharing?
• How are referrals/hand-offs managed? Is there any follow up to a referral? When? How?

Secret Sauce

• Ensure there are participants who represent all the key stakeholders in the room (as far as possible).
• Follow the session with a break so the group can reflect and then with an Action Planning session to ensure the participants go away with clear list of actions.
• Use different coloured Post-Its to represent different types of activities (e.g. assessments, referrals, solution providers, handoffs etc.)
• This process can also be used to test the quality of the proposed / new design.