customer journey mapping ikea

 Get a free consultation

Exciting news 🤩 Our  project  has been nominated for the UX Design Awards!

• Business Analysis
• Development
• Video production
• Dedicated design team
• EdTech design
• Enterprise design
• Healthcare design
• Real estate design
• Case studies
• Price calculator

Customer Journey Mapping Both Online and Offline: an IKEA Case Study

But IKEA is known for way more than their friendly priced food. Most people seem to absolutely love the store, but it’s almost paradoxical in how they also lovingly mention their frustration at how much time and money they end up spending on their “IKEA runs”. 

This got us thinking about the customer experience in these stores. In a world where we’re told to simplify our digital customer journeys from point A to point B so that everyone can get what they want as quickly as possible, how has IKEA found so much success in their meandering store layouts?

If you haven’t yet seen one of their layouts, take a look at this map.

Source: https://m.ikea.com/au/en/stores/tempe/storemap/

Not your typical point A to point B trip, right? There’s a good reason for that.

A lay of the land

In case you haven’t yet had the pleasure to pay IKEA a visit, let’s try to paint a picture of what the experience looks like, using our imaginary friend (customer persona) named Sally.

Upon entering the store, Sally is greeted by the store staff and provided with a signature blue shopping bag. Then off she goes on her journey. 

We’re pretty sure that Sally has one or two things in mind that she needs to buy. However, before actually getting to buy anything, she has to go through multiple showrooms. These showrooms serve as a physical catalog of furniture that can later be picked up. After finding her way through the maze of showrooms, possibly a quick cafe stop (yum, meatballs), and endless buckets of “on-sale” stuff, Sally can finally get to the warehouse section to pick up the furniture she wanted. “Finally!” she thinks…with a big bag full of things she maybe doesn’t actually need in hand. An hour ago she had just wanted a desk. 

What happened to Sally is an extremely typical situation for anyone who has ever shopped in IKEA. The store has been intentionally laid out in a way to have Sally see the store in its entirety before she’s able to leave. It exposes Sally to more goods and subsequently more temptations. Just like a kid in a candy store.

So what can we, digital product lovers and founders, learn from IKEA? – Customer journeys matter. Let’s break down why that is.

Customer Journeys 101

Unlike the sales funnel analysis (which we’ve written about in our last walkthrough), customer journey mapping is not linear. Let’s imagine a scenario to illustrate what we mean. 

Sally is a well-informed customer. She did a lot of research before going to IKEA, even asking her friends and family for advice. She may have even chosen a specific desk she wanted. But Pete (another hypothetical buyer), on the other hand, is not like that. He just went to IKEA to get a desk and grabbed the first one he saw. 

In terms of funnel analysis, Pete and Sally arrive at the IKEA store at a similar point in their readiness to buy something. However, customer journey mapping digs deeper into the intricacies of the buyers’ behavior within the funnel, including the context, emotions, goals, and other aspects of their behaviors and surroundings. That’s the key reason why customer journey maps (CJMs) are valuable to lay out.

What is a customer journey map?

Here's a customer journey map we created for one of our clients. The purpose of it was to help them redesign their website. We used a tool called UXpressia to create this journey.

A customer journey map is a visualization of the series of steps a customer must take to interact with a product in relation to things like their thoughts, emotions, goals, and motives. So, for Sally with IKEA, these steps could look something like this:

• sees a big billboard advertising furniture at IKEA;
• realizes she needs a new desk;
• drives to the closest IKEA store;
• walks into the store and picks ups the shopping bag;
• leaves the store;
• uses this piece of furniture every day

These bullet points are called touchpoints, i.e. every interaction between Sally and anything that's related to IKEA's brand.

Despite the usefulness of the customer journey mapping, it is by definition a generalization. As with any generalization, there is a certain degree of inaccuracy, but this does not outweigh the value that customer journey maps bring to the table.

Why bother creating a customer journey map?

Shortlisting the touchpoints is helpful whether or not you have a digital or physical product already created, or are planning to develop one.

If you wonder what we mean by “how people actually use your product” take a look at this picture.

Source: Fred Steube’s twitter (@Steube)

See? Make sure you know your customers’ shortcuts 🙂

Before we dive into how customer journeys can be mapped, let’s take a look at what a bad customer journey might look like.

An equally poor blunder is to create a customer journey and then leave it forgotten and abandoned on your Google Drive or network folder. Just like all your business activities,  this map has a purpose . Depending on that purpose, you  should customize your CJM and then put it into action.

How do I create a customer journey?

The tools .

Literally, grab a piece of paper and a pen. If you prefer digital tools, open an Excel or Miro board. You can go as far as using designer tools like Sketch, Figma, or UXPressia. Whatever works best for you!

As you begin to create your first customer journey, it’ll be helpful to think about your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP). Having an ICP is crucial to every business for many different reasons, but when it comes to creating a customer journey map, this knowledge will help you understand a ton of things. 

A good persona profile will tell you how busy your customers are, what their goals and priorities are, what they look for in the products they use, and many other demographics and psychographics. When in doubt, the ICP should always be your guide.

Don’t have an ICP yet? Check out this article  to create one, or contact us . We’d be happy to help.

1. Write down the touchpoints

It’s usually advisable to split the touchpoints into logical sections. We can borrow the terminology from funnel analysis; feel free to modify the jargon if necessary, since some customer journeys do not entail buying something. 

Let’s write the sections horizontally.

Great! Now let’s start filling in some touchpoints for Sally and IKEA. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll minimize the number of them.

If you want to see the bigger picture here’s the link to the whole journey.

Touchpoints

Sally moves into a new appartment. She naturally needs furniture. Alongside with the new apartment Sally got an IKEA discount code.

Interest & Consideration

Sally goes online to research the options IKEA can provide her with. She also scrolls through different review sites to see what other people have to say about IKEA, and compares the prices for other furniture retailers too.

Sally drives to the closest IKEA store, enters the supermarket, gets the shopping bag, and enters the showroom.

Having gone through multiple showrooms, Sally has chosen a piece of furniture she wants. She also noticed a couple of buckets with products on sale, so she picked out a few other things she might need.

While heading to the warehouse, Sally also goes through the market hall. Again, Sally sees a lot of things she’ll probably need like lamps or curtains, so she picks up more stuff.

Having arrived at the warehouse Sally wants to collect the piece of furniture she’s chosen. But then she realizes it might be too big to fit in her car.

Sally asks a consultant whether it would be possible to have the furniture delivered to her house. Yes, it is possible. For an extra fee, the IKEA employees can even assemble it. Sally agrees.

Sally’s going home. A bit later that day she has her furniture delivered and assembled. She’s happy about the purchase.

Brand Evangelism

Wanting to share her great experience at IKEA, Sally boasts to her friends that she’s got new furniture. Then, she recommends IKEA to her other acquaintances.

2. Customer’s goals

Understanding the customer’s goals is the easiest way to tell whether your product’s functionality satisfies them. When thinking of goals, try to dig deep into the actual desires your customers have and the optimal ways to satisfy them.

Sally needs a piece of furniture. She’s looking for a store to get one. She’s looking for a balance between quality and cost.

Sally wants to compare the prices to make sure she’s getting a good deal. She also needs to make sure that the product she’s going to buy has good quality.

Sally drives to the closest IKEA store, enters the supermarket, gets the shopping bag and enters the showroom.

Having gone through multiple showrooms, Sally has chosen a piece of furniture she wants. She also noticed a couple buckets with products on sale, so she picked out a few other things she might need.

Sally asks a consultant whether it would be possible to have the furniture delivered to her house. Yes, it is possible. For an extra fee the IKEA employees can even assemble it. Sally agrees.

3. Emotions

Emotions are very often illustrated throughout the process as a squiggly line like the one below. Lines that go up symbolize people’s growing happiness, and lines that go down reflect increasing disappointment and negativity.

Understanding whether your customers are annoyed or enthusiastic is insightful when it comes to analyzing threats and opportunities in the customer journey. For example, when a customer is naturally annoyed, having an upselling pop-up might not the best idea. Conversely, if a customer is cheerful, then it would be great to capitalize on those positive emotions and attempt an upsell.

A little nervous. Sally has already moved in but hasn’t yet fully furnished her apartment. It does not feel like home yet.

Sally feels somewhat enthusiastic, feels like the solution to her problem is right in front of her. She’s still not %100 certain though.

Sally is almost sure that she’s gonna get what she needs here. She’s hopeful.

Sally’s a little overwhelmed. Her check is getting bigger and bigger.

Relieved. Sally wasn’t sure if she can load all her stuff into her car but it turns our IKEA can help her with that.

Sally wants her acquaintances to think that she’s good at giving advice and be useful to others.

4. Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are especially important if you’re looking to improve your business metrics, but methodically tracking them can be difficult. Tracking these indicators is much easier for digital products due to all the analytics software out there, and the reason is simple: you’re able to know exactly how many people clicked on your ad but there’s no way to know how many people have seen your big board. 

KPIs are great for setting internal goals related to customer engagement and sales.

Number of discount codes.

Number of google searches related to IKEA.

Number of visitors / the amount of money an average customer spends on auxilary products.

Number / percentage of customers who pay for the furniture delivery / assembling.

Customer retention.

5. Problems

View your product as a solution to your potential customers’ problems. In other words, what other problems do your customers tend to have? How can you help them solve it? Is there enough information on the web or other places about the services you provide or the goods you sell? Do your customers have concerns about the quality of your products? Having a good idea of these types of problems will help you answer these questions and drive your revenue up. 

Sally’s apartment is pretty much plain. She wants to make it feel like home. She doesn’t know where she can get good furniture.

There is a lot of information about IKEA and its competitors. It’s quite challenging to digest everything she needs to know.

IKEA store is huge. Sally’s overwhelmed with the options she has. She’s not sure whether she knows enough to make a good decision.

Sally’s getting more and more conscious about her budget. Getting a few things on discount is ok but spending too much on things she doesn’t really need is not.

Sally doesn’t know how to get the piece of furniture delivered to her house.

Sally doesn’t know if it’s worth recommending IKEA to other people cause she’s not sure if she’ll get rewarded.

6. Use your imagination

You can add as many rows as needed to make this customer journey map useful to your business, taking into account as many additional factors as needed. One could consider different demographics and psychographics of your customers, how they find out about your company, if they previously engaging with you online or offline, and what digital devices they use. It’s also worth taking a look at your own processes within the customer journey map, identifying stages that are ripe for optimization? The specifics depend on the kind of business you have, though, and you are the ultimate judge of what’s most relevant.

Your Business Idea 1

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Your Business Idea 2

Your business idea 3, your business idea 4, your business idea 5, your business idea 6, bringing the physical world online, and vice versa.

All the principles we discuss in this article can and should be applied to software. We used IKEA as an example since their physical journey provides much fodder for discussion. However, we can also explore some digital-first companies and see how their customer journeys also translate into roundabout ways to tempt customers with additional purchases that might satisfy their myriad needs (and whims).

Let’s take Amazon as an example. Unlike IKEA, Amazon provides its customers with an easy and intuitive way to quickly find the main thing they’re looking for, either through the search bar or the product catalog. Customers simply need to type in what they want in the search bar and pick a product. However, in order to expose the shoppers to more “temptations”, there are additional areas of the website, like “compare to similar items”, “customers also search for”, “recommended by Amazon”, and other attention grabbers. 

It’s important to note that customer journey maps don’t only apply to eCommerce or brick-and-mortar stores. They’re useful for any kind of physical or digital product or service. 

Here are a few more examples. 

If you don’t have a paid subscription, Spotify allows up to six skips while you’re listening to music playlists. If you try to skip a song for the seventh time, a “you’ve discovered a premium feature” pop-up appears, subsequently recommending the paid subscription. Allowing six skips helps you see the value in this particular feature, while the pop-up requests you to subscribe in order to have unlimited skips.

Grammarly, a proofreading and spellchecking internet browser extension, also provides a great example of utilizing the right time to upsell. Under the free plan, Grammarly only tells you if you’ve spelled everything correctly. If you also make a stylistic, word-choice, or other types of mistake, it simply alerts you and then suggests subscribing to see the details about what’s wrong. 

As you can see, customer journey maps are very helpful in laying out your customers’ overall experiences in engaging with your company. Positive experiences yield positive results and growth. Negative experiences often yield negative returns. 

Following the steps we outlined should give you a solid template for creating your own customer journey map. Since you’re the person who knows the ins and outs of your product or services and the customers you like working with, you’re the best person to map everything out. However, if you feel like you could use help from a professional, feel free to drop us a line or subscribe to our newsletter for more tips! 

PS. As a reward for you, our beloved reader, who’s made it to the end, here’s a link to our customer journey template. Feel free to copy and modify for your needs.

Did you like the article?

Help us share it:

prev .  

Typographic Hierarchy: Everything You Need to Know

next .  

Conversion Funnels Mapped: the Awareness Stage

Start your project with us ..

