Customer Journey Map: Real Marketer Experience. Designing or creating a map

See the CustomerThink blog on how to map the customer journey. In the article, he identified the main components of the map and described them in nine paragraphs.

If you've been looking for information on how to create a customer journey map, chances are you've found a wealth of information on a huge number of different approaches. After searching, you might have some questions, such as:

Why are consumer journey maps so different from each other?
Where do I start if I want to create a path map?
How do I know which approach will work best for my organization?
Are there any map templates that you can use in your work?

In this article, I will identify nine of the most common components of user journey maps. I hope this helps you create the most efficient map for your needs.

1. Focus on the customer

The first thing you need to decide is whose path you are going to map. For example, you can create a journey map for a specific type of customer (ideal customer image), a potential (target) customer, or an entire segment of customers, depending on what goal you are pursuing.

In order to determine whose journey you want to map, it's worth identifying the business goal you're starting this research to achieve. Here are some examples of business goals you can achieve with mapping:

Define a template path that can be applied to all or nearly all customers and that can be used throughout the company, for example, to create a common understanding among employees of each stage of the buying cycle, buying goals, customer touchpoints, and so on .
Correlate the company's stand-alone branches and its structural divisions with key problem areas in the customer experience.
Make the planning process participatory in order to empirically increase the number of buyers.
Practically implement new scheme customer segmentation.
Optimize the shopping experience for a priority group of customers (high value clients).
Understand how the user experience of a particular customer segment or customer experience differs from that of another customer segment.
Expand the business by working with new customers or with those who have not been fully engaged in attracting.

When it comes to B2B customer acquisition, a customer journey map typically includes different types of employees in the buying company who play different roles in the B2B buying process. In this case, it will be useful to include several types of buyers in the map and show how and when one or another type is involved in the main buying process.

Usually, buying roles are defined using images. Buyer persona is a buying archetype that helps your organization understand customer needs, expectations, and behaviors. Imagery is a very useful tool to provide your customers with a positive and memorable shopping experience.

Buyer persona is a buying archetype that helps your organization understand customer needs, expectations, and behaviors

Associating your customer journey map with your customer image definition can help establish and maintain a common understanding of your ideal customer images and their likely journey across the company. If you don't have images defined, you should consider incorporating image type development into your customer journey mapping process.

2. Creating a customer journey map with certain stages from the perspective of the buyer

Customer Journey Maps are made up of stages in the buying process (sometimes referred to as phases). Each stage represents a meaningful goal that your customer is trying to achieve as they progress along the journey.

The client journey map should be built in accordance with the stages that will represent the path of the client, purposefully going to achieve their goals. The map should not be focused on the stages of your internal processes.

Why can't there be a correspondence between stages of the customer journey and stages of internal processes? It's a common misconception that in this way you instantly turn a customer journey map into a graph of internal processes - this approach is commonly referred to as internal to external. As we will learn later, you can map your internal processes to the customer journey after you have built a customer-centric model of the stages of the buying process.

Stages can reflect general processes, for example, a stage in the relationship between a customer and your brand. Or, on the contrary, narrower ones - such as, for example, the "test flight" stage, which simulates the experience of the buyer's first flight with the airline. How general or narrow the stages are depends on which path you choose to map.

Each stage represents a meaningful goal that your customer is trying to achieve as they progress along the journey.

This stage format is linear because one stage follows another. However, you can use visual construction in your maps to show cyclic patterns of shopper behavior.

3. Identifying Your Buyers' Goals

Your customer interacts with your brand to achieve their goals, also called wants, needs, or expectations.

Here are some examples of buyer goals:

I want to know what my options are.
I want to make sure the price is fair.
I want to feel that I am respected.
I want to be productive while traveling.

By clearly identifying the buyer's goals at each stage of the journey, you can assess how the customer experience you provide contributes (or does not) to the buyer's goals.

And the value of your map as an auxiliary tool for making business decisions depends precisely on how well you define your goals. So try to clearly understand the goals of the buyer.

4. Description of the touch points between the buyer and your organization

Touchpoints are the points of interaction between the buyer and the brand, or vice versa - the lack of interaction with the brand. Most often, the value of customer journey maps lies in a clear understanding of the points of interaction between the customer and the brand along the entire customer journey.

Interaction points may occur in one or two channels, through tools or resources, but the points of interaction and the tools and resources used are not the same thing. For example, if a customer visits the site retail store to conduct research, the point of interaction here is the actions of the buyer to achieve his goal using the feed. That is, the point of interaction is the intersection of the buyer's actions with a particular tool or resource.

It's easiest to think of touchpoints as tools, resources, or a channel. And that's okay. But on their own, these touchpoints are not part of the user experience, and they don't really give you much information. In order for them to become part of a real shopping experience, it is necessary that real buyer used them on the way to his goal.

