Customer journey mapping is a great instrument but it’s not a silver bullet. And like it is with any tool, you have to use it properly to get the results you want. Otherwise, it’s just good old busywork that eats up time and money leaving you with nothing but a lousy t-shirt :).
Use it the right way and you’re golden, but make just one tiny mistake and wasting time and money will be among your least concerns. We’re talking losing reputation that goes away with your customers. Being UX evangelists at UXPressia we want you to take the most from your tools and that’s why we’ve come up with five cases when drawing a CJM might not help you and how you can make it work.
When there’s a hammer in your hand, once you start swinging it, there’s no going back – everything around you becomes nails. Especially your thumb. And that is one of the problems with tools - once you got your hands on some new doohickey, you blindly try to fix everything with it. Relying solely on customer journey mapping to save the day is a critical mistake you must avoid as long as you want to see positive and long-term effects in your business.
In order to get the most of the CJM, it has to be a part of your strategy, not your strategy itself. So let mapping be one of your tools, not the only one. To make real progress use it along with user interviews, surveys, contextual inquiry or with any other tool for that matter. And don’t forget the rule of thumb: quality over quantity.
Photo: http://www.quickmeme.com/
Drawing CJM just for fun and then letting it collect dust on your office shelves is another mistake you should avoid. We know how tempting it can be to play around with something new, but we also know how easily it can be left behind once another fancy thing pops up on the horizon. Thus you should have a concrete knowledge of why and what you want to use every tool including mapping for. And what’s more important is to have a sound plan of what to do once you got your map. Finally, and most importantly, you must stick to this plan! Otherwise, what’s the point?
Sometimes the UX path your customers are going through is way too short for you to create a whole map from scratch. There might be few touchpoints between clients and your business. Or if you have a very standard business model, then drawing a CJM is like going for a duck hunt with a six-barrel M134 Minigun. Now don’t get me wrong here, I do not want to take away the fun. I’m just saying that it’s way too much to make a custom map. It could be a better idea to take a pre-cooked solution.
So if what I said above fits your situation, then why waste time and resources drawing custom maps when you can take a ready-made one and get to work. Speaking of pre-cooked solutions, we got a handful of those for any occasion at our template hub.
Doing stuff because it’s trending is okay if we’re talking about what hobbies to pick up or what pants to wear. But blindly following trends is a no-no when it comes to business. Trends appear and fade away but you don’t want your business to be a flashy bam in the sky on the 4th of July. So if you consider trying CJM as yet another nifty thingy just because a guy in a tie told you ‘This will change your life!’, you better lower your expectations or reevaluate your motives. But if the motive is to make your users happy – go ahead and start drawing!
Photo: pinterest.com
Another landmine to avoid is using wrong sources for map creation. Or few sources. Or both. Let’s take interviews as an example. It is hard to argue that people often fail when they try to convey their emotions with words. Not only that, they may forget important nuances when interviewed a few days after they had their experience. Not to mention that people can simply be insincere. Exaggeration, forgetfulness, insincerity are the things you don’t want your maps to be built upon. Though you can still scoop some valuable insights from sources like that.
Yet creating maps using info collected only this way will result in irrelevant points that will misguide your UX team. Same goes to speculating. Making up ‘spherical chickens in a vacuum’ personas is not among good UX practices. On the other hand, it's not bad as long as you keep in mind that these are not real users.
They say forewarned is forearmed. Avoiding these mistakes will help you escape common pitfalls and take the best of what CJM can offer. And now that you’re equipped with our premium tips it's time to take your UX on a whole another level.
At uxpressia.com you’ll definitely find something that will interest you. Today we offer you three tools that will boost your productivity:
Click any link and let’s start building awesome UX together!