• Partner Content

Home » How IKEA Flawlessly Brings The Customer Journey Mapping To Life

How IKEA Flawlessly Brings The Customer Journey Mapping To Life

IKEA — the mystical land of flatpack furniture and Swedish meatballs.

There’s much to be said about this Swedish marvel of a business, starting from the fact that it remains the world’s largest furniture retailer and one of the most loved businesses worldwide .

So, what is it about the endless maze of open floor plans and decadent room displays that pulls us in? It can’t just be the pun-worthy names each item of furniture is endowed with or the neatly stacked rows of flatpack furniture just waiting to be unpacked and assembled. Akin to a Saturday morning sausage sizzle reward at Bunnings, there’s something about the experience of starting from the top and working your way through the maze of rooms, until you finally reach the haven of meatballs, soft-serve ice cream, and hot dogs.

What’s more: you get all of these things at a ridiculously low price. IKEA’s low costs for their furniture and food items is one of the key reasons why people suffer through the crowd to get there, time and time again. If that doesn’t appeal to customers, then their interesting choices of product names might.  

NTWRK co-founder and chief customer and people officer Garreth Dorey said: “Short of it being a maze, it’s also a-mazing at bringing to life the customer experience and journey mapping in real-time engagement.”

Customer journey mapping comes to life

“Customer journeys are the roadmap of a business. IKEA takes it to the next level. There’s more to their floorplans than carefully laid out aesthetics and room segmentation. IKEA’s floorplan is, in fact, a very carefully curated labyrinth that brings the customer journey to life,” said Dorey.

Each phase of room displays, paired with conveniently-placed feature items, creates touchpoints for the brand to engage with its customers beyond just securing a sale. This interactive and intuitive journey is by no means a covert operation — customers walk into IKEA knowing full well they’re being led through a sales pitch. And yet, they still go in, and they still buy things they didn’t know they needed.

It’s funny because it’s true. Right?

IKEA’s level of genius isn’t just about trapping their customers within a seemingly inescapable maze with only one exit. Granted, some people might feel like mice trapped in a maze, but IKEA’s floor plan is in fact, genius. The customer’s literal journey through the store allows them to experience the buying process at their own leisure. It allows for every product available, with the burden of purchase being only a casual but terribly convenient suggestion.

Holding their hands, but from a distance

Despite appearances, customers aren’t just left to fend for themselves. Dorey said: “IKEA’s engagement and interactions with their customers come from a distance and with subtlety. Their touchpoints range from large arrows painted on the floor and overhead signages to customer service and interactive IKEA information hubs.”

Subtlety is one of IKEA’s strong suits when it comes to crafting its physical and theoretical customer journey. Judging by the success of this global business and brand, balancing subtlety with obvious marketing goes a long way.

Maze with a meaning

“It’s all about perspective with IKEA. Customers walk in and experience immaculate interior design that could be their own. Beds to lie on, couches to rest their weary feet, neatly organised kitchens to strive towards. People walk into IKEA to experience the living space they dream of — and IKEA provides them with an opportunity to achieve these dreams. Each layout emphasises the idea of perspective and interactivity between customers and business,” said Dorey.

The ability to experience the products firsthand further boosts chances of purchases being made, or rather, increases the likelihood of conversion. Because the layout of the showrooms is a little tedious to manoeuvre more than once, customers are encouraged to make quick conversion decisions in regards to their purchases.

We’ve all done those drive-by purchases — packs of multi-coloured food clips, food containers, assorted kitchenware. Things that weren’t on our buying list but somehow made it into our reusable blue bags anyway. IKEA is a haven for impulse purchases, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

IKEA gets away with these blatant marketing tactics for one simple reason — they add value. Customers venturing into their maze of display rooms and warehouses more often than not come away with a purchase they’re satisfied with. No matter the size of their purchases, they’re getting value out of their conversion one way or another.

The IKEA customer journey map isn’t all that hard to implement. It takes is some subtle customer engagement and a curated customer experience that’ll leave them coming back for more. After all, cheap, high-quality product is worth the adventure.

And if nothing else, there’s always Swedish meatballs!

Please login with linkedin to comment

Latest news, the unapproved climate certification allegedly causing mass greenwashing.

Are you left flummoxed in the canned tuna & free range eggs aisle? Just wait till this green certification gets up.

TV Ratings (22/04/2024): Fans Mock “Over The Top” Reaction To New MasterChef Judges

MasterChef returns for its 2024 season. B&T stands by putting peppercorns in Gravox & no one will be any the wiser.

Dentsu Restructure: Muddle, Harvey & Johnston Take Leadership Baton As Bass & Yurisich Exit

A large broom has swept through Dentsu's local ops this morning, taking with it some big names & the air con's cobwebs.

Industry Shares Trends Shaping The Industry This International Creators Day

B&T's asking adland creators to reveal their top trends. And it's not good news for your Jenny Kee cardigan collection.

Mable Extends HOYTS Sensory Screenings Partnership

Mable has extended its HOYTS sensory screening partnership. Vigorously defends its two-star Oppenheimer review.

Orphan Launches ‘They Need Our Help. We Need Yours’ For Children’s Cancer Institute

Anything to do with childhood cancers has B&T's 110% support. That said, we do ignore the red meat & alcohol warnings.

Smile Team Orthodontics & Keep Left Collaborate On Smile-Inducing Campaign

As parents would attest, given the cost of orthodontics you'd expect this campaign to be a lavish production indeed.

Opinion: How Video Calls Neglect Learning Diversity

Need an excuse to duck out of a video call this arvo? Show this to your boss.

DoubleVerify Achieves First-Of-Its-Kind Responsible AI Certification From TrustArc

DoubleVerify receives responsible AI certification. However, not its robotic vacuum that's been seen menacing the cat.

Smile For A Good Cause: The Social Media Campaign Giving Back To The Community

Are you known as the office Austin Powers? More for you teeth than shagability? Get snappy new fangs with this news.

Elon Musk Mocks Albo After ESafety Wins Court Injunction Against X

Albo's 2024 from hell continues - Rabbitohs in crisis, down in the polls and now feuding with world's richest man.

• Advertising

Real Estate Developer In Hot Water Over “Sexually Exploitative” OOH Campaign

Real estate agents again tops in the 'least trusted profession' polls, nudging used car salesmen & ad creatives.

Epsilon’s Shane Hanby: Post-Cookie Era Relies On “Teamwork” Between Brands, Marketers & Tech

This pro predicts more "teamwork" in a post-cookie era. Which spells bad news for the uncooperative or plain stubborn.

Entries For Five Decades Of Advertising Graduates Awards Close On Monday

Entries for the Five Decades of Advertising awards close Monday. And no extensions! Any bribery is open til Wednesday.

Cadbury Extends Commitment To Women’s Sport With Sweet New Wallaroos Deal

Rot your teeth, get fat and support women's sport all at the same time with this sweet new sponsorship arrangement.

Campfire X & Nando’s Partner To Acknowledge Traditional Land Owners Across Australia

Chicken chain unveils important First Nations initiative. The actual chickens more concerned with the Adani coal mine.

Lisa Ronson, Naysla Edwards & Ben Hill Join MFA Awards Signature Judging Panel

MFA Awards adds some serious clout to its judging panel. Still no confirmation Paulini will be performing on the night.

Connect Hearing ‘Sounds Good’ Platform Via Bread Agency

Every office has that one hard of hearing person that's oblivious to the fact. Ramp up their insecurities with this.

Ipsos Iris Data: Australians Prioritise Entertainment & Sports Over Serious News In March

Data shows Aussies prioritising light entertainment over hard news. And who can blame them if you've seen the hard news!

Fur Media Partners With Mad Paws To Support Advertisers

It's never good if your office smells like faeces & brine chunks in aspic. Not if you're pet-friendly agency Fur Media.

MAXIBON Drops Epic Flavour Collaboration Via SICKDOGWOLFMAN

There are few pluses to be had with global warming, except the extension of ice-cream eating season.

Sling & Stone Scrubs Up With Lush Account

Got friends at Sling & Stone? Expect the dreaded loofah and bath bomb for birthdays/Christmas this year.

SBS’s The Cook Up With Adam Liaw Produces ‘Fewer CO2 Emissions Than Industry Average’

SBS could go full vegan for Adam Liaw's seventh season and reduce its TV audience and emissions by 99 per cent.

GumGum & Playground xyz To Merge Media Portfolio, Creating “Powerhouse” Ad Suite

GumGum & Playground xyz tap into consumer mindset. B&T prefers tapping a keg, but whatever works.

• B&T Exclusive

All The Winners & Grinners From The TikTok Young Lions Awards Night!

Last week saw every part of the human experience: Exalted, devastated, exhausted & stuffing sausage rolls in the corner.

TV Ratings (21/4/24): Farmer Wants A Wife Wins Sunday Prime Time

Farmer Wants A Wife does make the country life seductive. Apart from the manure stench & the bleating roosters at 5am.

Australia’s Automotive Industry Shifts Gears With CTV

How much was CTV responsible for Australia's record car sales in 2023? Or those horrible oversized American utes?

by B&T Magazine

Australia’s C7EVEN Communications Launches Services In Japan With New Tokyo Office

Aussie comms agency unveils its Tokyo plans. Confirms it's still getting the hang of the toilets over there.

Daniel Goldstein Promoted To Head Of PR At Example

Try as he may to surreptitiously blend in with the wall in his photo, this PR fellow still relatively easy to spot.

Marie Claire & Volvo Partner For The Planet: Nominees For The Inaugural Marie Claire Sustainability Awards Announced

Fashion bible Marie Claire unveils its Sustainability Awards. Yet still refusing to recycle 2023's maxi skirts trend.

Sefiani Unveils A Wave Of Promotions & Appointments

Life's good in PR/comms as Sefiani unveils new hires. Well, bad news for media sites obsessed with redundancy stories.

Yahoo Launches Identity Solutions For CTV

Connected TV just got a whole lot more exciting with this innovation. Bar the incessant Friends re-runs.

Infosum Launches Data Clean Room Solution With Samsung Ads Australia

Infosum & Samsung Ads launch a data clean room solution that's a lot more than a Wettex & squirt of Ajax.

Fast 10: Bread Agency’s Amaury Treguer On Its “Unrivalled” Social Commerce Focus

Bread Agency's Amaury Treguer takes B&T's Fast 10, as he reveals why he won't be sandwiched up against the opposition.

X And Elon Musk To Sue Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Over Sydney Stabbing Takedown Order

If this all wasn't traumatic enough, Elon weighs in to prove he's the world's richest man & world's biggest dickhead.

CRA Siren Award To Be Presented At B&T Awards 2024!

Often attend award nights & think "I wish this night would never end"? Well, B&T's just got that tiny bit longer.

You are using an outdated browser

Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

Signing in with LinkedIn

Please wait while we sign you in with LinkedIn.

This may take some time.

Please be patient and do not refresh the page.

(A new window from LinkedIn should open for you to authorize the B&T login. If you don't see this please check behind this window, and if it is still not there check your browser settings and turn off the pop-up blocker.)

SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR FREE

Never miss a story again. Sign up for B&T's daily newsletter now.

Existing customer? Sign in

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Journey Mapping [Updated 2022]

In a world full of choice, how are brands standing out?

By creating exceptional customer experiences.

Emotions play a large role in purchasing decisions. Brands that can create positive experiences are more likely to attract and retain customers, drive revenue, and experience growth.

For many businesses, customer journey mapping (CJM) is the first step towards creating these exceptional customer experiences.

We’ll talk about what customer journey mapping is, why customer journey mapping is especially important for offline-first businesses, and how to create your own customer journey map..

Customer journey mapping process, source: Unsplash

Customer journey definition

Your customer journey is the series of touchpoints your customer experiences as they interact with your brand on their way to making a purchase or after purchasing.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. It highlights the various touchpoints, actions, and goals a user has in the process of becoming your customer.

Since 56% of customer interactions happen across channels , there are many opportunities for cost savings, growth, and customer retention for your brand when you deepen your understanding of your customer’s journey. It’s best practice to map out your customer journey so you can identify pain points and opportunities for growth.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of your customer journey from the moment they first interact with your brand all the way through to when they become loyal advocates.

Customer journey mapping will help you step into your customers’ shoes and gain valuable insights into their real-world interactions with your brand – from clicking on your Google ad to stepping into your museum or store.

A strong customer journey map will provide insights into the aspects of the customer journey that are working well, not-so-well, and any aspects that may be missing altogether. These insights are an incredible resource as they help you to better understand your customers and pinpoint where you should be focusing your time and efforts.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

An exceptional customer experience is essential if you want to build brand equity, attract customers, and grow your business. Your customers interact with your organisation in a variety of ways. With the increasing complexity of interactions online and offline you’d think customer journey mapping features in most organisations’ customer experience (CX) plans.

How would you best describe your understanding of the customer journey? Source: econsultancy.com

Yet, even though 81% of companies believe customer experience is a competitive advantage , only 8% report having a joined up omnichannel strategy. A full 33% admit they’re unable to track customer journeys at all.