Touchpoints are points of interaction between the buyer and the brand, or vice versa - the lack of interaction with the brand, while the buyer is looking for a way to satisfy his own needs or achieve goals.

Some cards simply summarize all the tools and resources without describing the actions of buyers at each touchpoint. This can come in handy if there are multiple touchpoints at each step of the customer journey and you need to understand what tools and resources your customer is using to achieve their goals, as well as their relative importance.

No matter what terminology you use when talking about touchpoints—or even if you indirectly describe key touchpoints in your map by mapping the actions and behaviors of your customers—be sure to use a customer-centered or external-to-internal approach that describes how your buyer uses them to achieve their goals.

5. Using a path map to visually communicate emotions

Emotions are the cause of most human actions - even if we don't realize it. The most seemingly rational B2B buying decisions, even those backed up by large-scale questionnaires and multiple evaluation matrices, are powerless over the emotions of buyers.

Here's what we've learned over the past decade, and the thousands of customer surveys I've conducted have only confirmed: Emotions play an important role in B2B buying decisions.
— Tony Zambito in "The Role of Emotions and Goals in Intercompany Buying Decisions"

It's important to capture your customers' emotions (also called feelings) all the way through to get a real understanding of their experience. It's important to understand both how your customer wants to feel at each stage of their journey and how they actually feel at each stage.

Regardless of the nature of the experience your organization provides to the customer, you will retain your customer and attract new ones if the service you offer makes people feel good. In other words, you need to give the buyer a memorable experience that he will want to repeat.

When I am asked to design a user interface for a website, I immediately ask the question - do I also need to design an interface for mobile devices and usually get an affirmative answer. The fact is that modern sites and programs that can be called digital products are, as a rule, part of a large service. And the further, the more digital products (websites, applications) will be involved in the interaction with the user.

Let me give you an example of a rather popular service - listening to music. I listen to music on a personal computer running OS X, on a smartphone (iOS), and on an Apple TV. Apple has pretty well thought out the process of consuming music: I can buy an album on my iPhone, and then I can listen to this album on Apple TV, which I have large speakers connected to. However, I can't start listening to a song on my iPhone and then continue listening to it on Apple TV - to do this, I have to look for the desired album in the Apple TV menu, this procedure cannot be called simple. That is, no one at Apple bothered with such an opportunity and did not implement it. That being said, both the designer of the iPhone and the Apple TV did a good job. The functionality that I need is located on the border of two devices and it is not clear who should be responsible for designing such bundles.

This example shows that in our time it is not enough to think through the details of the user interface of one digital product in isolation from interaction with other products with which they are in a single infrastructure. We need a tool that allows you to identify problems at the junctions, and also allows you to design links between products. As usual, the need provoked the creation of a wonderful new technique called "Customer Journey Map».

The Customer Journey Map is arguably the best User Experience tool of the last 10 years (after characters).

What is a service?

What is a service? For lovers of strict definitions, I will quote from GOST-9000-2008:

A service is the result of at least one action, necessarily carried out in the interaction between the supplier and the consumer, and, as a rule, is intangible.

Let's remember the word "result" - this is what is most important for any consumer.

As I have already reported, modern consumers interact with mobile devices, web browsers, people, environments and spaces, and so on. Each act of interaction between a consumer and a service is called a “point of contact”.
Points of contact can be not only digital, but also analog or offline.

Take, for example, a modern bank. What points of contact can we identify here?

bank website;
web service "client-bank", where the user can carry out operations with his account and bank cards;
mobile application "client-bank";
the physical branch of the bank, which can also be considered a product. Just like in the case of websites, there is a navigation system inside the bank branch.
Suppose you came to the bank for some purpose and are not yet very familiar with the rules of its work. If the navigation was poorly designed, then you may not be sure who exactly to contact to solve your problem. You have to contact the girl at the reception, which may be a separate queue of customers.
With this example, I wanted to illustrate the simple idea that bank branches can and should be designed similarly to websites.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

So, what is a Customer Journey Map (for short, just CJM)?

CJM is a directed graph onto which the path of the consumer of the provided service is mapped with the help of contact points. The CJM captures the details of the interaction with the service.

That is, CJM displays exactly how the consumer interacts with the service - what touchpoints exist, through which channels the interaction is carried out (web, mobile application, offline point of presence, and so on), as well as what happens inside each touchpoint.

Here are examples of typical CJMs (for now, pay attention only to the outside of the chart):

customerexperienceplanning.com

thebridge.nl

Let's look at a simplified CJM example:

Mel Edwards, 2011

You see three representatives, each representing a different consumer group. In the process of consuming the service (achieving the goal), they have to interact with different products. At each point, a service act occurs with a certain level of quality:

Mel Edwards, 2011 & Alexey Kopylov, 2013

The overall impression of the service, as a rule, depends on the quality of service at all points of contact. The weak link principle applies - one bad interaction casts a shadow over the entire service. Therefore, it is very important that each interaction point is worked out with maximum quality.

