Use service design thinking to deliver marketing ROI Part 2: user journey mapping

Step 1: Use customer journey mapping to help you think like a service designer

Customer journey mapping is designed to help organisations think beyond the simple sales funnel.

A customer journey map explains really quickly and visually how a customer experiences your organisation by looking at:

• Touchpoints – the points at which the customer interacts with your organisation, on any channel (including face to face and offline material)
• Emotional experience (sometimes called ‘empathy mapping’) – how the customer feels at each stage in the journey and why
• Pain points – any friction, frustration or dislike associated with each step
• Actions – what you and the customer do at each stage

With service design thinking, a full journey map might also include:

• Resources – what you as the organisation need to use or provide at each stage to deliver the customer need
• People – who’s involved and when

The goal of the user journey map to serve each customer (sometimes represented by customer personas) better by understanding the experience from their perspective. Through this process we can hopefully uncover opportunities to:

• reduce unnecessary friction in the journey
• reduce lost sales or conversions from customers dropping away mid-journey
• improve efficiency
• deliver better customer experiences

I’d strongly recommend customer journey mapping as a way to visualise your organisation from your customers’ perspective if you haven’t done it before (or even relatively recently).  

Unfortunately, customer journey maps alone don’t magically solve the problem. Turning the insights gained into real-world results takes more.