It makes sense to spend some time creating your customer journey map – 71% of brands say that customer journey mapping has reduced their customer service costs by up to 20%. A further 77% of consumers say they view brands more favourably when they ask for feedback.

With 84% of consumers saying being treated like an individual is very important to winning their business, it’s critical that you understand your buyers’ desires and pain points at every interaction with your brand.

Source: salesforce.com

To create an exceptional customer experience , you need to have the proper data. Customer journey mapping is a strategic tool that helps you create personalised experiences along every step of the customer journey. It helps you meet short-term customer needs and expectations but also gives you a long-term view of their expectations so you can anticipate future needs. A customer journey map provides you with the insights you need to better understand your customers. This allows you to then create a customer experience that satisfies all their expectations.

The last mile of the customer journey is an important topic and customer journey mapping can help you identify opportunities for advanced forecasting, optimised delivery, intelligent insights, and real-time tracking.

Benefits of customer journey mapping

With information comes empowerment. By gaining a deeper understanding of your customer experiences through customer journey mapping, you will be empowered to make decisions that elevate your business.

By thoroughly mapping customer journeys, you can develop a customer-focused mentality, improve your customer retention rate, and gain a deeper understanding of your customers.

Customer journey mapping has several benefits , including:

• Uncovering the differences in behaviour between buyer personas
• Creating a logical buying process
• Optimising the onboarding process
• Benchmarking your customers’ experience against predictions

You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company

Although every department in your company is working towards the same goal, the objectives of each department may be slightly different. Everyone in the business wants to achieve growth. But while the marketing department focuses on building brand awareness, the accounting department focuses on profits and losses. Whatever the department’s objectives may be, the customer must always be at the heart of every action and goal.

By creating a customer journey map that illustrates the entire customer journey and the role each department plays in shaping the experience, you can unite departments over a shared customer-focused mentality. This shared mentality can help departments unite their objectives, improve the customer experience, and reach the same goals.

You can improve your customer retention rate

Customers are largely driven by emotion. If your business delivers a consistently positive experience, your customers are unlikely to take their business elsewhere.

By improving customer engagement and your customer retention rate through exceptional customer experiences, your business will likely also benefit from:

• Increased revenue. You are more likely to up-sell and cross-sell to existing customers. These revenue sources are often more profitable for your business.
• Improved external touchpoints. Your loyal customers will share positive referrals and reviews of your business to new potential customers.
• Cost efficiencies. It is generally more affordable to retain current customers than to attract new ones.

You can gain a deeper understanding of your customer

The best way to help your customer and create an exceptional customer experience is by understanding who they are and what they want. Diving into the actions and touchpoints your customers have along their journey will reveal the different goals they have and the outcomes they expect. This understanding will allow you to implement solutions and strategies that appeal directly to your customer’s wants and needs so you can continue creating those positive experiences and build brand loyalty.

A case against customer journey mapping

While there are many benefits to creating a customer journey map, it is not without its limitations. Some of these limitations include:

Little opportunity for flexibility. If you are a newer business without a pre-established customer journey in place, creating a customer journey map can limit your ability to test and experiment with different customer experience models or initiatives.

Excludes external factors. Inputs such as cost, implementation difficulty, and competition are not included in a customer journey map. However, these inputs have the potential to hold a notable influence on your overall customer experience and customer satisfaction.

Does not consider related journeys. Purchases don’t often happen in isolation, and your customer is likely engaging in a variety of related journeys with multiple businesses at the same time. CJM’s are not able to evaluate how these related journeys impact one another and influence the overall customer experience.

Despite its limitations, a customer journey map is still a great tool. Supplement CJM’s shortcomings by implementing additional tools that can work alongside your map.

The basic concepts of a customer journey map

A customer journey map combines a series of touchpoints, actions, emotions, and barriers that your customer experiences throughout their journey. Together, these inputs create one cohesive experience.

Example Customer Journey Map, source: Columbia Road

A strong journey map will include all these different inputs in detail so that you can make customer experience decisions based on complete and accurate information.

Touchpoints

A touchpoint is any interaction a customer has with your brand. This can include everything from in-store experiences and web searches to paid advertising and word-of-mouth referral. Essentially, a touchpoint is any interaction that allows your customer to form an opinion on your business.

Touchpoints are critical because their combined influence determines whether a user will become a customer. The challenge with touchpoints, however, is that many of them are outside of your control. Peer recommendations and user-generated content cannot be managed by your marketing department and depend upon the experiences of other customers with your brand.

Actions are any behaviour your customer engages in. This includes following your social media page, visiting your website, or coming to your store. While not all actions are equally important, they all play a role in determining whether a customer makes a purchase at the end of their journey.

Emotions & Motivations

Every customer has a different reason for purchasing from you. It may be because your product or service fulfils a functional need or because the customer aligns with your brand promise. Either way, the aspect uniting all purchasing motivations is emotion.

Customers’ decisions are largely based on how your business makes them feel. Ensuring you can fulfil customer’s functional needs while delivering a positive emotional experience is essential in creating a great customer journey.

Barriers & Pain Points

No customer journey is perfect, and at some point, your customer is likely to come across a barrier or pain point. Maybe your website load time is slow, or your return policy does not meet expectations. Whatever it is, most customer encounters a touchpoint or action that takes away from their overall experience.

Customers experience roadblocks, dead ends and frustration in their journey. The more friction we put in front of potential customers, the less likely they are to complete the journey Forbes

To create an outstanding customer experience, the first step is knowing where your barriers are. You need to identify these pain points and understand why they deter customers. With this information you can respond quickly and build effective solutions.

Current State

The most common type of customer journey map, is one that represents your customer journey as it currently exists. These customer journey maps outline the touchpoints, actions, emotions, and barriers that your users currently go through before and after becoming a customer. These types of CJM’s are great to help you acknowledge aspects of the customer journey that are working and identify growth opportunities.

Future State

A future state customer journey map, visualises your customer journey as you would like it to be. Future state CJM’s are aspirational by nature. They are great for creating a visual representation of your customer experience goals.

How do I create a customer journey map?

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/w00FkE6e8zE

Your customer journey mapping should seek to address questions such as:

• Which customer segments am I targeting?
• What kinds of behaviours am I looking at – linear or cyclical?
• How can I start from the customer’s perspective?
• How can I recreate experiences across multiple channels and touch points?
• How can I represent important metrics and indicators such as NPS or CSAT scores?

There are many ways you can go about creating and designing your CJM, but for best results, we recommend following the following customer journey mapping methodology:

Conduct persona research

Many businesses believe they have an in-depth understanding of your customers and the customer experience. Yet, nothing beats speaking to your customers directly. For a strong customer journey map, conduct thorough research. Interview your customers via feedback surveys and questionnaires to get more complete and honest feedback on your current customer experience. Avoid making mistakes when surveying customers .

It is important to note when building your customer journey map, it is often best practice to focus on one customer persona at a time. Your customer base is diverse and so are their experiences with your brand. One CJM will not be enough to cover the variability in different customer journeys. Begin by focusing on one persona and slowly build out more maps from there to cover multiple personas.

Understand your customer’s goals

At every step along the customer journey, there is a goal your customer is trying to achieve. Whether that be trying to find your store hours when visiting your website, or wanting to learn more about your brand personality through social media. Every action is motivated by an end goal. By figuring out what these goals are at each stage of the customer journey, you will be able to determine if these goals are being satisfied effectively. You will also understand how these goals are evolving throughout the customer journey.

List all the touchpoints

The strongest CJM’s have lots of detail and are specific. Spend time identifying all the different touchpoints in your customer journey, to get a complete view of the experience.

Map the current state

To understand how you can improve your customer experience, you must first understand how the current journey is doing. Start by mapping the current state to create a baseline and identify opportunities for growth and improvement.

Take the customer journey yourself

Your real customers will be able to tell you a lot about your current customer experience. But most customers are not taking note of each and every touchpoint. They are likely to forget minor pain points or small moments of delight when questioned later on.

Going through your customer journey yourself is a great exercise. Approach with an unbiased perspective so you can experience first-hand the strengths and limitations of the journey. You’ll find deeper insight when you put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Chart a sentiment line

Representing the emotional state of your customer throughout each stage of the journey is one of the most important aspects of your customer journey map. Each action taken by your customer is driven by emotion, so understanding how these emotions evolve throughout the journey and how they influence different actions is imperative. Include a sentiment line in your CJM that represents how emotions are evolving throughout the journey, and use this as a baseline when creating changes and improvements to your map.

Step-by-step: Customer journey mapping process

While it can be helpful to find other customer journey mapping examples, your customer journey map will be unique to your organisation’s goals and customers.

Source: davechaffey.com

We suggest the following 5 step process to build your customer journey map:

1. Gather the support of stakeholders

In the modern connected enterprise every department has a stake in the customer experience, not just customer support. Getting everyone involved early in the customer mapping process will help you define requirements and gather feedback further down the line.

2. Conduct customer research

Find out everything you can about your customers and their pain points through surveys , customer effort scores , and interviews. You can also use the data you have concerning your interactions with your customers, including your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool , social media conversations, customer support calls, and complaint logs.

Build a complete picture of your customers using words and phrases you’ve heard them use, adding motivations, expectations, pain points and other emotional elements you’ve been able to gather.

When you’re building a customer journey map, don’t forget to include customers that didn’t purchase to uncover differences in their experiences. This can provide useful insights on their decision-making process, helping you to plug gaps in your product and service offerings you may be unaware of.

3. Create your customer personas

Armed with the results of your customer research, build a comprehensive profile of your customers. You may have one or several buyer personas. A buyer persona is an idealised profile of a customer but it will help you formulate an understanding of each customer type.

Your customer persona will also help you understand your customers’ motivations.

These can be:

• Price – At the research stage
• Information and guidance – At the purchasing stage
• Recognition from peers – Post purchase, such as when recommending your product or service to their friends and family

4. Draw your customer journey map

There are many ways (customer touchpoints) your customer comes into contact with your brand before, during and after purchasing.

Your map should capture these touch points adequately, highlighting those that have the highest impact. The point of sale is especially important for many businesses because this is the last interaction your would-be customer has with the brand before committing to a purchase.

For long customer journeys, break up your map into phases , taking care to document your customers’ mindset throughout each phase as they try to accomplish different goals.

Start with a customer journey map template if you’re unsure where to start. You may want to ask a graphic designer to give your map a professional finish to maximise its impact on stakeholders.

5. Refine your journey maps

Use qualitative and quantitative data to identify roadblocks and pain points in your customer journey. Also, mark areas where you’re excelling so you can build on them. Where there are roadblocks in your customer journey, drill further into the data and try to figure out where adjustments might have the biggest impact.

How can I improve my customer journey?

Once you understand your current customer journey, you will face the challenge of figuring out ways to make improvements. While each business will have different areas of focus, here are some guiding steps to follow when creating and implementing changes.

Your journey maps will be extensive, and there are likely many different areas you could focus your time on. To avoid getting overwhelmed or, feeling unsure of where to start, begin by setting specific goals of what you want to achieve. Maybe you want to focus on your social media presence or improve your customer service wait times, whatever it is, start small and set specific and tangible goals to guide your efforts.

Decide what to measure

When making improvements to your customer journey, it’s important to measure their impact. By defining metrics and measuring the success of different initiatives, you can track your progress and create a benchmark for future changes and opportunities.

Include KPIs

Changes to your customer journey won’t happen overnight. Set key performance indicators to help keep your team focused and on track as they work towards implementing outlined improvements. Align your KPI’s with your goals to help keep the improvement process organised and succinct.

Prioritise and fix issues

Once you’ve built your current state customer journey map, there will likely be quite a few customer pain points and improvement opportunities. To decide where to start, prioritise improvements based upon their significance in the customer journey, how frequently a customer interacts with that touchpoint, and the return on investment (ROI) they can deliver. Begin by fixing the highest priority items and work your way down the list.

Review and update each journey map after every major change

As your business evolves, so will your customer journey. Every time you launch a new product, service, or location be sure to update your CJM to reflect the changes. Customers expect a lot and being able to constantly improve your offerings while delivering consistently exceptional experiences will go a long way in building customer loyalty .

Set monthly, quarterly, or annual meetings to review the CJM as a team to help get you in the practice of making updates frequently.

Example customer journey maps

No two customer journey maps are alike. Depending on your industry and who your customers are, your customer journey map will hold different details and nuances to create a comprehensive and specific visual of your customer journey.

Although each CJM is unique, here are a few examples to help get you started.

Retail customer journey map example

Source: IKEA

Customer journey mapping for big corporations can be tough. Ikea did a great job of developing a CJM that outlines the thoughts, behaviours, and emotions of a customer throughout their journey at the store. Visually appealing and easily digested, this map clearly describes the entire journey with all its complexities and nuances.

Bonus example: Omnichannel consumer journey map example

Source: Medium

It’s not a simple customer journey map, but this amazing graphic beautifully demonstrates how offline and online consumer journeys are connected as a buyer interacts with different touchpoints at IKEA.