However, it happens that all points of interaction are implemented just fine, and problems are hidden at the boundaries of the transition from one point to another. That is, it may turn out that all employees of the company serve customers well, but some consumers still do not reach their goal:

Mel Edwards, 2011 & Alexey Kopylov, 2013

Let's illustrate this simple example: many online stores require you to go through the registration procedure and, often, there is such a step as confirmation of registration by a special link that comes to your mailbox(this is necessary to prove that a living person is registered, and not a robot). In this case, the probability increases that the user will not be able to go through this step: perhaps the letter with the link got into spam, perhaps the user made a mistake and entered gmail.ru or another non-existent address instead of gmail.com, perhaps he even forgot that it was necessary to confirm registration. In the examples known to me, the loss of users at this step reached 70%!

How can we lower these barriers? For example, you can control what exactly the user enters as an email and offer to correct clearly erroneous addresses. Further, if the user has not clicked on a link from an email message for several days, then you can resend him an email with a link. But the best thing, of course, is to abandon this step altogether - use other methods of protection against robots!

In general, you should always implement the system in such a way that any point of contact motivates the consumer to go to the next step (principle "push"), and the next point pulled the consumer from the previous point of contact (operation "pull"). The push-pull principle contributes to a smoother interaction between the consumer and the service.

Consider the example of listening to music. In fact, Apple has a way to make the transition from listening on iPhone to listening on Apple TV, namely AirPlay technology. However, not all consumers are aware of the magic technology and therefore cannot use it. There is a rule that the functionality that users cannot find for them, as it were, does not exist. It would be possible to implement the “push-pull” principle in this way: as soon as the user is in an area where Apple TV is available, he immediately receives a message (not interrupting listening) that he can turn on the audio system (connected to Apple TV) and continue listening already on her. And vice versa, as soon as the user turns on the TV, he sees a message, what song is playing on the iPhone and what needs to be done to redirect the sound to the audio system (by pressing one button).

So, CJM allows you to control the process of designing services that are implemented using various interactive products, as well as visually visualize the process of service execution itself.

Tasks solved by CJM

I will list all the tasks that CJM solves:

Creating a continuous UX throughout the entire consumption of the service.
Remember the aforementioned "push-pull".
Increasing consumer conversion.
By reducing barriers, as well as by reducing losses during the transition from point of contact to point of contact, more consumers reach the goal.
Increasing consumer loyalty.
Retention rate - The number of returning consumers grows if we design and implement a service without barriers.
Increasing the responsibility of the company's specialists.
Each point of interaction has its own responsible employees from the company. After we have mapped all the points of interaction, all employees in the company can see who is responsible for what and how they cope with their duties (if we set up KPI for each point). This in itself increases the level of responsibility.
Accelerate the development of multi-channel services and products and improve the quality of development.
Due to the fact that all parties involved in the development see more fully how the service is carried out, and also see all the potential weak points of the service and can intervene in their development in time.
Create exciting new interactions.
There is an opportunity to come up with and implement new innovative features (remember the example of continuing to listen to an audio recording while moving from one device to another).

Everything looks great, but how to create CJM?

Create CJM, step by step instructions

Step #1. We identify all points of contact and channels of interaction

We put on the map all the points of interaction of a certain typical consumer with the service. We don't forget anything! It may turn out that there are hidden points of interaction that you did not know about. For example, you may find that some problems are solved by consumers through informal way - using social networks (which happens often). That is, one of the employees of the company contacts the consumer directly within the social network and helps him achieve his goal. It is necessary to record everything, including such points of interaction!

In order not to miss anything, use the mystery shopper technique, that is, go through all the steps of a typical consumer of the service yourself. You can also find an external company that professionally identifies all touchpoints with a large number of respondents.

Remember that one CJM diagram is drawn for one target group (or one character if you use the character technique)!

Further - it is important to determine all possible channels of interaction for each point. That is, to determine which devices are used for interactions, for example, it can be web browsers, mobile applications, phone calls, skype calls, email, social networks. Do not forget about offline channels - office visits, meetings with couriers, meetings with agents and so on. Again, unexpected channels may open up for you, for example, you may find out that a huge number of consumers come from mobile devices. And it may turn out that the design of your site does not take into account this channel of interaction.

Graphically, CJM can have a different look - diagrams can be linear if the nature of interaction with consumers is also linear:

desonance.wordpress.com

Can be branched if consumers have multiple alternative interaction scenarios:

Alexey Kopylov, 2013

May have a temporary form - suitable for displaying interaction with the service during the day:

customerexperienceplanning.com

We can make several CJM charts for different customer groups and for different purposes.

Step #2. Describing points of contact

Now each point of contact and each channel must be described.

