Design Effective Customer Journey Maps

Learning Outcomes

After completing this unit, you will be able to: 

1. Understand the Objective of the Customer Journey Map (CJM) you are creating
2. Consider personas or segments
3. List all the touchpoints for each persona or segment
4. Clearly define, in your mind, where the journey will START and FINISH
5. Initially, define the high-level activities only  

Decide on your objectives

Like all marketing activities, it’s vital you start with a clear idea of your objectives. Consider your goals and the reasons behind them. What client journeys are you charting, and how will your methods vary? Once you receive the information, how will you use it?

Consider your customer personas

A semi-fictionalised description of your typical user or customer. Think about the different characteristics of your buyers and what leads them to you. Where and how they find you, what captures their interest, which content encourages them to find out more, and why.

List all the touchpoints in your customer journey

Make a list of all the touchpoints, both direct and indirect, your customers have with your brand. They might not follow what you think in a linear or expected order, so use your personas to explore the different routes to make sure you cover everything.

Map your customer personas to different touchpoints

Focus on one persona at a time, guiding your customer through every potential touchpoint in their customer journey, taking time to imagine and empathise with every emotion, challenge, obstacle, action, or behaviour they may experience.

Clearly define when the journey will Start and Finish

Consider the initial first and last action of the customer. For example, a customer approaching the receptionist could be the start of the journey, and the journey will end once the customer receives the staff's direction.

Alternatively, define a specific location, on the premises, to start and end the journey. For example, the entrance doors to a dining room can define both the start and the finish.

Initially, define the high-level activities only 

The overarching objective of the Customer Journey Mapping Canvas is to extract, from the collective minds of experienced team members, individual journeys of members by segment. Creating CJMs on the canvas provides two primary outcomes:

1. Becomes a shareable document to be shared to explain to existing, and new staff, the journeys each customer segment takes.
2. The Customer and Staff Actions will be automatically published to kick-start the Service Blueprinting process, where the granular detail of the desired CX is captured.

Note: Too much detail can be too difficult to follow and confuse first-time readers.

“The key to creating a successful customer journey is to put yourself in their shoes”