B2B customer journey map example

Source: FedEx Business Insights

This customer journey map by FedEx is customer-focused and addresses the goal of the customer – global expansion. Through b2b international customer journey mapping, and by highlighting the customer journey from start to finish - and how FedEx plays a role in goal attainment - FedEx can position itself as an essential aspect of the B2B customer journey.

Circular customer journey map example

Customer Journey Map created by LEGO

A fun example of a circular customer journey map is the one from Lego, showing the customer experience of a Lego customer flying from Heathrow to New York City. In this example, Lego pays close attention to each step of the journey to create a detailed, unique, and exceptional LEGO customer journey.

Automotive customer journey map example

Car Rental Customer Journey Map created by Delightability

The image shows an automotive customer journey map using car rental. It’s taken from Gregory Olson’s book, The Experience Design Blueprint.

As you might notice, the relevance of each touchpoint on the journey depends largely on the audience. The company may have an interest in improving the overall experience when you’re trying to find a car to rent and using their app, but for someone renting a car for business travel, that might be less important than how easy it is to return the car at their destination.

So context matters. How you use the service as a business traveler will likely be very different from how you use it as a tourist.

The one thing we can all relate to is that most people have rented a car, so we can look at this map and think about all of our experiences in this context—and then consider how they could improve those parts that are more relevant to us based on what we do with them.

Use of customer journeys to improve customer satisfaction

Depending on what type of business you are in, the ideal customer experience will be different. By understanding who your customers are, what they need, and the experience they want to have, you can prioritise and implement the improvements that best align with your customer’s ideal experience.

In our world of change, competing on exceptional experiences is key to success. Make sure to use your journey map frequently and across departments to maintain your competitive advantage.

Tools to help you with your journey mapping

There are a variety of tools you can use to support the development of a strong customer journey map. Some of the tools that we recommend include:

Get everything done at once with Smaply.

A great tool to help you along the journey, Smaply helps you create customer personas, stakeholder maps, and customer journey maps. Includes various visualisation features and icons to help you add detail.

Create custom templates with Lucidchart

A great option for those looking to create a customised map. Lucidchart is a free online tool that allows you to develop a customer journey map using its suite of features.

Keep yourself on track with Asana.

After building your map, you will need a strong organisational system to keep you on track to implement journey improvements. Using a CRM journey map or work management platform like Asana helps you build out implementation projects, assign roles, and collaborate with your team to make customer journey changes quickly and efficiently.

15 free customer journey map templates

A customer journey map that looks great and is easily interpreted is more likely to be used by your team. Here are some great (free!) customer journey templates and customer journey canvas you can use to help develop your journey map:

• Practical Service Template
• Customer Journey Canvas
• Visual Paradigm Customer Journey Maps
• Invision App CJM Template
• Shopping & Purchases CJM Template
• Bundled Journey Map
• Graphic Customer Journey Maps
• Retail Customer Journey Template
• Miro Customer Journey Map
• Customize CJM
• Comprehensive CJM Template
• Simple Customer Journey Template
• Leisure & Entertainment CJM Template
• Restaurant Customer Journey Map
• Service Blueprint Template

Download your free customer journey map template using any of the links above.

Final Thoughts

To compete in our world of choice, you need to stand out from the crowd.

By delivering exceptional customer experiences you can stay competitive, build strong customer relationships, and drive profits.

Use the above steps, recommendations, and tools to build a strong customer journey map that will help you better understand your customers and grow your business.

Co-founder, TRACX

Tom is the co-founder of TRACX, a no-code marketing platform that allows local business owners to collect customer feedback and create engaging marketing campaigns. With over 17 years of experience in entrepreneurship, product development, and marketing for businesses large and small, Tom is currently responsible for developing product and marketing strategies for TRACX.

Give your business a boost with TRACX®

Sign up for free and get everything you need to turn visitors into customers, and customers into super-fans — all in one platform.

• TRACX is free forever
• Upgrade anytime, cancel anytime
• No coding necessary
• Get set up in seconds
• GDPR & CCPA-ready
• Hosted in EU datacentres

The Customer Journey in IKEA

Three things that most people associate with the iconic Swedish retailer: sleek, modern furniture that requires a bit of DIY, having a branded restaurant on location, and the unique customer journey in IKEA that consists of a winding store layout that takes you through a visual tour.

We have described at length how retail customers are more likely to buy as they engage with more touchpoints in your store. If you’re in the industry, you’ve no doubt contemplated what you can learn from the Swedish furniture retailer, who has continued to grow as many stores of similar store size shut their doors.

You don’t have to completely mimic IKEA to be successful. However, by using their business model, you can influence your own customer journey.

Making Your Products and Store a Spectacle

Driving to an IKEA feels like arriving at a stadium. Parking lot after parking lot complements the massive warehouse, which looks like an airport terminal.

What’s more important here is branding. When you walk inside, you enter a totally different world—while you are at IKEA, you are immersed in the world of home goods. IKEA is very clear in its branding: the IKEA store is not just a stop along the way on a full day of errands. It is a destination, and you can expect to spend more than an hour there.

In your own stores, you may not be able to build a hundred thousand square feet of space. But you can still brand your store to feel less like an errand and more like a unique experience. Have your store immerse or engage customers. Tell the narrative and guide how they will be interacting with your products.

IKEA uses its space well, with products laid out in 400 square foot compact dioramas fully loaded with their products. The more products you have laid out demonstrated or acting as touchpoints, the more likely consumers are to buy.

IKEA gives customers a good idea of how something might look in their home, the crux of selling products. They help customers go beyond just looking at products, but actually experiencing them and visualizing how they might look in their homes.

The Customer Journey in IKEA Answers Questions

Furniture shopping is arduous and a task most people put off. Think of the excuses that someone might say when they’re considering going furniture shopping.

• It’s time-consuming
• I have kids to take care of
• Moving furniture is hard
• It’s difficult to make decisions
• I don’t know what I want

Each element of the IKEA experience is catered toward answering these excuses and driving a sale – that’s what defines a customer journey. In regards to the above items, IKEA answers it as such:

• It’s time-consuming, but it’s also fun browsing their store. If you end up staying at IKEA throughout the afternoon or evening, they of course come equipped with a fully-loaded restaurant.
• IKEA has a supervised play place, “Småland”, to keep an eye on your kids.
• IKEA offers carts and carriages to help carry out the products to your car.
• The entire store’s layout is a guided, sequential journey through the different displays. It is a strict path that leads you inevitably toward the warehouse and the checkout lanes at its exit.

So in your own stores, take a lesson from IKEA: ask the questions your customers are asking. What reasons would your customers not want to go out of their way to shop at your store – and what can you do to make your customer journey an answer to those questions.

Room for Improvement

What’s next for IKEA? They could integrate their kiosks with customers’ mobile phones to cut out the need for a pencil-and-paper and note-taking when looking for products in their warehouse. They also have potential in the augmented reality space, which has served furniture retailers in China well in further amplifying the customer experience.

IKEA currently has is a step up from the competition, offering a sleek, agile, and engaging experience that sets a model for other home goods stores to follow. Even if competitors like Pier 1 Imports or Havertys don’t follow the model one-for-one, there is still a lot to be gained from looking at where they have been successful.

If you’re ready to start applying some of these lessons to your own retail locations, let us make those improvements for you. Worldlink’s team has years of experience implement networks with great bandwidth and additional IoT capabilities, as well as performing POS refreshes and rolling out digital signage and kiosks to new locations. Contact us today by simply filling out the lead form to the right, or book an appointment with us .

Stay on top of all the latest trends in IT tech, by signing up for our Newsletter.

• Cabling Infrastructure
• Channel Partner
• Digital Signage / Kiosks
• Wireless Connectivity

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

• New Locations
• Technologies

• Hide Menu"> Show Menu
• [email protected]

UX & Technology

The Customer Journey of IKEA

6th December 2021 at 16:33

As the UK team is heading to Gothenburg, we are doing a mini-series on Swedish Design. What better company to start with than IKEA? One of the most prolific design companies not only in Sweden, but in the world. There’s a cultural phenomena named after them, called The IKEA Effect – the idea that we have a cognitive bias that says we attach greater value to things we build ourselves. So, as a UX company , we thought why not add to this, and break down the customer journey and experience that is IKEA, with added input from our team of UX experts here at UX Connections.

The Showrooms.

When you enter the store you will dive straight into the showrooms. This might feel overwhelming, as there is inspiration everywhere you look. All of a sudden, you forget what you came for and have so many ideas of how you can redecorate your entire house instead. IKEA has ‘an attention to detail and it’s easy to imagine yourself in these rooms’, as pointed out by Ali ( UX Consultant ). That’s exactly what is supposed to happen, you see how just one piece of furniture can completely change a whole room, in so many different ways. It’s a convincing way of marketing their products. It’s important that it doesn’t get confusing or congested, which is something IKEA has succeeded with, according to Sirine (UX Consultant). The showrooms is also the start of an ‘almost never ending path’ as explained by Gemma (UX Consultant), a journey that for some people can feel claustrophobic and stressful, while for others it can be a way to relax and get a break from the outside world.

The Restaurant.

After walking through the multitude of showrooms, you arrive at the IKEA restaurant where you will find a selection of food for everyone. Most famous are the Swedish meatballs, which has almost become a phenomenon of their own. IKEA makes the food simple and affordable, which probably is the reason why many stop there for a break. Because of this, many families can make going to IKEA a whole day trip, spending hours inside the store, picking up more items than intended. If you don’t have to leave the store, this gives them more time to convince you to buy their products!

The Marketplace.

When you feel re-energised from all the Swedish food you’ve eaten, it is time to take on the marketplace, which is always overloaded with products. IKEA has designed it in a clever way, separating it into sections of a house, and making it so the customers must follow the path the whole way through, which makes it impossible to only see the products you were originally looking for. They do have shortcuts, as Gemma points out, but ‘they aren’t always easy to find’, and could be made clearer. Ali adds to this, saying that as IKEA targets the bigger products, it is difficult and takes a long time to find the smaller products that you are actually looking for. Gemma also mentions another UX improvement, that ‘IKEA could implement signs in the ceilings, so when you walk along the path you can easily get an overview of the room and understand what section you are in’.

The Warehouse.

Once you’re done picking up all of the home furnishings you’ve realised you most-definitely need (even though you only came in for that rug), you find yourself at the warehouse. This is where they stock all of their brown-boxed, build-it-yourself furniture. This is arguably what IKEA is best known for, and therefore it is always stocked to the brim. After noting down the different codes you’ll need whilst making your way through the store, it’s now time to find your desired item. All you do is check the aisle and position, and make sure it has the same name on the box as it did when you saw it built up in the showroom! This is a fairly straightforward process, making it easy to find what you are looking for. Once you have everything you need, it’s a clear line to the finish, where you’ll realise just how much you’ve spent!

The Checkout.

The checkout is an experience of its own. There everyone stands: queuing up to buy a desk, a chair, a bed, and maybe some fake plants. There is no store quite like it. If you’ve managed to restrain yourself and only picked up a few items, you can use the self checkout and skip the lengthy queues. Finally, you pick up your giant blue bags before you pack your house-worth of furniture away ready for the drive home. Because it’s boxed and flat, you can fit quite a few pieces into the boot of your car, making it easily transportable – you can take it home yourself rather than having to plan for a delivery man to bring it to you.

Once you finally make it home, you step into the last level of the IKEA game: the building stage. Usually, this is done a few days (if not weeks) after the trip, as you summon the courage to spend a full weekend fitting all the pieces together without pulling your hair out. You lay everything out on the floor, purposely skipping the step that tells you to check you have all the pieces you’ll need just because you like to take risks. When you then open the instruction manual and start to follow along with the images, Gemma mentions that ‘their instruction manuals only have drawings so you don’t need a long booklet with a multitude of languages, nor lengthy, hard-to-understand text’. Plus, if you do ultimately regret not checking that you have all the separate parts you need, ‘you can very easily buy independent pieces to fix this mistake’. Of course though, the emotional rollercoaster that is building IKEA furniture is certainly what has made it the cultural phenomenon that it is today – we can all understand that what should take a few hours will ultimately take at least a day for most of us.

It is clear that a trip to IKEA has become a very well-known, well-understood customer experience, one that includes browsing, shopping, playing, eating, sitting and drinking – all in a furniture shop. It has created its own cultural phenomenon that raises particular emotions in all of us, that come with not just visiting IKEA, but building the flat-pack furniture. It is designed in such a specific way that we don’t even realise we’re playing into the designer’s dream – buying more than we need, but enjoying it anyway. The ‘ user experience ’ of IKEA is one that is so different from any other furniture shop, but looking at the customer journey alone, that’s exactly why it’s become such a popular and successful global business.

Get in touch for our UX expertise!

Maisie Carroll and Elin Forsslund, Writer @uxconnections

Subscribe to the Blog Join for the latest tech, design and industry news straight to your inbox.

Our UX team designs customer experiences and digital products that your users will love.

Related articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Customer Journey Map Examples With Expert Analysis

We share customer journey map examples from a whole host of familiar brands, analysing them to find key best practices.