Here is the typical information we need to capture:

Interaction channel
Points can have several channels, we list all channels.
Target action, scenario, success criteria
We describe what the consumer wants to achieve with this interaction. We also describe how the ideal interaction scenario arises, as well as what to do if the consumer has problems. We describe the specific criteria for the success of the passage of the scenario - this is necessary for us to collect statistics on the quality of the passage of each point of contact.
Degree of criticality of a point/channel
Helps to concentrate on the most critical points.
barriers
We list all the problems that consumers may encounter within this touchpoint.
Ways to lower barriers
For each barrier, we define countermeasures that we must implement when optimizing the service. For example, as in my registration confirmation example, we can control which emails a consumer enters and offer to correct spelling errors.
Conversion and ROI optimization
We consider the number of consumers who came to a given point to the number of those who successfully reached the next point of interaction. Ideally, if all consumers have reached the next point (coefficient = 1.0). This is the main KPI of the point of interaction and the employee of the company who implements this interaction. The conversion will allow you to calculate the economic effect of lowering one or the barrier. For example, you can calculate that lowering the barrier within a certain point of contact will result in a 20% increase in conversions. By tracing that 20% further down the CJM chain and getting to the point where the customer makes money, you can pretty accurately determine how much money the optimization of that point will make. If at the same time you still evaluate the costs of lowering the barrier, then you have the value of the ROI coefficient (return on investment). Having the value of ROI, it will be quite easy for you to prove to top managers the benefits of such optimization.
Other KPIs(for example, retention rate, contact time, and so on)
We can come up with a large number of KPIs that more fully characterize the quality of the service at a given point.
Psycho-emotional state, degree of frustration and stress
We can obtain this data by viewing consumer complaints or by using qualitative methods research (interviews, field observations). As well as the degree of criticality of the point of contact, this information helps to focus on the most important points of the service.

Important advice
When describing points of contact, use consumer vocabulary, not your professional one.

Below in the figure are examples of the description of interaction points. I mapped a loyalty program for an oil company.

Alexey Kopylov, 2013

Step #3. Finding out who is responsible for what within the company

For each point and channel, we add the name of a specialist or a group of specialists whose actions determine the success of interaction with the consumer.

Depending on the level of development of the company, this task can be very simple, or, on the contrary, very difficult. The more opaque the company, the more difficult it is to collect such data.
The situation is exacerbated when employees find out that you are going to capture KPIs for the quality of their work. Some employees may begin to sabotage the KPI collection process, they simply will not give you the necessary data. First, you need to convince all employees that fixing KPIs will help improve the quality of the service, which, in turn, will help move up the career ladder. But, as a rule, there will always be a couple of black sheep that will interfere increased transparency - and to overcome such resistance, you will need support from senior management.

Attention, ethical question!
Not everyone works strictly according to work instructions. Some employees may bypass them to increase efficiency. In this case, anonymize the sources of your information as much as possible.

Step number 4. Optimize the most critical points/channels

We take the most critical points interactions and reduce barriers within these points.

Take the example of an oil company - barrier #2 of step #3:

This barrier can be reduced by the competent presentation of information in the form of a sequence of actions (using graphics similar to comics). You just need to remember that any optimization should be checked after implementation - is it really a new version point of contact works better than the previous one?

Also consider whether you were able to implement the push-and-pull principle to motivate consumers to move up the CJM?

A more radical way of optimizing is to remove unnecessary interaction points. The figure below shows the CJM circuit before and after optimization. In the right scheme, extra levels of hierarchy were removed and the chain of interaction as a whole became shorter.

Alexey Kopylov, 2013

Step number 5. We take control of the optimization process

We set the optimization process to be regular. After fixing the most critical points of interaction, we begin to consistently optimize the less critical points. At the same time, we establish regular KPI collection (including conversion). All changes in the UX of services and products are constantly checked against KPIs.

Thus, we consistently improve the quality of service and earn credibility within the company. It's important to start with the most critical one so that it's easier to get approval and a budget for other service improvements. Taking on everything right away is expensive and time-consuming, and there is a risk of concentrating on unimportant problems.

Tools for creating CJMs

post-it leaflets

Use Post-It sheets to start working on CJM, for brainstorming, for building hypotheses and recording preliminary results. Leaflets encourage group work and are probably the cheapest tool and the most fast way fixing CJM.

Beautiful schemes

At an advanced stage, you can Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to draw a sexy scheme, on which all points of contact are served as tasty as possible. Such schemes are suitable for presentation to various top managers for additional funding. However, these schemes are static and inconvenient for development; most of descriptive information. Do not abuse such schemes!

Excel + diagrams

Right now I'm working using two tools: Flying Logic to draw the chart and Excel (or Google Docs) to enter information for each touchpoint. Flying Logic is quite well suited for such diagrams, as it was originally made for constructing theory of constraints diagrams, which mates quite well with CJM. The disadvantage of this method is that you have to constantly synchronize the chart and table in order for the information to be up-to-date.

