Two weeks ago I hosted a webinar with Intouch Insight (you can view the recording here), and I was blown away with all of the good questions we had. We left fifteen minutes for Q&A and weren’t even able to get through everything!
Samuel, in particular, asked two good questions we often hear from companies considering journey mapping, so I thought I’d share his questions – alongside my answers – for our broader audience.
This is a very common question, one we receive in nearly every first conversation. In fact, with one prospective client, we had four one-hour sessions trying to answer this question, followed by an onsite two-hour discussion with leadership to get to the bottom of what was right for their needs. Another client spent six months working through potential different journeys to map.
My answer:
There is no single answer to this question. To find the right answer for your organization, start with the business problem that’s led to your journey mapping initiative. Something has led you to spend your scarce time looking into journey mapping – this should drive your decision. We typically see one of three business problems:
The one drawback is that many will say, “wow, those all sound good.”
Customer journey mapping (and customer experience and even business overall) is about trade-offs. For a project (to be announced soon!) we interviewed dozens of CX pros who have led journey mapping initiatives, and one phrase kept coming up: Don’t try to boil the ocean. While it’s probably true that all of these are happening, successful journey mapping requires selecting one of these problems/opportunities and going after that.
The key is: Start with a business problem.
The channels covered are selected from the business problem, but also based on what customers do. Rather than forcing your map to cover just one channel, let the customers lead you to what channels to focus on.
If your goal (for example) is to move more customers to self-service, then I’d create two maps – one focused on those who use self-service and one on those who don’t (you may want a third for those who switch channels). Look to see what separates the two. Is it the type of problem addressed, the type of customer (perhaps a different persona), or something different? Then use this to find ways to encourage the preferred behavior. Understand that there are reasons that customers use the channels they do, and trying to force the behavior you want is unlikely to be successful unless you focus on the Desire component of the ADKAR change model.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but keep in mind what journey mapping is all about. It’s not about you – it’s about your customer. Since your reason for mapping should be based on a business problem, it’s unlikely to be about what you do well. It’s possible that an organization would say, “We have a really good portal. Let’s map that portal experience.” It’s more likely, though, that a sponsor would say, “We’re redeveloping our portal. Go find out how people are using our existing portal, so we can target our upgrades appropriately.”
It’s less about mapping what you do well, and more about finding ways to redesign the process to better address customers’ emotional outcomes. Yes, you want to leverage what you do well. Use the business problem to address the scope of the map; then, the best CX programs use this information to recreate the experience for a desired emotional outcome.