A Quick Brief on Customer Journey Maps

The traditional approach to journey mapping starts with leaders creating a framework that maps out every step that a customer takes along a journey – from start to finish.

In other words, they piece every customer touchpoint together – just as in the following example of 02’s customer journey map.

Example of 02’s customer journey map

Data is then collected for each touchpoint and gaps will be assessed, considering what’s happening today and what customers say they’d like the experience to look like.

Brand leaders may then choose to take action to reduce the gap and create an experience that requires less effort on the part of the customer.

However, there are some more innovative customer journeys which are designed from scratch.

Let’s analyse several of these journeys, starting with some of those that contact centres might just be most familiar with.

A Contact Centre-Specific Customer Journey

Individual customer journeys that only pass through the contact centre can be quite simple to map, so long as they pass through just one channel.

For instance, take this example of a map that follows the customer journey through the voice channel. It was shared with us by a high-end fashion retailer.

An example customer journey through the voice channel shared by a high-end fashion retailer

As is common practice, the retailer has used sticky notes to map out the existing customer journey. Let’s call this the “as is” journey.

The next stage of the customer journey mapping would typically be to analyse quantitative and qualitative customer data at every customer touchpoint. This will help to identify glitches and pain points along the journey.

Then, the contact centre can take action by removing pain points along the “as is” journey and mapping out an improved, “to be” journey.

“As Is” and “To Be” Journeys

Here’s an example of another “as is” customer journey map, from the same retailer. This shows the experience of a customer who receives a dispatch email.

An example of an “as is” customer journey map

After assessing pain points and customer emotions at each touchpoint, the following “to be” customer journey was created.

An example of a “to be” customer journey

Having looked into the systems and processes that frustrate customers, the retailer has designed a system to remove these.

With the help of Keith Gait, Leader at The Customer Experience Foundation , they managed to positively transform the journey by:

• Closing the loop on the FAQ support page
• Simplifying the returns process
• Enabling a new self-serve option to track the return, keeping customers “in the know”

The key to success? Well, according to Keith: “The retailer did not pay attention to technology and IT team limitations. The aim was for the system and IT to fit around the customer journey.”

This is a great example of working constructively with the IT team to produce the best customer experience. Too often, they dictate what can and can’t be done. Getting them onside is crucial.

Yet this was quite a simple customer service journey to clean up. What about those that require the attention of different departments?.…

A Website Navigation Journey Map

Here’s a good example of a much more complicated journey map, which follows the customer journey once they land on the retailer’s website.

An example of a high-level customer journey map for a retail website

The first takeaway is that when the customer lands on the website, there was no easy way to get to live chat. In fact, according to Keith, it took 19 clicks of the mouse.

To make matters worse, the customer service number was removed from the website and the “contact us” page is buried. The ease of customer access just wasn’t there.

Just imagine having to go through all of this trouble for simple queries such as “Where’s my order?”, “Where’s my delivery?” Or “How do I process a return?” Well, these queries made up 65% of contact volumes. Yikes.

However, to build the journey back better, Keith tells us that: “The company have captured customers’ emotions and customer pain points at every stage, especially key contact points.”

“This is important because when something goes wrong, it’s vital to see what the customer’s specific emotions are and how can we transform those.”

“Also, we closely considered cart abandon rates. These will help to highlight system limitations and dead ends, as well as providing another signal as to how the customer is feeling.”

Keith and the team uncovered lots of areas for improvement. Even from casting an eye over the journey map above, it’s easy to sense customer frustration.

The website is not giving customers the information, they’re being forced down a digital channel and there’s very little self-service. This is such a common issue across customer service and one that Keith and the team are working to fix.

Virgin Atlantic’s Business Class Customer Journey Maps

Let’s stick with the theme of using customer journey maps to unlock pain points, but look over a much longer customer journey.

The following example shows how Virgin Atlantic improved its business class customer journey based on where the customers’ “pain” and emotional vulnerability was the greatest.

With a basic framework, the company first assessed the current state of the customer journey, highlighting all the pain points along the way, along a pain/pleasure scale.

Virgin Atlantic customer journey map pain points example

For Virgin Atlantic, it was at these points – highlighted by the troughs within the pleasure/pain graph – where they could best impact customer service.

By pinpointing these, Virgin aimed to flip the experience on its head, putting forward the following prospective journey map.

Virgin Atlantic prospective journey map

To achieve this ideal red line, they came up with design features such as a drive-through check-in, arrival valet and even a driving range for customers as they waited for their flight.

The full range of these new ideas is highlighted in red below.

Virgin Atlantic customer journey design feature ideas

Many of these ideas were created to alleviate some of the negative emotions that were extracted from qualitative data at every pain point. This data is evident at every pain point, as each is labelled with very emotive language, such as “stressful”, “complicated” and “long, frustrating lines”.

For Virgin, this language made creating an action plan for improving the customer journey easier, as they understood which emotions they actively wanted to target with improvement initiatives.

Yet using emotions to structure customer journey maps is just one key takeaway from this example. There are many others too…

From this customer journey map example, you may also notice:

• Virgin have highlighted specific touchpoints to delight customers – i.e. their “moments of truth”. These are entitled: “Comfort until Flight” and “Arrival”.
• The company have identified the causes for each pain point.
• They use a pleasure/pain scale to map emotion, instead of a customer satisfaction score.

Symantec’s Customer Journey Map

The following customer journey map of cybersecurity company Symantec shows a “to be” journey (green line) in the same map as the “as is” journey (red line).

Symantec shows a “to be” journey (green line) in the same map as the “as is” journey (red line)

With two peaks in customer happiness, one towards the middle of the journey and one at the end, the “to be” journey seems to have been developed with the “Peak-End Rule” in mind.

This “rule” dictates that the memory we have of an experience is almost entirely dictated by two things:

• The gap between the experience at its peak and its trough.
• How an experience ends has a disproportionate impact on our memory.

From these two points, it’s easy to see why Symantec’s desired customer journey has two deliberate peaks in expectation. These “hallmarks” – as the company calls them – are positioned in the middle and at the end of the experience.

Coincidence? It’s doubtful. And consideration of the Peak-End Rule may also clarify why the company chose not to improve the start of the journey by so much.

“The message is that if you have some nasty stuff in the customer experience, bring it together and get it over early,” says John Aves, Chief Executive at cp2 Experience .

“But if you’ve got some nice things that’ll impress customers, space them out to provide lots of nice memories along the journey.”

You can see this in place within the “to be” journey map, as the green line bends much more than the red line. This gives the customer a more emotionally stimulating journey.

Remember, as the saying goes: “A flat line says that you’re dead.”

• Symantec only exceeds the “brilliant basics” marker on three occasions, highlighting how their investment is largely focused on creating three great memories.
• The company have highlighted their key “moments of truth”, labelling them as “hallmarks”.
• They have also ensured that every touchpoint meets customer expectations, even at the worst of times. This ensures a more consistent experience.

IKEA’s Customer Journey Map

Below is IKEA’s customer journey map, which shows its in-store experience. It highlights every touchpoint in a very visual way.

IKEA’s customer journey map, which shows its in-store experience

A few things stand out in this example. Firstly, look at the scale on the y-axis. Notice how it ranks every touchpoint via an emotion, instead of a satisfaction or net promoter score (NPS).

This is interesting, as the numbers ordinarily presented on these maps can cause confusion. Say a touchpoint was given the number 76. Is that good or is it bad? Practitioners looking to improve customer experience need to know what that means.

Secondly, IKEA has accepted that certain parts of its experience are bad. They’ve picked a few areas in which they really want to excel and have invested in those, leaving others to suffer – not to the state of being “horrible”, of course.

“IKEA has a very clear view of what they want the experience to look like,” says John. “For example, they want you to go around and experience the touch and feel of everything, and this is integral to carrying out their vision.”

“Even though the fifth touchpoint – which signifies “the round tour” – gets a low rating, they feel that the forced interaction with the products causes people to have a different emotional attachment to them as a furniture retailer.”

It’s true that lots of people just want to grab something and go. So, the round tour is not great for those customers. IKEA know this but have designed their customer journey to create brand loyalty through creating an emotionally stimulating journey.

• As in the previous example, the design of this customer journey map follows the Peak-End Rule.
• There are big contrasts between the peaks and the troughs within the graph, enabling those “moments of truth” – highlighted by the blue stars – to become more memorable.

How to Create Your Own Customer Journey Map

When working with organizations to create customer journey maps that will transform their entire business strategy, John starts by exploring four key areas:

• The executive view of where they want the brand to be
• Good quality data that highlights what the future might look like
• Competitor analysis, to understand where the opportunities are
• The culture and organizational capacity for such a big change

“Put all of those pieces together and ask yourself where is the opportunity for us to differentiate the business over the next three to five years?” John suggests.

“Then, if we are differentiating, what will we be delivering to our customers that will cause them to become loyal advocates?”

To do this, brands create customer promises, just like the following example, which comes courtesy of the UK supermarket Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s customer promises and journey commitments

This highlights three key themes: easy, enjoyable and inspiring. Each theme then has four commitments. These articulate how the theme can be brought to life.

By sticking to these commitments from one touchpoint to the next, organizations can tweak every stage of the customer journey.

In the case of the example above, Sainsbury’s executives could all agree on the themes of “easy”, “enjoyable” and “inspiring”, while their customer experience managers had a practical idea of how to bring that to life.

Discover a more detailed approach to customer journey mapping by reading our article: 5 Steps to Creating a Customer Journey Map

Final Point – Run a Cultural Change Programme Alongside Big Changes

Brands can take an incremental approach to customer journey mapping and aim to cut down on pain points. This doesn’t require organization-wide transformation and helps stop customers from screaming about things that are irritating them.

However, customer journey mapping can sometimes be a driver of a fundamental change in business strategy.

According to John: “To be a success, this needs a fundamental cultural shift, as customers don’t buy from a department, they buy from an organization.”

Don’t underestimate how big an effort this can be. Managing customer journeys is, after all, now more complicated than ever, with numerous journeys – online and offline – which intersect with one another.

So, if customer journey mapping is being used as a key to unlock a major change in strategy, people need to focus on customer experience, right across the organization. This is very different from only worrying about what they do in certain departments, like the contact centre.

Unpack lots more insights from our collection of customer journey articles, which include:

• Customer Journey Mapping FAQs Answered
• How to Use Customer Feedback to Improve Journey Maps
• 6 Ideas for Customer Journey Mapping

Published On: 6th Oct 2021 - Last modified: 28th Oct 2022 Read more about - Customer Service Strategy , Customer Journey , CX , Editor's Picks

Recommended Articles

Related Reports

How to Facilitate a Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

Posted in Blog , Facilitation , Innovation , Virtual Facilitation by Jo North

Facilitate a Customer Journey Mapping Workshop that Gets Great Results

The purpose of this article is to help you to:

• Discover great ways to facilitate a customer journey mapping workshop and create insightful, actionable before and after customer journey maps with my step-by-step guide.
• Learn the fundamentals of customer journey mapping and add it to your business tools to improve your organization’s understanding of the customers’ perspective.
• Find out why a customer journey mapping workshop is important for creating a better customer experience and meeting important business needs.
• Improve your knowledge of customer journey mapping and create a clearer understanding of your customers with this powerful tool.

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

What is a customer journey mapping workshop, overview of the key steps to creating a customer journey map, why facilitate a customer journey mapping workshop.

• Transport for London
• Gather Data for Your Workshop

Types of Data

• Importance of Customer Emotions

Risks and Benefits of Co-creating with Real Customers

Introducing the workshop, activity 1: persona creation, different types and styles of customer journey maps, activity 3: pain point analysis, activity 4: creating a new customer journey, activity 5: action planning, post-workshop follow-up, how to create an engaging, productive and fun customer journey mapping workshop, validating your new customer journey.

• Examples of Customer Journey Mapping Software Tools
• Some Useful References and Resources

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool that businesses can use to understand and improve their customer experience. It involves creating a visual representation of every step that a customer takes when interacting with a brand, from initial awareness through to post-purchase activities.

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to gain insights into customer behavior, pain points, and motivations.

By understanding these factors, businesses can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance the customer experience.

Simply put, a customer journey mapping workshop is a collaborative process where team members work together to create a visual representation of a customer’s experience with a business.

By identifying the different touchpoints a customer has with your business, you can better understand their needs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.

The ultimate goal of the workshop is to create a better customer experience and meet important business needs.

The process of creating a customer journey map typically involves the following steps:

• Define the stages of the customer journey : The first step is to identify the key stages that a customer goes through when interacting with the brand. This might include awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase activities.
• Gather data : Next, businesses need to gather data about customer behavior at each stage of the journey. This might include surveys, interviews, customer feedback, and analytics data.
• Map the journey : Once the data has been gathered, it’s time to create a visual representation of the customer journey. This might be done using a flowchart or a series of diagrams that illustrate the key touchpoints and interactions that a customer has with the brand.
• Identify customers’ pain points and opportunities : The next step is to analyze the customer journey map and identify areas where the customer experience could be improved. This might include pain points where customers are experiencing frustration or dissatisfaction, as well as opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
• Create a new, target state journey map : Using insights from identification of pain points and opportunities, create a new plan that elevates the user experience and will help to achieve your business innovation and growth objectives.
• Develop a plan : Finally, develop a plan to move from the current customer journey map to the new, target one. This might involve making changes to the product or service, improving customer service, or developing new marketing strategies.