Alexey Kopylov, 2013

Touchpoint Dashboard Web Service

This is the only web service I know of that is specifically designed to work with CJM. In addition to capturing CJM, you can create crosstabs like importance/ease of implementation/effect or time to fix/cost of fix/effect. Such crosstabs will help you determine the order of service optimization.

touchpointdashboard.com

All this looks very nice, however, the cost of the service looks like this (per month):

touchpointdashboard.com

$175 for 1 user
$625 for 5
$950 for 10

In my opinion, this is still too expensive for most teams - waiting for the appearance of a competitor, I'm sure after that the cost will decrease.

Results

Finally, I will briefly list the benefits of using CJM when redesigning a service:

CJM allows you to spread knowledge about the real state of affairs with consumers in your company.
Helps to draw the attention of top managers to egregious facts or potential opportunities for growth.
Helps to calculate the ROI of CJM optimization.
Contributes to the development of a strategy for the development of services and products that are included in it.
Improves communication within the company.
Increases the level of staff training (we go beyond pure UX).
Improves the organizational culture of your company.
Most importantly: it improves the quality of the service, which contributes to the loyalty of your customers!

Alexey Kopylov, UX expert at Kaspersky Lab, co-founder of UIDG, author of a tutorial on designing with Customer Journey Map, wrote an interesting tutorial on working with Customer Journey Map. With his permission, we present a version of this article on .

Introduction

When I am asked to design a user interface for a website, I immediately ask if I should also design an interface for mobile devices and usually get an affirmative answer. The fact is that modern sites and programs that can be called digital products are, as a rule, part of a large service. And the further, the more digital products (websites, applications) will be involved in the interaction with the user.

This example shows that in our time it is not enough to think through the details of the user interface of one digital product in isolation from interaction with other products with which they are in a single infrastructure. We need a tool that allows you to identify problems at the junctions, and also allows you to design links between products. As usual, the need triggered the creation of a wonderful new technique called the "Customer Journey Map".

The Customer Journey Map is arguably the best User Experience tool of the last 10 years (after characters).

What is a service?

What is a service? For lovers of strict definitions, I will quote from GOST-9000-2008:

A service is the result of at least one action, necessarily carried out in the interaction between the supplier and the consumer, and, as a rule, is intangible.
Let's remember the word "result" - this is what is most important for any consumer.

Points of contact can be not only digital, but also analog or offline.

Take, for example, a modern bank. What points of contact can we identify here?

bank website;
web service "client-bank", where the user can carry out operations with his account and bank cards;
mobile application "client-bank";
the physical branch of the bank, which can also be considered a product. Just like in the case of websites, there is a navigation system inside the bank branch.

Suppose you came to the bank for some purpose and are not yet very familiar with the rules of its work. If the navigation was poorly designed, then you may not be sure who exactly to contact to solve your problem. You have to contact the girl at the reception, which may be a separate queue of customers.

With this example, I wanted to illustrate the simple idea that bank branches can and should be designed similarly to websites.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

So, what is a Customer Journey Map (for short, just CJM)?

CJM is a directed graph onto which the path of the consumer of the provided service is mapped with the help of contact points. The CJM captures the details of the interaction with the service.

Here are examples of typical CJMs (for now, pay attention only to the outside of the chart):

Let's look at a simplified CJM example:

Let's illustrate this with a simple example: many online stores require you to go through the registration procedure and, often, there is such a step as confirming registration by clicking on a special link that comes to your mailbox (this is necessary to prove that a real person is registering, and not a robot ). In this case, the probability increases that the user will not be able to go through this step: perhaps the letter with the link got into spam, perhaps the user made a mistake and entered gmail.ru or another non-existent address instead of gmail.com, perhaps he even forgot that it was necessary to confirm registration. In the examples known to me, the loss of users at this step reached 70%!

In general, you should always implement the system so that any point of contact motivates the consumer to go to the next step (the "push" principle), and the next point pulls the consumer from the previous point of contact (the "pull" operation). The push-pull principle contributes to a smoother interaction between the consumer and the service.

So, CJM allows you to control the process of designing services that are implemented using various interactive products, as well as visually visualize the process of service execution itself.

Tasks solved by CJM

I will list all the tasks that CJM solves:

Creating a continuous UX throughout the entire consumption of the service.
Remember the aforementioned "push-pull".
Increasing consumer conversion.
By reducing barriers, as well as by reducing losses during the transition from point of contact to point of contact, more consumers reach the goal.
Increasing consumer loyalty.
Retention rate - The number of returning consumers grows if we design and implement a service without barriers.
Increasing the responsibility of the company's specialists.
Each point of interaction has its own responsible employees from the company. After we have mapped all the points of interaction, all employees in the company can see who is responsible for what and how they cope with their duties (if we set up KPI for each point). This in itself increases the level of responsibility.
Accelerate the development of multi-channel services and products and improve the quality of development.
Due to the fact that all parties involved in the development see more fully how the service is carried out, and also see all the potential weak points of the service and can intervene in their development in time.
Create exciting new interactions.
There is an opportunity to come up with and implement new innovative features (remember the example of continuing to listen to an audio recording while moving from one device to another).

