Customer Journey Maps: Best Practices for implementation

Cody · 2023-07-27T20:43:13+00:00

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Hi All first post in the community!

I'm looking for guidance on best practices around creating, introducing, and maintaining customer Journeymaps within a Series A SaaS company.

Currently, our customer Journey maps are lacking/practically nonexistent. I'm struggling with one convince our exec team that this artifact is worth having and maintaining, two finding a balance of the quality/detail it needs to have, three a tool that works best for documenting the Map and sharing it across orgs.

Any resources or insights on this would be awesome!

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Yogesh

A few years back, while setting up our Customer Success process, I faced similar challenges. To convince my team about the benefits of a customer journey map, I focused on how it can help us understand our customers' experiences, identify pain points and needs from their perspective, and develop customer-focused strategies across departments.

I walked them through this using two cases, explaining how a mapped journey could have improved our approach.

Getting the quality/details right on the first try can be tough. So, I began by examining our best customers, creating a basic map around them. Got that reviewed, had to make some changes. Then, I studied customers who churned, updating the map to highlight and address their struggles. This took me waaaay longer than expected.

Initially, I used Draw.io and Google Docs for mapping, but later replaced Google Docs with Confluence. As we gathered more data, I refined the Draw.io diagrams and added detailed resources to Confluence.

If you looking at more tech options this image might be of some help.

John Keller

My firm is a little different in that we are "Series A" operationally but financially profitable. And because of that, they haven't really thought about the client journey prior to a csm org stressing about any churn. With that, I did Create a journey map to help create common ground when discussing clients with other departments. It helps. In addition, we started getting reports about a small segment of clients (long tail) and the churn % is high. The question is why...what their journey was and what can we do to correct it. So, yes, journey mapping is great and it helps direct the conversation of an executive (who thinks that churn doesn't happen) to the data and what challenges that segment faces.

Happy to scrub our specific map and pass on the template.

chrisdishman

Cody, Yep Journeys are critical in helping ensure you have a consistent and scaled approach to how you support your customers.

Our recommendation is to start with a solid basic foundational journey...dont try to over complicate it. Just get the basics, get it launched and start tracking the success. Then you can review, measure the success and adjust. We often see Journeys fail when you go nuts with complexity which results in something difficult to measure its success.

For an exec view, IMHO, you need to show them what you are doing, and the value that you are getting from that. (what is the measurable outcome to help ensure or streamline the success of the journey for your customers...and how that impacts your company positively.

love the topic!

Chris

Ed Powers

Hi Cody—

Congratulations on getting started on this important initiative.

I facilitate journey mapping for my clients, and it’s helpful to understand that the purpose isn’t documentation but to create a shared understanding, a shared vision, and a shared commitment among the right set of people to create a better customer experience. A map helps identify the gaps and disconnects which can then be addressed cross-functionally through improvements in products, services, and processes. The choice of tools, formats, etc. is important, but it’s a secondary concern.

Hope that helps.

Ed

Jeffrey Kushmerek

I do all of our maps in Miro. There is a point where the granular elements needs to be a process that is documented in a wiki, though