A customer journey mapping workshop is a powerful way to create a better customer experience and meet important business needs. By using different perspectives, identifying pain points, and creating a new customer journey, you can improve the entire map of the customer journey.

Whether you run an in-person or online workshop, a thorough and collaborative process can help you gain a clearer understanding of your customers and create a better customer experience.

Real Examples of Customer Journey Maps

To inspire you and your business, here are three examples of real customer journey mapping from a variety of industries and places around the world:

1. Transport for London

Transport for London (TfL) used customer journey mapping to identify pain points in the customer experience of using public transport in London. By mapping the journey from planning a journey to arriving at the destination, TfL was able to identify areas where customers were experiencing frustration and develop strategies to improve the customer experience.

IKEA used customer journey mapping to understand the customer experience of buying and assembling furniture. By mapping the journey from research and planning to assembly and post-purchase, IKEA was able to identify pain points and develop new products and services to address these issues, such as online planning tools and assembly services.

Ikea is also well-known for its meticulously planned approach to their internal store layouts, which funnel customers through a deliberate journey amongst room designs and products to inspire customers to buy.

Westpac, a bank in Australia, used customer journey mapping to identify opportunities for innovation in its mobile banking app . By mapping the customer journey from downloading the app to making a transaction, Westpac was able to identify pain points and develop new features to improve the customer experience, such as mobile check deposits and real-time spending notifications.

There’s also a great example here of how Westpac used customer journey mapping in ux design to explore a particular problem with business banking.

Preparation for your Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

Take these steps to prepare for your customer journey mapping workshop:

• Define the purpose and scope of the workshop: In particular, be specific about which customer segment(s) and which part(s) of the customer journey experience you want to focus on. Keep you scope well-defined – don’t try to cover too much. Your scoping might involve identifying the key touchpoints and interactions that customers have with the business, as well as the goals and outcomes that you want to achieve through the mapping process.
• Gather data: Gather data about customer behavior at each stage of the journey. This might include surveys, interviews, customer feedback, and analytics data.
• Identify the stages of the journey: Based on the data gathered, identify the key stages of the customer journey that customers go through when interacting with your business.

Gather Data for Your Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

To help your workshop participants to develop a comprehensive customer journey map, you’ll need to gather data about customer behavior at each stage of the journey.

Here are some of the key types of data that you need to gather:

Demographic Data

Demographic data includes information such as age, gender, income, education, and location. It helps businesses to understand the characteristics of their target customers and how these characteristics may impact their behavior.

Behavioral Data

Behavioral data includes information about how customers interact with your business at each stage of the journey. This might include website traffic, engagement with marketing materials, and customer service interactions.

Behavioral data helps businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement in the customer journey.

Attitudinal Data

Attitudinal data includes information about customer attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. It helps businesses to understand the motivations and emotions that drive customer behavior.

Competitor Data

Competitor data includes information about your competitors’ products, services, and marketing strategies. It helps businesses to identify areas where they can differentiate themselves and improve the customer experience.

Industry Data

Industry data includes information about industry trends, consumer preferences, and regulatory changes. It helps businesses to stay informed about external factors that may impact the customer experience.

Analytics Data

Analytics data includes data from web analytics tools, social media analytics, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. It helps businesses to understand customer behavior on a granular level and identify opportunities for improvement.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback includes information from customer surveys, online reviews, and customer service interactions.

It helps businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement in the customer journey, as well as to understand customer sentiment towards the brand.

Remember the Importance of Customer Emotions

Emotions play a critical role in the customer journey mapping process as they have a significant impact on customer behavior and decision-making. Understanding customer emotions is essential for creating a customer journey map that accurately reflects the customer experience and identifies areas for improvement.

Emotions can be positive or negative and can arise at any stage of the customer journey. For example, a customer may feel excited and hopeful when they first discover a product, frustrated and confused during the purchase process, and satisfied or disappointed after the product arrives.

When creating a customer journey map, it’s essential to consider the emotional experiences that customers have at each touchpoint. This might include identifying moments where customers experience positive emotions, such as delight or joy, as well as moments where they experience negative emotions, such as frustration or anger.

By understanding the emotional experiences of customers, businesses can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to enhance the customer experience. For example, if customers are experiencing frustration during the purchase process, businesses might simplify the process or provide more guidance and support.

Furthermore, emotions are closely tied to customer loyalty and advocacy. Customers who have positive emotional experiences are more likely to become loyal customers and advocates for the brand, while customers who have negative emotional experiences are more likely to switch to a competitor or leave negative feedback.

What to do if you lack data for your customer journey mapping workshop?

If your business does not have access to sufficient data, you may struggle to create an accurate and comprehensive journey map. To overcome this challenge, collect more data through customer feedback surveys, user research, and other data gathering methods. Or invite some trusted, representative and key customers to all or parts of your session.

Co-creating a Customer Journey Map with Real Customers

Co-creating a customer journey map with customers can be an effective way to gain insights into the customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

Here are some ways to co-create a customer journey map with customers:

• Conduct customer workshops: Conducting customer workshops is an effective way to involve customers in the customer journey mapping process. Workshops can include interactive exercises, such as customer journey mapping activities, where customers provide feedback and insights on their experience.
• Conduct customer interviews: Conducting customer interviews can provide valuable insights into customer experiences and emotions throughout the customer journey. This can help to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement in the customer journey.
• Engage customers through social media: Social media can be a powerful tool for engaging customers and involving them in the customer journey mapping process. Businesses can create polls, surveys, and other interactive content to gather feedback and insights from customers.
• Create customer feedback channels: Creating feedback channels, such as online forums or customer feedback forms, can provide customers with an opportunity to share their experiences and provide feedback on the customer journey.
• Use customer journey mapping software: There are several customer journey mapping software available that allow customers to collaborate in real-time with businesses. These tools can facilitate co-creation of the customer journey map by allowing customers to provide feedback and suggestions on the map.

There are some more ideas on how to create a great event for your customers here .

Involving customers in the customer journey mapping process can have both risks and benefits. Here are some of the potential risks and benefits of involving customers in the process, along with strategies for dealing with them:

• Greater customer satisfaction : By involving customers in the process, businesses can gain a better understanding of their needs and preferences, leading to a more satisfying customer experience.
• More accurate insights : Customers can provide valuable insights into their experiences that businesses may not be aware of, leading to more accurate and comprehensive journey maps.
• Enhanced customer engagement : Involving customers in the process can create a sense of ownership and investment in the customer journey, leading to greater engagement and loyalty.
• Greater innovation : By involving customers in the process, businesses can identify new ideas and opportunities for innovation that they may not have considered otherwise.
• Complexity : Involving customers in the process can make it more complex and time-consuming, potentially slowing down the journey mapping process.
• Biased feedback : Customers may provide biased or incomplete feedback, leading to inaccurate or incomplete journey maps.
• Confidentiality concerns : Customers may be hesitant to provide feedback if they are concerned about the confidentiality of their information.
• Cost : Involving customers in the process can be costly, particularly if businesses need to offer incentives or compensation for their time and participation.

Strategies for dealing with risks:

• Manage complexity : To manage the complexity of involving customers in the process, businesses can break the process down into smaller, more manageable steps and use technology to streamline communication and collaboration.
• Address bias : To address bias in customer feedback, businesses can use a variety of feedback methods and gather feedback from a diverse group of customers to ensure that multiple perspectives are represented.
• Ensure confidentiality : To address confidentiality concerns, businesses can communicate clearly with customers about how their feedback will be used and stored, and ensure that all customer data is stored securely.
• Control costs : To manage costs, businesses can consider offering non-monetary incentives, such as recognition or exclusive access to new products or services.

Customer Journey Mapping Workshop Agenda

Introduction:.

• Welcome and introductions
• Overview of the purpose and scope of the workshop
• Define customer personas based on demographic and behavioral data
• Get clear on the personas’ “jobs to be done”. These are what the customer really aims to accomplish when interacting with your business.
• Identify the characteristics, goals, and pain points of each persona

Activity 2: Creating a Customer Journey Map

• Identify the stages of the customer journey based on the data gathered
• Map out the touchpoints and interactions that customers have with the business at each stage of the journey
• Add emotional and behavioral insights to each touchpoint based on the customer feedback and data gathered
• Analyze the customer journey map to identify areas where the customer experience could be improved
• Identify pain points where customers are experiencing frustration or dissatisfaction, as well as opportunities to enhance the customer experience
• Prioritize actions that need to be taken to improve the customer experience based on the pain points identified
• Develop a plan to address the pain points and opportunities identified in the customer journey map
• Recap of the workshop and key insights gained
• Review of action plan and next steps
• Share the customer journey map and action plan with the team and stakeholders
• Validate the new customer journey map with real customers
• Implement the action plan and monitor the impact on the customer experience
• Review and update the customer journey map regularly to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date

Here are some creative elements that you can incorporate into your customer journey mapping workshop to make it even more engaging, productive and fun:

• Role-playing: In this activity, team members take on the role of customers and act out different scenarios to explore the customer journey. This can help to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement in the customer experience. Even better, bring in some real customers for parts of your workshop!
• Visual storytelling: Use visual aids, such as images, videos, or infographics, to tell the story of the customer journey throughout your workshop. This can help to engage team members and provide a deeper understanding of the customer experience.
• Gamification: All the way through your workshop you can use game mechanics, such as points, rewards, and challenges, to make the customer journey mapping process more engaging and fun. This can help to increase team participation and creativity.
• Work in manageable chunks: Customer journeys can be complex and involve multiple touchpoints across different channels. This can make it difficult to create a comprehensive and accurate journey map. To overcome this challenge, make sure that your workshop participants break down the customer journey into smaller, more manageable parts and use multiple maps to cover the entire journey.

There are lots of other useful tips on how to be a great facilitator in my article here .

At the start of your workshop, set clear ground rules. This means establishing common goals, providing a basic understanding of customer journey mapping, and setting time management guidelines. It’s also important to ensure that all workshop participants, from senior managers to the marketing team, understand the importance of customer satisfaction, customer experience and empathy in the workshop.

To begin the workshop, divide workshop attendees into smaller groups and assign each group a different team to work on. Each team should represent a different target persona, or ideal customer, to ensure that the workshop covers a variety of perspectives. It’s also important to use research data, such as market research or customer interviews, to guide the workshop process.

Persona creation is a process of creating fictional characters that represent the different types of customers who interact with your business. Personas help businesses to understand the characteristics, goals or “ jobs to be done “, and pain points of their target customers, and use this understanding to create products and services that meet their needs.

You could use a template like the one shown in the visual below.

Step-by-step Guide on How to Do Persona Creation

• Gather data: The first step in persona creation is to gather data about your customers. This might include demographic data such as age, gender, income, and education, as well as behavioral data such as purchasing habits, interests, and motivations.
• Identify commonalities: Once you have gathered data, identify the common characteristics that customers share. This might include shared goals, pain points, or behaviors.
• Define your personas: Based on the commonalities identified, define your personas. A persona is a fictional character that represents a specific customer type. Give each persona a name, demographic information, and behavioral information that reflects their characteristics.
• Prioritize personas: Prioritize the personas based on their importance to your business. You may want to focus on personas that represent your primary target audience or personas that represent a segment of your customer base that you want to grow.
• Validate your personas: Validate your personas by testing them against the data that you have gathered. Ensure that each persona accurately reflects the characteristics, goals, and pain points of your target customers.
• Use your personas: Use your personas to guide decision-making across your business. Use them to inform product development, marketing, and customer service strategies that meet the needs of your target customers.

Bonus tip: I encourage people to think about a number of real customers within the same segment that they know well . A lso to use key insights about these real people to develop their customer personas for the workshop.

Alternative Persona Creation Activities

Gamification option.

• Divide the team into smaller groups and assign each group a persona and a specific customer journey stage to focus on.
• Give each group a set of cards or tokens, each representing a different touchpoint or interaction that customers have with the business at their assigned stage.
• Explain the rules of the game: Teams must use the cards or tokens to create a customer journey map for their assigned stage, placing the cards or tokens in the order that customers would typically encounter them.
• Each card or token has a point value assigned to it, based on its importance to the customer journey. Teams must strategize and allocate their cards or tokens in a way that maximizes their point value.
• After a set amount of time, have the teams present their customer journey maps and explain their strategy for maximizing point value.
• Award prizes or recognition to the team that earns the most points or develops the most innovative strategy.

Customer Empathy Interviews

Customer empathy interviews are a good option to support this activity. In the session, or as pre-work, teams conduct interviews with customers to gain insights into their experiences and emotions throughout the customer journey. This can help to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement in the customer experience.

