Up until this moment, we’ve been talking a lot about personas, touchpoints and why customer journey mapping is something your company can’t live without. These parts are clear enough to you and now you’re sitting behind your desk with all personas you could come up with and with dozens of touchpoints. You’re itching to start wrapping it all together, aren’t you? One thing, however, remains quite vague – what exactly should you look at when analyzing CJM? Gaps in service and all the yadda yadda. Yeah, we’ve heard it all. How about a few down-to-earth examples? Well, how about we hook you up with seven points you can inspect to make your journey mapping debut the moment of glory?
Process
Grab your microscope and look at the processes within your organization. Compare them to the steps customers take during their journey. Questions you can pose at this moment are:
- Is every process currently in place absolutely necessary for your customers to engage with your product or service? I see you’re shaking your head. Go ahead and remove all the “de trop” from the customer path or from your backstage and you’ll take UX a few steps further.
- Are there any points where customers aren’t sure what to do next?
- Does the customer have to do the same action more than once? That won’t do at all. Think about ways for fixing this mess.
Make sure there’s a clear purpose for each step your customers take. Eliminate all redundancy because less is more when it comes to user experience.
Time
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Once you’re done with processes, it’s time for timing analysis. There’s a black hole of insights waiting for you. All you need is to ask yourself this:
- How long does it take to get through the entire path? Start by looking at it from ten yards and then go closer. How much does each step take?
- Are customers satisfied with the overall timing? What about the timing at each step? If you don’t see the difference you better be seeing it now. Time is a tricky matter and we all know that the length of a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.
- Where and why customers have to wait?
- Are there any steps where customers have to wait for some sort of feedback? And once received, is that feedback clear?
Mistakes
Observe your customers in action to see what common mistakes they make. If there’s a pattern, most likely these are your mistakes and not theirs.
- Where exactly people make mistakes most of the time?
- Who makes these mistakes most often and why?
- At what stages these mistakes result in extra work?
- Do you think customers need company’s involvement to help them resolve the problem?
- How can you prevent mistakes at each stage?
Mistakes customers make can tell a lot about your product or service. Say if people click the wrong button every other time it’s not their fault. Probably you placed it on a wrong spot. Watch out for their mistakes and see what you can do to prevent them.
Costs
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You’re making money by offering something to people, but are they ready to pay that much for whatever you are offering? Ask these yourself and your team:
- What are the costs of the service at each stage?
- At what stage(s) customers won’t be willing to pay for your service?
- What’s the cost of each stage for your company?
- How much are you willing to spend on customer support?
- Are there any hidden expenses for your company? And for the customer?
- What stages imply expenses that don’t provide any value to your customers?
Channels and Touchpoints
Analyze the whole process channel by channel and touchpoint by touchpoint.
- Where and when is the entry point for customers?
- Do you offer appropriate channels for different segments of your target audience?
- At which step do you lose customers?
- Do customers see consistency in your brand across all the channels? And what about touchpoints?
People
Now take a closer look at your staff.
- Are there any bottlenecks, errors or delays that are results of having few skilled employees?
- At which steps employees fail to deliver exceptional service?
- Do all the employees understand their responsibilities at every stage of the process? Do they realize how they impact the overall user experience?
- Is there a clearly identified decision-maker at every stage?
- Are all the departments on the same page in terms of understanding customers?
Past
Once you start designing your service based on facts and not on opinions, you will certainly have a hard time with all the conversations about required changes. But that’s the cost of success. Look at the company’s past and ask these questions:
- Do we make assumptions about process based on how it used to be in the past?
- Are there any parts of the system that were not upgraded for a very long time?
- Are there any excessive touchpoints/stages that exist because of the old system legacy?
- What stages do not leverage the benefits of modern technologies?
For now, this will be enough for you. Be honest answering these questions and they’ll take to the right place.
Mapping journey with UXPressia
You can use our fine services to get there even faster. Check out our CJM tool that let’s build state-of-the-art maps in just a few click and share it with your teammates.
Create, store journey maps and collaborate online with your teammates. Keep all stakeholders in sync at every stage. Add Personas and Impact Mapping tools and you'll have almost everything to design outstanding experience! Go to UXPressia and start mapping out!