Everything looks great, but how to create CJM?

Create CJM, step by step instructions

Step #1. We identify all points of contact and channels of interaction

We put on the map all the points of interaction of a certain typical consumer with the service. We don't forget anything! It may turn out that there are hidden points of interaction that you did not know about. For example, you can find out that some problems are solved by consumers in an informal way - using social networks (which is not uncommon). That is, one of the employees of the company contacts the consumer directly within the social network and helps him achieve his goal. It is necessary to record everything, including such points of interaction!

Remember that one CJM diagram is drawn for one target group (or one character if you use the character technique)!

Graphically, the CJM can have a different look - the diagram can be linear if the nature of the interaction with consumers is also linear:

Can be branched if consumers have multiple alternative interaction scenarios:

May have a temporary form - suitable for displaying interaction with the service during the day:

We can make several CJM charts for different customer groups and for different purposes.

Step #2. Describing points of contact

Now each point of contact and each channel must be described.

Here is the typical information we need to capture:

Interaction channel
Points can have several channels, we list all channels.
Target action, scenario, success criteria
We describe what the consumer wants to achieve with this interaction. We also describe how the ideal interaction scenario arises, as well as what to do if the consumer has problems. We describe the specific criteria for the success of the passage of the scenario - this is necessary for us to collect statistics on the quality of the passage of each point of contact.
Degree of criticality of a point/channel
Helps to concentrate on the most critical points.
barriers
We list all the problems that consumers may encounter within this touchpoint.
Ways to lower barriers
For each barrier, we define countermeasures that we must implement when optimizing the service. For example, as in my registration confirmation example, we can control which emails a consumer enters and offer to correct spelling errors.
Conversion and ROI optimization
We consider the number of consumers who came to a given point to the number of those who successfully reached the next point of interaction. Ideally, if all consumers have reached the next point (coefficient = 1.0). This is the main KPI of the point of interaction and the employee of the company who implements this interaction. The conversion will allow you to calculate the economic effect of lowering one or the barrier. For example, you can calculate that lowering the barrier within a certain point of contact will result in a 20% increase in conversions. By tracing that 20% further down the CJM chain and getting to the point where the customer makes money, you can pretty accurately determine how much money the optimization of that point will make. If at the same time you still evaluate the costs of lowering the barrier, then you have the value of the ROI coefficient (return on investment). Having the value of ROI, it will be quite easy for you to prove to top managers the benefits of such optimization.
Other KPIs (for example, retention rate, time to contact, and so on)
We can come up with a large number of KPIs that more fully characterize the quality of the service at a given point.
Psycho-emotional state, degree of frustration and stress
We can get this data by looking at consumer complaints or using qualitative research methods (interviews, field observations). As well as the degree of criticality of the point of contact, this information helps to focus on the most important points of the service.

Important advice

When describing points of contact, use consumer vocabulary, not your professional one.

Below in the figure are examples of the description of interaction points. I mapped a loyalty program for an oil company.

Step #3. Find out who is responsible for what within the company

For each point and channel, we add the name of a specialist or a group of specialists whose actions determine the success of interaction with the consumer.

Depending on the level of development of the company, this task can be very simple, or, on the contrary, very difficult. The more opaque the company, the more difficult it is to collect such data.
The situation is exacerbated when employees find out that you are going to capture KPIs for the quality of their work. Some employees may begin to sabotage the KPI collection process, they simply will not give you the necessary data. First, it is necessary to convince all employees that fixing KPIs will improve the quality of the service, which, in turn, will contribute to career advancement. But, as a rule, there will always be a couple of black sheep that will prevent increased transparency - and you will need support from top management to overcome such resistance.

Attention, ethical question!

Not everyone works strictly according to work instructions. Some employees may bypass them to increase efficiency. In this case, anonymize the sources of your information as much as possible.

Step number 4. Optimize the most critical points/channels

We take the most critical points of interaction and lower the barriers within these points.

Take the example of an oil company - barrier #2 of step #3:

This barrier can be reduced by the competent presentation of information in the form of a sequence of actions (using graphics similar to comics). Just keep in mind that any optimization needs to be tested after implementation - does the new version of the touchpoint really work better than the previous one?

Also consider whether you were able to implement the push-and-pull principle to motivate consumers to move up the CJM?

Step number 5. We take control of the optimization process

We make the optimization process regular. After fixing the most critical points of interaction, we begin to consistently optimize the less critical points. At the same time, we establish regular KPI collection (including conversion). All changes in the UX of services and products are constantly checked against KPIs.

Thus, we consistently improve the quality of the service and earn credibility within the company. It's important to start with the most critical one so that it's easier to get approval and a budget for other service improvements. Taking on everything right away is expensive and time-consuming, and there is a risk of concentrating on unimportant problems.