It’s a great idea to video record these interviews. They can be shared with colleagues internally.

The first step is to create a user journey map.

Sometimes this is called a “current-state hypothesis map”. This map is a visual representation of the customer journey based on assumptions and hypotheses about the customer experience. It should include all the touchpoints and interactions that customers have with the business using the available data.

It involves creating a visual representation of the customer’s journey, including the key moments, touchpoints, and pain points. You can do this by using sticky notes or an empathy map, a powerful tool for understanding the customer’s perspective.

To create the user journey map, plot the different touchpoints and experiences along a horizontal line that represents the chronological order of the customer journey. Then, use a vertical axis to represent the customer’s emotions and experiences at each touchpoint. This will give your participants a clearer understanding of the customer’s experience and help them to identify areas of opportunity.

Bonus tip: You could ask delegates to create their versions of the current state customer journey map in advance of the workshop, to bring with them and combine with their colleagues’ versions.

There are several types and styles of customer journey maps, each with their own unique features and benefits. Here’s a detailed list of some of the most common types and styles:

Linear Journey Map

A linear journey map shows the customer journey as a linear progression, with each stage of the journey represented by a sequential step. This is the most common and traditional style of customer journey map.

Non-linear Journey Map

A non-linear journey map represents the customer journey in a non-linear format, such as a diagram or flowchart, that allows the customer to move back and forth between stages as needed. This style is useful for complex customer journeys with multiple touchpoints.

Emotional Journey Map

An emotional journey map focuses on the emotional experiences of customers at each stage of the journey. This style can be used to identify emotional pain points and opportunities for emotional connection with customers.

Service Blueprint

A service blueprint is a detailed map that shows the interactions between customers, employees, and processes across the entire service experience. This style is useful for identifying pain points and opportunities for process improvement.

Usually, first-hand interactions with employees in your business are captured as “front of house” or “on stage” experiences. People working “behind the scenes” – such as finance, despatch, marketing (depending on the nature of your business) are also included in the journey experience map to indicate how well the organization is set up to serve the customer.

In addition to employees, physical and virtual touchpoints on the journey are tracked and analyzed.

Moments of Truth

Examining the customer’s interaction with these elements can shed light on the “moments of truth” for your business.

Moments of truth (MoT) are moments when the customer interacts with your brand, product or service, and their experience leads them to create or change their opinion (positively or negatively) about your proposition and business.

Persona-based Journey Map

A persona-based journey map shows the customer journey from the perspective of a specific customer persona. This style is useful for identifying pain points and opportunities to enhance the customer experience for a particular group of customers.

Channel-based Journey Map

A channel-based journey map shows the customer journey for a specific channel or touchpoint, such as a website or mobile app. This style is useful for identifying pain points and opportunities to improve the customer experience for a particular channel.

Hybrid Journey Map

A hybrid journey map combines elements of multiple journey map styles to provide a comprehensive and detailed view of the customer journey. This style is useful for complex customer journeys that involve multiple touch points and interactions.

Bear in mind that some of these are overlapping and their features can be combined – e.g. you can create a non-linear, persona-based emotional journey map.

Decide what sort of map you’d like your workshop participants to create in advance of the session.

As long as they stay on track, participants can enhance and shape the format of their map as they work, so allow for some creative freedom within the scope that you set them.

Advanced Tips

A question that facilitators and delegates often ask me is: “how do you do customer journey mapping when your customer swaps between numerous channels in the same journey?”

I wholeheartedly agree that when customers swap between numerous channels in the same journey, it can be challenging to create a traditional linear journey map.

However, there are several approaches you can take to create an effective customer journey map in this scenario.

Multi-channel journey map

A multi-channel journey map shows the customer journey across multiple channels, highlighting the touchpoints and interactions that occur on each channel. This approach can help businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement at each touchpoint.

Channel-specific journey maps

Creating channel-specific journey maps for each channel the customer uses can provide a more detailed and targeted view of the customer journey. This approach allows businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement on each channel. They can then develop strategies to improve the overall customer experience.

Journey mapping with customer feedback

Gathering feedback from customers about their journey across multiple channels can provide valuable insights into pain points and areas for improvement. This approach allows businesses to identify customer needs and preferences across different channels and develop strategies to meet these needs.

A customer pain point refers to a specific problem or challenge that a customer is facing in relation to a product or service. It is a term often used in business and marketing to describe areas where customers are dissatisfied and may be considering a switch to a competitor’s offering. Identifying and addressing customer pain points is a critical aspect of customer experience management and can help businesses improve their products or services to better meet customer needs.

A customer pain point can take many forms. Examples are a difficult user interface, poor customer service, high costs, or low product quality. Identifying these pain points requires careful observation of customer behavior, feedback, and market research. Addressing pain points may involve product redesign, process improvement, or a shift in marketing strategy.

By addressing your customers’ most important pain points better than your competition, you’ll create a distinctive, compelling value proposition .

Make sure participants identify the real customer pain points, not superficial ones.

Identifying Challenges and Opportunities

As you work through the journey mapping process, it’s important to keep the scope of the journey in mind. This means focusing on the entire journey, from the first point of contact to the end point, rather than isolated touchpoints. By taking a comprehensive approach, you can create a better customer experience.

Once you’ve created the user journey map, next identify the biggest challenges and opportunities for improvement. Use the entire team’s expertise and knowledge to identify the biggest pain points and negative experiences. This will help you prioritize which areas need the most attention.

Prioritizing Pain Points

After gathering feedback and refining the map, the next step is to prioritize pain points within the journey. This involves identifying the most critical pain points that have the greatest impact on the customer experience. Prioritizing pain points helps to ensure that resources are focused on the most important issues and that the customer experience is improved in the most impactful way.

The next step is to create a new customer journey, one that takes into account the areas of opportunity you identified earlier. This can be done by brainstorming different ways to improve the customer experience and testing them out to see which works best.

The final step in facilitating a customer journey mapping workshop is to create a future-state vision through sketching activities.

This involves creating a visual representation of the ideal customer experience, based on the feedback and ideas generated during the workshop.

Participants can be asked to sketch their vision of the future-state journey map and share their ideas with the group. This can help to create a shared vision of the ideal customer experience and provide a roadmap for future improvements.

Storytelling Activities for Your Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

I strongly recommend that you consider asking your workshop participants to use storytelling activities to bring their customer journey mapping to life. There are lots of ideas for facilitators in my article here and video below.

Competitive Differentiation

Creating a customer experience that differentiates a business positively from the competition is crucial to attracting and retaining customers. Here are some ways you can prompt and encourage your workshop participants can achieve this:

• Provide personalized experiences : Use customer data to provide personalized experiences that meet the unique needs and preferences of each customer. This can include personalized recommendations, customized products, and personalized communication.
• Create a seamless experience : Ensure that the customer experience is seamless and effortless, with easy navigation and clear communication at every touchpoint. This can include clear product descriptions, simple checkout processes, and responsive customer service.
• Focus on emotion : Focus on creating emotional connections with customers, such as by providing exceptional customer service or by tapping into customer values and beliefs. This can help to build loyalty and differentiate the business from competitors.
• Innovate : Continuously innovate and improve the customer experience, whether through new products or services, new technologies, or new processes. This can help to set the business apart from competitors and provide a unique value proposition.
• Cultivate a strong brand : Develop a strong brand identity and voice that resonates with customers and reflects the values and personality of the business. A strong brand can help to differentiate the business from competitors and create a positive emotional connection with customers.

At the end of this activity, your delegates should have finalized maps of the customer journey that reflect customers’ most important needs.

Activity 5: Action Planning – Next Steps for Your Customer Journey Planning Workshop

Once the team has generated a list of ideas, prioritize and select the most feasible and impactful actions. Use a tool such as a decision matrix. This can help the team evaluate and rank the ideas based on their potential impact and feasibility.

Ask your participants to agree roles and responsibilities. Set realistic timelines and deadlines for each action item. Agree to track progress regularly to ensure that the team is making progress towards their goals and objectives.

Post Customer Journey Mapping Workshop Follow-Up

Share the customer journey map and action plan with the team and stakeholders.

Make sure that the team validates the maps with real customers.

Once the action plan is being implemented, monitor the impact on the customer experience using data.

Don’t stop there. Drive for continuous improvement. Review and update the customer journey map regularly to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date

Validating a customer journey map is an essential step in ensuring that the map accurately reflects the customer experience and identifies areas for improvement.

Here are some ways to validate a customer journey map:

• Review and analyze customer feedback : Reviewing customer feedback, such as surveys, online reviews, and customer service interactions, can help to identify pain points and areas for improvement in the customer journey. Comparing the feedback with the customer journey map can validate or highlight any discrepancies in the map.
• Conduct user testing : User testing involves having customers interact with the business or product and providing feedback on their experience. This can help to validate the customer journey map and identify any issues or opportunities that were not previously identified.
• Analyze web dat a: Web analytics, such as website traffic and engagement metrics, can help to validate the customer journey map and identify any areas where customers are experiencing issues or dropping off.
• Conduct interviews with customers : Conducting interviews with customers can provide valuable insights into their experiences and emotions throughout the customer journey. This can help to validate the customer journey map and identify any areas for improvement.
• Collaborate with stakeholders : Collaborating with stakeholders, such as marketing, sales, and customer service teams, can help to validate the customer journey map and ensure that it accurately reflects the customer experience. Stakeholders can provide insights and feedback on the map based on their experiences and interactions with customers.

There are lots more creative techniques for validating business ideas in this article here .

Examples of Software Tools for Your Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

There are several software options available that you could use to create, analyze, and improve your customer journey maps.

Here are some examples of customer journey mapping software:

Smaply is a customer journey mapping software that allows businesses to create and share customer journey maps. The software includes features such as persona creation, touchpoint mapping, and data visualization.

Touchpoint Dashboard

Touchpoint Dashboard is a customer journey mapping suite of tools that allows businesses to create customer journeys across multiple channels. The tool includes features such as touchpoint analysis, customer persona creation, and data visualization.

UXPressia is a customer journey mapping software that allows businesses to create and share customer journey maps. The tool includes features such as persona creation, touchpoint mapping, and customer feedback analysis.

Canvanizer is a cloud-based customer journey mapping software that allows businesses to create, collaborate and share customer journey maps. The tool includes features such as persona creation, touchpoint mapping, and data visualization.

Customer Journey Mapping by Creately

Customer Journey Mapping by Creately is a customer journey mapping software that allows businesses to create and share customer journey maps. The software includes features such as touchpoint mapping, customer persona creation, and data visualization.

Miro Customer Journey Map Template

Miro Customer Journey Map Template. Your participants can plot customers’ paths and collaborate on solving their wants and needs with Miro’s online workshop template.

These customer journey mapping tools can help you and your business to collaborate and gain insights into customer behavior, pain points, and motivation .

Some Useful References and Resources for Your Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

Harvard Business Review. (2015). The new science of customer emotions. https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions

The Journey Mapping Playbook: A Practical Guide to Preparing, Facilitating and Unlocking the Value of Customer Journey Mapping , by Jerry Angrave

How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Journey Mapping to Drive Customer Focused Change , by Jim Tincher and Nicole Newton

Mapping Experiences: A Complete Guide to Creating Value through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams: A Complete Guide to Customer Alignment Through Journeys, Blueprints, and Diagrams , by James Kalbach

User Journey Mapping , by Stephanie Walter

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Some of our clients
• Jo's PhD Research
• CONTENT STUDIO
• Idea Time Book
• Innovation Events
• Innovation Consulting
• Creative Facilitation Skills
• Executive Development

Privacy Policy © The Big Bang Partnership Limited 2023

Privacy Overview

Jira Software

Project and issue tracking

Content collaboration

Jira Service Management

High-velocity ITSM

Visual project management

• View all products

Marketplace

Connect thousands of apps and integrations for all your Atlassian products

Developer Experience Platform

Jira Product Discovery

Prioritization and roadmapping

You might find helpful

Cloud Product Roadmap

Atlassian Migration Program

Work Management

Manage projects and align goals across all teams to achieve deliverables

IT Service Management

Enable dev, IT ops, and business teams to deliver great service at high velocity

Agile & DevOps

Run a world-class agile software organization from discovery to delivery and operations

BY TEAM SIZE

Small Business

BY TEAM FUNCTION

Software Development

BY INDUSTRY

Telecommunications

Professional Services

What's new

Atlassian together.

Get Atlassian work management products in one convenient package for enterprise teams.

Atlassian Trust & Security

Customer Case Studies

Atlassian University

Atlassian Playbook

Product Documentation

Developer Resources

Atlassian Community

Atlassian Support

Enterprise Services

Partner Support

Purchasing & Licensing

Work Life Blog

Atlassian Presents: Unleash

Product updates, hands-on training, and technical demos – catch all that and more at our biggest agile & DevOps event.

• Atlassian.com

Customer Journey Mapping

Journey mapping helps you visualize how customers experience your product or service, and how they feel along the way. Scroll to step 6 for a real-life example from one of our product teams!

USE THIS PLAY TO...

