Are customer journey maps a nonsense?

The first step in CX strategy is Situation analysis and most companies faults here jumping the gun in initial stages.

Before going into the fancy post-it workshops on Customer journey mapping exercises it is very critical you have sound understanding and “research” of Situational understanding, if its not done its a waste of time. Plain & Simple.

This situational understanding consists critical elements of your internal realities, customers, external environment, Industry trends on UX & CX, your competition (think the biggest competition of Toys R Us is an iPad) & key partners. So it’s certainly not a bullshit if you have at least following pointers in consideration.

The effectiveness of insights you discover totally depends on the completeness of questions you are asking — how are you asking currently?

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Insight is a super powerful word, if done correctly you will understand the customer experience environment better and more quickly than your competitors, this will help you in making sense of customer journey maps and taking next action else they will get limited only to 2-day workshops.

Here are critical factors you need to answer before jumping to fancy Post-It customer journey mapping exercise.

• How reliable is your evidence on journey points, data source, factual basis, recency?
• How expectations are changing — are you thinking about a differentiated experience focused journey map or just a generic one for a formality?
• How would you treat segments of customers differently?
• Critical touch point for partners, should you segment partners from experience perspective
• What is your top few vs potential partner treatment experience strategy? How it’s different?
• Competition benchmark survey data — how are startups focusing on CX in this segment
• What investment is your competition making, what is their resource line up on CX strategy?
• What new improvement process or communication channel emerging in the industry?
• What is an impact of social media and reviews on our product and services?
• Rules on Data privacy and retention policy, govt regulations etc within your industry, do you know them?
• What is your recency of data based on which you r making decisions?
• State of executive sponsorships, will sponsorship service leadership changes?

You don’t need to answer all the above but it’s very important that you think through them and keep them in solid consideration before mapping journey decisions. I know it was a bold headline above — Whats your view?

Disclaimer: Opinions mentioned above are in a personal capacity, and do not by any means, reflect the views of my employer.

Resources & Additional Credits: customerstrategy.net — I strongly recommend to visit them for great insights.