Tools for creating CJMs

post-it leaflets

Beautiful schemes

At an advanced stage, you can draw a sexual diagram in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, on which all points of contact are served as tasty as possible. Such schemes are suitable for presentation to various top managers for additional funding. However, these schemes are static and inconvenient for development, they lack most of the descriptive information. Do not abuse such schemes!

Excel + diagrams

Touchpoint Dashboard Web Service

All this looks very nice, however, the cost of the service looks like this (per month):

$175 for 1 user
$625 for 5
$950 for 10

In my opinion, this is still too expensive for most teams - waiting for the appearance of a competitor, I'm sure after that the cost will decrease.

Results

Finally, I will briefly list the benefits of using CJM when redesigning a service:

CJM allows you to spread knowledge about the real state of affairs with consumers in your company.
Helps to draw the attention of top managers to egregious facts or potential opportunities for growth.
Helps to calculate the ROI of CJM optimization.
Contributes to the development of a strategy for the development of services and products that are included in it.
Improves communication within the company.
Increases the level of staff training (we go beyond pure UX).
Improves the organizational culture of your company.
Most importantly: it improves the quality of the service, which contributes to the loyalty of your customers!

Afterword: what to read?

On the Internet you will find many articles on the keywords of this article.

There are also a couple of books on the subject:

This is Service Design Thinking

An excellent fresh book, absolutely topical - I recommend it in every possible way!

Comprehensive user experience is a real discovery for many companies. After all, if you improve products / processes purely “for show”, how to make sure that they will be convenient to use for customers? This is a common reason why target customers leave already for early stages sales funnels.

With the Customer Journey approach (“consumer journey”), we see what stages the potential consumer when interacting with the company. This technique allows not only not to lose customers, but also to increase the conversion in each next step. Read this article on how to use it for different types business.

Who is this for?

The Customer Journey technique is suitable for all cases where the purchase decision is delayed in time. These are most often IT and information products. Users, before paying for them, consider, study, weigh the pros and cons. SaaS solutions can even be tested - as a rule, they have a free trial period.

Also, understanding the consumer journey will come in handy for online stores and B2C products / services that users are looking for on the Internet (buying household appliances, installation of stretch ceilings, paid legal advice).

Goods and services with a "super hot" demand do not fit here - a tow truck, ordering pizza, urgent printing of business cards, etc., since the decision is made momentarily there.

The essence of the technique

How does the target audience get in touch with you;
What stages do users go through before making a purchase;
What emotions are experienced;
Where do barriers appear?
How successfully they move from stage to stage.

The ultimate goal is to find ways to improve user experience in particular and business processes in general.

Ideally, all touchpoints work in concert on a “pull-push” principle: any touchpoint “pushes” the consumer to the next step, and the next one “pulls” from the previous one.

At the end, you get a "road map" that shows how to engage and bring the user to purchase from the moment of the first touch.

Step 1: Compiling Custom Scripts

The consumer chain of an IT product will look something like this:

For an info product, the chain is as follows:

When buying goods / services B2C, the user goes through four main stages:

The process of ordering a product from an online store:

Think about how to activate the user at different stages, what to offer him in order to bring him closer to the next stage and, ultimately, to the conversion. Free trial period for SaaS products and other types work well.

This is a valuable offer at a nominal cost or free of charge, which will stir up interest in basic goods. For example, free samples of cosmetics, electronic book or participate in a webinar at half price, cheap related products, etc.

In these diagrams, we have shown only the most basic stages. You can build more detailed diagrams if you include all the intermediate steps down to which button to press. And for email newsletters, plan trigger chains of letters depending on the user's actions (opened / did not open the letter; clicked / did not follow the link from the letter).

Here is an example for an online store from the CarrotQuest service:

Develop a KPI system for each touchpoint to measure the effectiveness of business processes.

Step 2. Analysis and identification of barriers

The impression about the product is made up of what the user receives at all stages of interaction. When the visitor sees the first desired results, he has an insight “this is what I need!” These are the so-called aha moments, which increase the likelihood of conversion to a client.

For example, when a user enters the YAGLA service, he writes the values of the replaced elements and, using the preview function, sees how they look on his site.

An example for an online store is adding a product to the cart. The user finds what he likes in the assortment, and is likely to pay for the order soon.

At the same time, if something goes wrong, it can have the opposite effect. Even one “weak link” can spoil the whole picture: a broken link, incorrect contact details on the page, a problem with checkout, etc.

Barriers are obstacles that prevent the consumer from taking the next step. To identify them, follow these steps:

Calculate the click-through conversion for each stage to know what percentage of consumers reached the next point;
Identify barriers at points of contact. If 90% of users go from the first step to the second, and 5% from the second to the third, then something went wrong in the second case. For example, a user is faced with too confusing checkout in an online store.