Understand the customer journey from a specific persona's perspective so that you can design a better experience.

Running the play

Depending on how many touchpoints along the customer journey you're mapping, you might break the journey into stages and tackle each stage in pairs.

Sticky notes

Whiteboards.io Template

Define the map's scope (15 min)

Ideally, customer journey mapping focuses on the experience of a single persona  in a single scenario with a single goal. Else, the journey map will be too generic, and you'll miss out on opportunities for new insights and questions. You may need to pause creating a customer journey map until you have defined your customer personas . Your personas should be informed by  customer interviews , as well as data wherever possible.

Saying that, don't let perfect be the enemy of good! Sometimes a team just needs to get started, and you can agree to revisit with more rigor in  a few months' time. Once scope is agreed on, check your invite list to make sure you've got people who know the details of what customers experience when using your product or service.

Set the stage (5 min)

It's really important that your group understands the user  persona  and the goal driving their journey. Decide on or recap with your group the target persona and the scope of the journey being explored in your session. Make sure to pre-share required reading with the team at least a week ahead of your session to make sure everyone understands the persona, scope of the journey, and has a chance to delve deeper into research and data where needed. Even better- invite the team to run or attend the customer interviews to hear from customers first hand!

E.g. "We're going to focus on the Alana persona. Alana's role is project manager, and her goal is to find a scalable way for her team to share their knowledge so they spend less time explaining things over email. We're going to map out what it's like for Alana to evaluate Confluence for this purpose, from the point where she clicks that TRY button, to the point where she decides to buy it – or not."

Build a customer back-story (10 min)

Have the group use sticky notes to post up reasons why your target persona would be on this journey in the first place. Odds are, you'll get a range of responses: everything from high-level goals, to pain points, to requested features or services. Group similar ideas and groom the stickies so you can design a story from them.

These narratives should be inspired by actual customer interviews. But each team member will also bring a different perspective to the table that helps to broaden the lens.

Take a look at the example provided in the call out of this section. This back story starts with the pain points – the reasons why Alana would be wanting something like Confluence in the first place.

• E.g., "Her team's knowledge is in silos"

Then it basically has a list of requirements – what Alana is looking for in a product to solve the bottom pain points. This is essentially a mental shopping list for the group to refer to when mapping out the customer journey.

• E.g., "Provide structure"

Then it has the outcomes – goals that Alana wants to achieve by using the product

• E.g., "To keep my team focused on their work instead of distracted by unnecessary emails and shoulder-taps"

And finally the highest-level goal for her and her team.

• E.g., "Improve team efficiency"

Round off the back story by getting someone to say out loud what they think the overall story so far is, highlighting the main goals the customer has. This ensures a shared understanding that will inform the journey mapping, and improve the chances that your team will map it from the persona's point of view (not their own).

• E.g., "Alana and her team are frustrated by having to spend so much time explaining their work to each other, and to stakeholders. They want a way to share their knowledge, and organize it so it's easy for people outside their team to find, so they can focus more energy on the tasks at hand."

For example...

Here's a backstory the Confluence team created. 

Map what the customer thinks and feels (30-60 min)

With the target persona, back story, and destination in place, it's time to walk a mile in their shoes. Show participants how to get going by writing the first thing that the persona does on a sticky note. The whole group can then grab stickies and markers and continue plotting the journey one action at a time.

This can also include questions and decisions! If the journey branches based on the answers or choices, have one participant map out each path. Keep in mind that the purpose of this Play is to build empathy for, and a shared understanding of the customer for the team. In order to do this, we focus on mapping the  current state of one discrete end to end journey, and looking for opportunities for improvement.

To do a more comprehensive discovery and inform strategy, you will need to go deeper on researching and designing these journey maps, which will need to split up over multiple sessions. Take a look at the variation below for tipes on how to design a completely new customer journey.

Use different color sticky notes for actions, questions, decisions, etc. so it's easier to see each element when you look at the whole map.

For each action on the customer journey, capture which channels are used for the interactions. Depending on your context, channels might include a website, phone, email, postal mail, face-to-face, and/or social media.

It might also help to visually split the mapping area in zones, such as "frontstage" (what the customer experiences) versus "backstage" (what systems and processes are active in the background).

Journey mapping can open up rich discussion, but try to avoid delving into the wrong sort of detail. The idea is to explore the journey and mine it for opportunities to improve the experience instead of coming up with solutions on the spot. It's important not only to keep the conversation on track, but also to create an artefact that can be easily referenced in the future. Use expands or footnotes in the Confluence template to capture any additional context while keeping the overview stable.

Try to be the commentator, not the critic. And remember: you're there to call out what’s going on for the persona, not explain what’s going on with internal systems and processes.

To get more granular on the 'backstage' processes required to provide the 'frontstage' customer value, consider using Confluence Whiteboard's Service Blueprint template as a next step to follow up on this Play.

ANTI-PATTERN

Your map has heaps of branches and loops.

Your scope is probably too high-level. Map a specific journey that focuses on a specific task, rather than mapping how a customer might explore for the first time.

Map the pain points (10-30 min)

"Ok, show me where it hurts." Go back over the map and jot down pain points on sticky notes. Place them underneath the corresponding touchpoints on the journey. Where is there frustration? Errors? Bottlenecks? Things not working as expected?

For added value, talk about the impact of each pain point. Is it trivial, or is it likely to necessitate some kind of hack or work-around. Even worse: does it cause the persona to abandon their journey entirely?

Chart a sentiment line (15 min)

(Optional, but totally worth it.) Plot the persona's sentiment in an area under your journey map, so that you can see how their emotional experience changes with each touchpoint. Look for things like:

• Areas of sawtooth sentiment – going up and down a lot is pretty common, but that doesn't mean it's not exhausting for the persona.
• Rapid drops – this indicates large gaps in expectations, and frustration.
• Troughs – these indicate opportunities for lifting overall sentiments.
• Positive peaks – can you design an experience that lifts them even higher? Can you delight the persona and inspire them to recommend you?

Remember that pain points don't always cause immediate drops in customer sentiment. Sometimes some friction may even buold trust (consider requiring verification for example). A pain point early in the journey might also result in negative feelings later on, as experiences accumulate. 

Having customers in the session to help validate and challenge the journey map means you'll be more confident what comes out of this session. 

Analyse the big picture (15 min)

As a group, stand back from the journey map and discuss trends and patterns in the experience.

• Where are the areas of greatest confusion/frustration?
• Where is the journey falling short of expectations?
• Are there any new un-met needs that have come up for the user type?
• Are there areas in the process being needlessly complicated or duplicated? Are there lots of emails being sent that aren’t actually useful? 

Then, discuss areas of opportunity to improve the experience. E.g., are there areas in the process where seven steps could be reduced to three? Is that verification email actually needed?

You can use quantitative data to validate the impact of the various opportunity areas identified. A particular step may well be a customer experience that falls short, but how many of your customers are actually effected by that step? Might you be better off as a team focused on another higher impact opportunity?

Here's a user onboarding jouney map our Engaging First Impressions team created.

Be sure to run a full Health Monitor session or checkpoint with your team to see if you're improving.

MAP A FUTURE STATE

Instead of mapping the current experience, map out an experience you haven't delivered yet. You can map one that simply improves on existing pain points, or design an absolutely visionary amazeballs awesome experience!

Just make sure to always base your ideas on real customer interviews and data. When designing a totally new customer journey, it can also be interesting to map competitor or peer customer journeys to find inspiration. Working on a personalised service? How do they do it in grocery? What about fashion? Finance?

After the mapping session, create a stakeholder summary. What pain points have the highest impact to customers' evaluation, adoption and usage of our products? What opportunities are there, and which teams should know about them? What is your action plan to resolve these pain points? Keep it at a summary level for a fast share out of key takeaways.

For a broader audience, or to allow stakeholders to go deeper, you could also create a write-up of your analysis and recommendations you came up with, notes captured, photos of the group and the artefacts created on a Confluence page. A great way of sharing this information is in a video walk through of the journey map. Loom is a great tool for this as viewers can comment on specific stages of the journey. This can be a great way to inspire change in your organization and provide a model for customer-centric design practices.

KEEP IT REAL

Now that you have interviewed your customers and created your customer journey map, circle back to your customers and validate! And yes: you might learn that your entire map is invalid and have to start again from scratch. (Better to find that out now, versus after you've delivered the journey!) Major initiatives typically make multiple journey maps to capture the needs of multiple personas, and often iterate on each map. Remember not to set and forget. Journeys are rapidly disrupted, and keeping your finger on the pulse of your customer's reality will enable your team to pivot (and get results!) faster when needed.

Related Plays

     Customer Interview

     Project Poster

Want even more Playbook?

Drop your email below to be notified when we add new Health Monitors and plays.

Thanks! Now get back to work.

Got feedback?

Drop a question or comment on the Atlassian Community site.

Shared understanding

Different types of teams need to share an understanding of different things.

LEADERSHIP TEAMS

The team has a  shared vision  and collective  purpose  which they support, and  confidence  they have made the right strategic bets to achieve success.

Proof of concept

Project teams.

Some sort of demonstration has been created and tested, that demonstrates why this problem needs to be solved, and demonstrates its value.

Customer centricity

Service teams.

Team members are skilled at  understanding , empathizing and  resolving  requests with an effective customer feedback loop in place that drives improvements and builds trust to improve service offerings.

Illustrator CC

• Autodesk Sketchbook

IKEA Customer Journey Map

• Illustrator

Creative Fields

Graphic Design

• customer experience
• Customer Journey Map
• design research
• infographic
• journey map

No use is allowed without explicit permission from owner

Customer journey Ikea

Zoals jullie weten ben ik fan van Ikea . Maar niet alleen ik, ook een aantal van mijn collega’s kennen de collecties uit hun hoofd. Zo blijken sommige een gehele Ikea-inrichting te hebben en is de Klippan kennelijk niet alleen een favoriet onder studenten. We zijn niet enkel fan van de producten, maar ook van de manier waarop ze aan content marketing doen.

Customer journey

Marketingmanager Inge is voornamelijk enthousiast over de gehele ‘customer journey’ die je doorloopt als je naar de Ikea gaat. De customer journey is een roadmap waarin je de reis van de klant beschrijft en bestaat uit vier fases: ideevorming, oriëntatie, keuze en retentie. De map brengt contactmomenten in beeld en heeft als doel de klant bewust te maken van je merk. Hieronder zie je de customer journey die een klant bij de Ikea aflegt. Ook al heb je net voor een paar honderd euro aan spullen afgetikt, zodra je de kassa voorbij loopt en vier appelflappen voor een euro ziet, denk je toch écht dat je een goede koop hebt gedaan en verlaat je met een goed gevoel de winkel.

Ikea is zowel offline als online heel actief. Sinds een paar maanden ben ik trouwe volger van het Ikea YouTube-kanaal . Ik woon in een klein appartement met veel spullen en denk al weken na over hoe ik dat nu zo efficiënt mogelijk kan inrichten. Veel dingen heb ik al weggedaan of verkocht, waaronder mijn te grote eettafel en stoelen. Met als resultaat dat ik nu al een paar weken met mijn bord op schoot op de bank dineer, want ik heb nog geen oplossing gevonden.

Woonfrustratie

Ikea is begin dit jaar begonnen met een YouTube-serie met woonfrustraties: de woonfrustratie van. Dat was zo’n succes dat ze meteen een tweede seizoen hebben gemaakt. Het zijn korte video’s van ongeveer drie minuten waarin iemand een probleem uitlegt met zijn of haar ruimte. Dit kan een logeerkamer zijn waar zes kinderen moeten kunnen logeren, een rommelige badkamer, een te kleine studentenkamer, woonkamer of tuin; Ikea heeft overal een slimme oplossing voor. Zodra het probleem duidelijk is, gaat desbetreffende persoon heerlijk een kopje koffie drinken en als ze thuiskomen is het probleem opgelost. Geweldig toch?

Ikea laat zien hoe je op een creatieve manier producten verkoopt. Geen opsomming van USP’s en fantastische aanbiedingen, maar juist oplossingen en toepassingen laten zien.

Ik zal eens kijken of ik mijn woonfrustratie ook kan oplossen met de tips van Ikea, maar voor vanavond wordt het toch weer een bordje op schoot.

Geef een reactie Reactie annuleren

Het e-mailadres wordt niet gepubliceerd. Vereiste velden zijn gemarkeerd met *

Deze site gebruikt Akismet om spam te verminderen. Bekijk hoe je reactie-gegevens worden verwerkt .

Gerelateerd

In 9 praktische stappen naar een eigen content marketing-strategie, customer journey in kaart.

EISMA Content Marketing Informaticaweg 3 7007 CP Doetinchem [email protected] Tel.: +31 88 29 44 700

Webinar- & Videoproducties

Zoekt u een partner en een professioneel ingerichte locatie voor uw webinar- en videoproducties? Bekijk dan de mogelijkheden van Studio Eisma. www.studio-eisma.nl

Social media

Meld je aan voor onze nieuwsbrief.

" * " geeft vereiste velden aan