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Making the Most of Journey Mapping Efforts

by Kate Kompelien

Remember These Do’s and Don’ts to Maximize the Impact of Journey Mapping

Once viewed as just another buzzword in the Customer Experience industry, Journey Mapping has quickly become a crucial component of an effective CX program. While many organizations understand the benefit and necessity of mapping their customers’ various interactions, few make the most of Journey Mapping efforts.

Where do most Journey Mapping efforts go wrong? There’s really no single answer to that question. Journey Mapping can go wrong in any number of ways, including:

  • Scope issues: Many organizations fail to properly plan the scope of a Journey Mapping project and focus on too much, or too little during the research phase. It is important to consider all channels while creating a Journey Map – however, the effort must not be so widely scoped as to lead to logistical issues or inconsumable amounts of data.
  • Lack of buy-in: As with any project that impacts the entire enterprise, it is vital to obtain buy-in from all individual employees, departments and leadership teams prior to launching a Journey Mapping effort. Without this buy-in, especially from leadership, the effort is bound to wither and fall short of optimal effectiveness.
  • Inaction or unaligned action: Journey Mapping is only worthwhile if an organization uses the information gained during the process to take action to benefit customers and employees. Failing to take action quickly can turn Journey Mapping into a waste of time and money. Conversely, action taken without first aligning the entire organization to the plan can be just as catastrophic.
  • Lack of perspective: Journey Mapping exercises are designed to help you deepen your knowledge of the steps, processes and efforts your customers go through to interact with your product or service. To gain this critical knowledge, you must remember to keep your customers’, and your employees’ perspectives in mind throughout the Journey Mapping process. Far too often organizations are unable to remain objective during Journey Mapping, and instead focus on the pathways they think customers should take, rather than the paths customers actually do traverse.
Chart: Avtex Journey Map

Put Journey Mapping to Work for Your Organization, Your Customers and Your Employees

Done properly, a Journey Map has the potential to benefit a wide range of stakeholders, most notably your customers, employees and stakeholders.

How can you make the most of your Journey Mapping efforts? If you are planning a Journey Mapping exercise, or have recently completed one, keep the following Do’s and Don’ts in mind to make the most of your mapping efforts.

DON’T do these things

  • Launch any Journey Mapping project without company-wide buy-in and participation
  • Only use journey mapping to improve your customer experience
  • Create the map in isolation, involve a cross channel and cross functional team
  • Map only part of a journey
  • Fund work that doesn’t meet an identified customer need or pain point to solve
  • Put your map on a shelf, or fail to leverage the information to take action

Instead, DO these things:

  • Obtain buy-in from all staff members, including leadership prior to launching the exercise
  • Identify customer personas and align on those you plan to map
  • Focus on a journey that is meaningful for your business
  • Take all channels into account, and map the interactions occurring on each of them
  • Understand and solve the needs and pain points of your customer identified in the map
  • Capture the voice of your customers and your employees
  • Use Journey Maps as an input into the customer experience process, and to prioritize improvements, resources and investments
  • Hold yourself accountable for fixing customer problems and addressing their needs
  • Set clear and reasonable goals and success metrics to help define the success of your journey mapping efforts
  • Track and measure to ensure you have solved your customers pains or needs

By carefully planning your Journey Mapping project, getting all departments and individuals involved, and taking clear and informed action, you can avoid the pitfalls of the process and drive CX evolution that benefits your customers, employees and organization.