You can evaluate the effect of lowering the barrier. For example, as a result, the conversion increased by 15%, calculate how much money these 15% brought to the company. The return on investment (ROI) can also be calculated from data on the cost of lowering the barrier.

Step 3. Mapping (Customer Journey Map)

In a rendered view, a Customer Journey is a graph or chart (Customer Journey Map, or CJM for short). It displays the points of contact and detailed information about each.

The main advantage of a consumer journey map is objectivity, since analytics is used during creation real events and only tested hypotheses.

Benefits of the Approach

Increasing consumer conversion. The fewer barriers along the way, the more consumers reach their goals. And therefore, bring more profit;
Increasing consumer loyalty. More visitors become customers;
Rational use budget;
Timely quality improvement. It is clear how to evaluate the points of contact, their strengths and weaknesses, and where they need to be improved.

In the Customer Journey concept, the consumer is at the center of attention. The more you know about it and its behavior, the more likely you are to find the right approach to it and create the perfect product.

P.S. The concept of Customer Journey is the basis of a digital strategy, which we will discuss in the next article.

High conversions for you!

Basically, all companies with one or another success collect information about their customers. But data is just data; often the real experience of the client, his frustrations and problems remain a mystery behind seven seals. The history of interaction between the client and the brand will help clarify the situation. In business, this story is Customer Journey Map, or customer journey map.

What is Customer Journey Map

This is a story about the client's experience with the brand: from the very first contact, through the interaction process and to long-term relationships. At its core, this is a graph that shows the points of contact of the client with the brand, thus building his path. And this very chart shows you the weak points and "failures" along the way.

CJM can like focus on a specific section of the path, and give an overview of the entire experience. But what is always in focus is the identification of the key interactions that the client has with the organization. It is important to find out the client's feelings, motives, and questions that they have on each of these touch points.

The customer journey map can be designed in any form. There is no single design standard, or any rules. Each organization draws up a map in the way that is most convenient for it. Most often, it is drawn up in the form of a diagram or infographic. But it can also be a table or graph, diagram.

But the main thing is not this. Whatever the form, the goal is the same: the organization must learn more about its customers.

The need for this tool arose at the moment when interaction with the client became systemic. Channels such as advertising, website, sales department do not work autonomously - all this forms single system. As a result, brands realized that it was impossible to just leave a client after the first contact with him: the client must feel taken care of himself, he must be taken by the hand and held from the very first point to the last, passing from department to department so that he does not feel discomfort or jumps.

Not surprisingly, marketers are increasingly using customer journey maps in their work.

Why CJM is needed

The customer journey map is a powerful tool that helps to solve several important tasks at once:

makes the client loyal;
provides comprehensive work with the client at all stages of interaction with;
enhances engagement.

The map will help the designer to see and realize the real aspirations of users.

CJM gives managers the opportunity to review the entire customer experience, to see the big picture. They see how customers go through the sales funnel. Weaknesses are visible, opportunities for improving user and customer experience are open.

A customer journey map helps identify gaps, points in the customer experience that are painful for people. It could be gaps between different channels interactions, for example, the experience of moving from social networks to a website can be better.

First of all, this approach puts the user at the center of the company's thinking. Mobile, social networks and the Internet have changed customer behavior. And each business needs to be able to adapt to these new realities, new channels.

This tool will allow you to consider the feelings, questions and needs of the user. This is especially important for digital products and services.

CJM has a lot of benefits and is a really great tool. But where to start?

I suggest that you first familiarize yourself with the examples, and then figure out how to create it.

Customer Journey Map Examples

Essentially, a brand customer journey map is an illustration, model, or diagram of all the touchpoints your customers interact with your company online or offline.

Of course, this is a simple model, often primitive. Like a portrait of the target audience, funnels or any other diagrams, it is not 100% true in reality. Rather, it is a model with which we try to reflect reality with a certain degree of accuracy.

It is unlikely that you will find two similar Customer Journey Map . The design depends on your product and your goals. Sometimes it is quite complex and detailed, as in this example:

The map could be much simpler, as it is here.

Here is an example of a CJM phone repair service. As you can see, this scheme is very different from the previous ones.

See more examples. Dapper Appsis an Australian company that specializes in the development of applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows and the web.

CJM Dapper includes 5 stages: research, comparison, workshop, questions and output.

One more example -IdeaRocket LLC. The company develops animated videos for businesses. Most of their clients come from SEM.

Finally - a map of a company operating in the construction industry. It includes six separate stages: design, financing, construction, leasing, model and completion.

There are many ways to explore the customer journey, as well as ways to create the final product (the card itself). The result obtained can be used for certain areas. We hope these examples have inspired you to create your own.

How to create a Customer Journey Map

The process of creating a map should begin with getting to know the customers. And you may already have some user information on hand. Start with this -gather information.

The most important thing you need to do is find out what groups of buyers you have and what questions they ask when they are at one stage or another of interaction with the company.