An effective way to gain this understanding is through a customer experience blueprint. This is a high-level process of visualising and understanding user journeys. These can range from marketing and sales to pre-customer and customer journeys.

There are also task-oriented journey maps. These are relevant when a customer has a specific task in mind to complete. For example, buying plane tickets or logging a repair (as a housing tenant). There is a clear’ completion’ in these journeys.

The experience blueprint ties together these task-oriented journeys across time and touchpoints / channels, as well showing what the enabling processes and tools are. This is a relatively undefined process as you can't say every single customer experience lifecycle is going to look the same, but specific tasks will be on the same set of guide rails.

This process is essential as it helps you identify pain points, opportunities for improvement, and areas of potential innovation.

There are 8 key activities of journey mapping to consider to create an effective roadmap.

1. Define the scope and objectives of the journey map

2. Define personas

3. Conduct user research

4. Map the journey

5. Identify pain points and opportunities for improvement

6. Prioritise improvements and act

7. Consider customer touchpoints

8. Do things properly

1. Define the scope and objectives of the journey map

For website customer journeys, the journey stages of Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention are especially relevant. However, in an omni-channel world it's important to consider the wider cross-channel customer experience like broadcast marketing / brand marketing / above the line marketing, or even social and performance advertising.

Clearly define what stage or stages of the journey you want to map and for the relevant channel. What are your goals for creating the journey map?

Defining these parameters will help create a focused and meaningful journey map.

For example, a business problem has been identified – customers appear to be dropping out in mid journey/checkout. In this scenario you’d likely map the journey from product search to final purchase. Your goal is to identify areas where customers are dropping out of the purchase process. This will help improve the checkout flow and increase conversions.

2. Define personas

This involves developing fictional characters, or personas that represent your ideal customers. Do you have one ideal customer or many? However, many you have, you must decide whether the journey map will be based on one or all personas.

Each customer persona must reflect the behaviours and the motivations of your target audience. Below are some tips on how to define your personas.

• Use consumer surveys and questionnaires

• Carry out in-person interviews with customers

• Test your product

• Conduct interviews

3. Conduct user research

User research is vital. Not discovering your customers' needs, motivations, and behaviours through qualitative and quantitative research leaves you blind.

Surveys, interviews and focus groups can help you understand your customers' needs and pain points throughout their journey.

Let’s say you’re testing a mobile banking app. You should conduct interviews with users to understand why they download it, what tasks they perform, and what frustrates them.

Our own established Usability Lab is a physical and remote space where your target users are observed whilst they test the usability of your digital product.

4. Map the journey

With a clear understanding of your customers' needs and behaviours, it's time to create the journey map. This involves visualising the customer journey from start to finish, including all touchpoints and interactions with your product or service.

Take the user journey for a health based SaaS product. You might want to create a diagram that shows the journey from sign-up to onboarding, feature adoption, and ultimately, renewal.

5. Identify pain points and opportunities for improvement

Not all journeys are smooth going. To make the journey as smooth as possible for your customers you must identify pain points, friction and opportunities for improvement.

Pain points are the areas where your customers experience difficulty or frustration. Friction is anything that makes it more difficult for your customers to do what they want to do.

What frustrates your customers? What gaps, and even superfluous stages, are they experiencing?

This means analysing the journey map to identify areas where customers are experiencing friction, frustration, or even confusion. All these issues represent opportunities for improvement. They’ll help you to make changes for a better customer experience that delivers on every level.

Once you identify these, you can start to develop solutions to make the experience as smooth and painless as possible.

6. Prioritise improvements and take action

Prioritise the improvements identified in the journey map and take action to implement them. You need to decide which pain points to address first. From that, develop a plan to make the necessary changes, and implement those changes.

To give an ecommerce example , if you identified pain points around the checkout process, then work with your development team to implement those changes as a matter of priority.

7. Consider customer touchpoints

Touchpoints are the different ways that your customers interact with your product or service.

Think about these interactions and include them in the map. Consider every possible way your customer can interact with your brand. The list will vary depending on your product. Some touchpoint examples are:

• Your website

• Email

• Salesperson

• Social media

• Surveys

• Reviews

• Customer support

• Press advertisements

• Direct mail

• Online search

• Online paid ads

• Word-of-mouth

• 
  

8. Do things properly

As with anything, planning, preparation and execution are key to success. Customer journey mapping is no different. Make sure your own journey to delivering a successful digital product hits the ground running.

• Start with the right data. Make sure you're gathering data from the right sources, such as interviews, surveys, and focus groups and analytics.

• Be user-focused. Keep the focus on the customer and their needs.

• Be creative. Don't be afraid to experiment with different ways of representing the customer journey

• Be collaborative. Involve different teams and stakeholders in the journey mapping process.

• Be iterative. The journey mapping process is an ongoing one. Keep coming back to it and updating it as you learn more about your customers.

Benefits of effective journey mapping

If your journey mapping is done right, you’ll be able to:

• Improve the customer experience

• Develop new products and features

• Increase customer satisfaction

• Generate more revenue

• Improve customer retention

Working with Codehouse

At Codehouse our Product Development team is available to discuss how to plan and implement a journey map for your digital product. Get in touch to find out more.