Customer Journey Map Round Table Review

I had the opportunity this week to host a CXPA round table on Best Practices on Customer Journey Mapping for B2B and B2C. We had great participation from a number of companies, including Fidelity, Thomson Reuters, and ServiceNow.

We discussed two very different meanings for the term, “Customer Journey Map:”

• A research activity where you work with customers to understand the steps they take as they experience your journey, and the emotional impact of each step along the way. I wrote a white paper on the topic here.
• A workshop where you bring members together to lay out the customer journey, often involving the people and systems that impact that customer journey. These workshops are also called Customer Ecosystem Map workshops, and I put together a SlideShare on the topic here.

Among the other topics was the preferred order for doing these. There was not a consensus – some do the research first so they can bring that into the customer journey map workshops, where others use the workshops to help their teams understand the concept of a journey, and use this to build hypotheses for the research.

My take?

When I work with clients, we use a three-step process for customer journey mapping:

• Start with a Customer Journey Hypothesis Workshop where we bring the teams together to lay out their thoughts on the journey. This helps them to start the process of seeing the journey through their customers’ eyes.
• Continue with a Research-Based Customer Journey Map where we talk to customers to get their input.
• Finish with a Customer Journey Map Workshop where we use the results from the research, and then dive into the ecosystem behind the customer journey.

CXPA (Customer Experience Professionals Association) members can listen to the “Customer Journey Mapping Round Table” call here. And if you’re not a member, why not?  It’s a great investment into your Customer Experience knowledge.