The many ways of mapping the customer journey
By: Zbignev Gecis
Tags: Customer Journey, Customer Experience, User Experience, Service Blueprint, Service Design

I’ve seen companies, full of bright people too focused on internal processes and technology and this is evident when customers interact with their various products, services and employees. These companies and teams need a change in viewpoint — they need to step into their customer’s shoes, and understand the forces that shape their preferences and decisions.

Steve Jobs once said:

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology”.

The notion of “starting with the experience and working back toward the technology” is a key part of being a human-centered business. You need to understand the way customers approach your product, the touch points, their frustrations, and the pain points. Customer journey maps & Service blueprinting gives you a scope to fine-tune your product’s experience.

Front stage and back stage

We need a little context in order to understand the difference between customer journeys and service blueprints. “The stage” consists of three perspectives: the front stage, the backstage and the behind-the-scenes.

We can take theater as an example.

The front stage is where the action takes place and what the audience can see. Customer journey depicts mostly the front stage and customer’s behind the scenes: customers’ touch points, actions that occur directly in view of the customer, his experience with the product or service.

is where the action takes place and what the audience can see. Customer journey depicts mostly the front stage and customer’s behind the scenes: customers’ touch points, actions that occur directly in view of the customer, his experience with the product or service. Back stage are steps and activities that occur behind the scenes to support onstage happenings: the lights, the sets, the crew, all of which should be invisible to the customer.

are steps and activities that occur behind the scenes to support onstage happenings: the lights, the sets, the crew, all of which should be invisible to the customer. Then there are the behind-the-scenes, things that the organization must do to make both the front and backstage possible. Internal steps, and interactions that support the employees in delivering the service.

In other words, these are the parts of the service that will be visible or invisible to the customer.

Customer journey map

“The Theater Begins With the Cloakroom”

— this phrase is attributed to one of the founders of the Moscow Chekhov Art Theater; Konstantin Stanislavsky. It is believed that he wrote in a letter to the cloakroom staff of his theater that: “…our theater differs from many others by the fact that performances start the minute members of audiences enter the theatre. You are the first to greet them…”.

I would add, that the whole customer experience starts even earlier when customer starts to plan his evening. The whole journey of choosing the act, buying the tickets, parking the car, hanging his coat, finding his chair, watching the performance and exiting the building — all those things are his customer experience journey.

A journey map captures what the user does, thinks and feels, and what they are interacting with overtime. It’s the front stage of the service experience from their point of view. It tells you what they went through. Like a story, it comes with a narrative, and the highs and the lows of user’s emotions.

Storytelling and visualization are essential aspects of journey mapping as they are powerful tools for conveying information in a way that is entertaining, intuitive and that creates a shared vision. The goal is to create a shared understanding of what is the customer experiencing during the journey among the whole organization, be it designer, engineer or salesman

I need to emphasize, that Customer journey map & Service blue print could reflect not only current state but the blueprint for the future improvements.