Customer journey map

Synthesising information by sharing honest ideas and creative insights. Everyone is happy with ideas and observations you have documented. The analysis of the observations will create useful insights.

Creating customer journey maps is one of the most satisfying aspects of service design. It is visual thinking at its most powerful. Often for the first time every one will be able to see and understand the user experience.

Adaptive Path years ago published a pdf guide The Anatomy of an Experience Map, which is a bit of a hybrid process that they created. They place a lot of emphasis on being clear what story you want your experience map to tell.

‘ Your goal is to craft a communication piece that can stand on its own, inspire new ideas, and have longevity as a strategy and design tool. In the end, every map is unique.’

At Seren we used a more ‘classic’ service map, with each stage of the customer journey in its own column. Then rows or swim lanes for each platforms the user was using to interact with the service for that part of their journey.

In a retail journey you might describe, the stages as Discovery and Research, Browsing and Choosing, Ordering and Paying, Advocacy and Feedback, and also Recover if anything goes wrong. The rows will show a wide variety of media, places and devices for example mobile phone, retail space, desktop, delivery services, social media, press. Your research will allow you to plot the positive points and pain points in the users journey.