Journey Maps: Tracing Real-world CX 

A journey map is a blueprint that tracks a typical consumer’s experience with a product or service and shows what that person encounters at each stage of their interaction. The maps feature icons, multiple colors, and some combination of charts and diagrams, making them useful tools for understanding and improving agency CX. 

You do not draft journey maps on a whim. They can be very complex, and they always require extensive research into sources such as website analytics and survey data. 

How do you create a journey map? There’s no single format, but there are guiding principles: 

• Maps should be as simple as possible, but still offer all necessary information. 
• They should reflect the experience of a user persona that, based on your research, represents a key group of consumers. You may need to create multiple journey maps if there’s more than one key group. 

• Individual stages of the journey are consolidated into phases — for instance, when someone “looks for information” or “seeks help” — and the phases appear chronologically. 
• The maps show various aspects of the consumer experience, such as touchpoints (e.g., phone calls, website interactions and emails), decisions the person makes, and the person’s emotions throughout the process. 

How do you use journey maps? Because they tell overarching CX stories, agencies can use journey maps to set organizational priorities and allocate resources, identify process improvements and coordinate efforts with stakeholders.  

“Citizen journey maps continue to gain traction around the world as an effective tool for governments to redesign public services as they grapple with fiscal realities, diminishing resources and changing citizen expectations that require them to do more with less.” — Utsav Vatsyayan, Assistant Manager at EY 

Source: Digital.gov

This article appears in “Improving Customer Experience: A Nuts-and-Bolts Guide.” For additional insights into making your organization more customer-friendly, download the guide.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay