Make journey

mapping your secret

to outstanding
customer service

START
1
Introduction to customer journey maps
Delivering an exceptional customer experience is priority number one for
companies hoping to succeed and grow in today’s competitive environment.
More than two-thirds of companies say they are currently competing mostly
on the basis of customer experience.1 And to make that customer experience
really shine, it’s critical to look at the customer journey from a customer’s
point of view.

So, how can you best assess the quality of your customer experience and
identify areas for improvement? Start by understanding their journey.

1
Gartner, “Key Findings From the Gartner Customer Experience Survey”, 2018.

2
The power of customer
journey maps
On the surface, a journey map is a visual representation of a
customer’s interactions with your company’s product or service. But
it goes beyond a basic diagram. It helps to shift your perspective
on the customer experience by considering each touchpoint from
your customer’s point of view.

The goal of a journey map is to help you clearly understand what

a customer goes through when using your product or interacting
with customer service. By examining each step of the journey,
you’ll discover how well you are serving the customer, along with
any roadblocks, pain points, or opportunities for improvement.

Customer journey mapping drives more efficient business processes,

boosts customer loyalty and satisfaction, and delivers bottom-line
benefits. Companies who have journey mapping programs show
a 23% reduction in customer service costs,14% higher employee
engagement, a 10% increase in revenue from customer referrals,
and many other tangible financial benefits.2

2
Aberdeen Group, “Customer Journey Mapping: Lead the Way to Advocacy”, 2016.

3
Lay the foundation for your
successful journey map
Your journey map should represent the chronological phases,
actions, thoughts, and emotions from your customer’s point of
view. And it should lead to new ways to make a specific action
better or insights for overall experience improvement.

Start by targeting a specific business problem or opportunity. Ask

yourself if there is an existing process that isn’t working correctly,
leading to customer complaints. From there, select a target customer
persona that aligns with this issue. Narrowing your focus to a specific
type of customer is critical to ensure the map is specific enough
to be useful.

After you have identified the business problem and target persona,
perform a discovery exercise to determine how much is known
about this specific journey. Gather up the knowledge and determine
whether additional research is needed. Once you have enough
detail about the customer journey—specifically, the steps your
persona might take to resolve the problem and the problems they
might be experiencing—you are ready to create the journey map.

4
Build your journey map
in five simple steps
Keeping your business problem in mind, it’s time to build a Using large format paper, stickies, and markers, the workshop
basic journey map. team will capture insights and ideas around these five “swim
lanes” that form the basis of a successful journey map. By the time
Ideally, this will take place as a workshop involving stakeholders you’re done, you should have a baseline map of the journey, not a
from across the organization to foster shared ownership and quick polished visualization—that comes later.
resolution of any issues that arise. A workshop also encourages
conversation and creative ideas for opportunities and solutions.

1 2 3 4 5
1 Wcustomer
hat the
2 Wcustomer
hat the
3 Wcustomer
hat the
4 Wthehatcustomer
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5 Wopportunities
hat are the

is doing is thinking is feeling touchpoints

5
Bring your journey map to life
Let’s delve into an example of what the journey mapping process Lane 3: What is Jen feeling Next, we
looks like. capture what Jen feels—from angry to
In this scenario, the workshop strives to “improve the existing optimistic to relieved—during each step
end-to-end customer service experience when cable subscribers of the journey.
have problems with their cable TV.” The persona is Jen, a cable TV
customer. Jen interacts with multiple company representatives in
this scenario, specifically with virtual chat, an agent, a dispatcher,
and a technician.
Lane 4: Jen’s touchpoints Now we
Lane 1: What is Jen doing From our parallel Jen’s journey touchpoints by
discovery and research, we know the articulating every interaction she
steps Jen takes to get her problem may have with our company.
solved. We use this information to fill
out the lane that describes what
Jen is doing.

Lane 2: What is Jen thinking As a Lane 5: What are our opportunities

group, we map out what Jen is thinking Finally, we look for opportunities to
when she is doing each of these steps. improve the customer experience or
address issues..

6
Insight into Jen’s journey
Now that the swim lanes have been filled out, every column
should give you a more clear picture of her experience at
any given point in the process. Go through each touchpoint
to determine which ones are prime for improvement and
opportunities for better service.

7
Develop and share
your journey map
Once your basic journey map is in place, a best practice is to
share it with a few customers who match the target persona. Their
customer insight will confirm whether the journey was the same or
different than the one captured in your map. By listening to their
experience and challenges, you’ll know that your map matches
the customer reality and add credibility to the overall exercise.

Then take your customer journey map to the next level by

developing a compelling visual representation for sharing within
your organization. This visualization should effectively convey
every step of the customer journey, leading to organization-wide
acceptance, stronger engagement, and better decision-making
based on the information contained within it.

Share this enhanced journey map with cross-company stakeholders.

This is best done in team meetings or using collaboration platforms
where the document can be posted, viewed, and discussed. Having
these conversations and answering questions about the journey
map will foster buy in and encourage creative thinking, moving
the overall discussion toward improving each and every step in
the journey.

8
 Opportunities for improvement Actions Thoughts & feelings

• Watching TV • L
ov
et
his
sh
• Cable goes out • U ow
gh | H
.C ap
ab py
• le’
• KB articles and communities Ca s ou
nI t.
fix | A
it? ng
• Connects with virtual agent • ry

Discovery
Ph | C
ew ur
.I iou
ca s
• Clearly communicate virtual • Cable box reset remotely • Is
n.
| R
agent vs real human th eli
is
a ev
ed
Jen’s cable troubleshooting journey map

rea
• Problem unresolved. • W lp
er
Ticket created. ill t
his
so
n?
wo | M
• Contacted by call center, • Iw rk? ist
ru
chat agent an | S sti
tt k e ng
ot pt
• ica
• Follows instructions Ye
alk
wi l
s! th
A a
rea hu
• lp ma
• Connected to dispatcher So er n.
for improvement that will help make the journey better for all.

so

Engagement
me n! | F
th | O ru
ing str
• Onsite scheduled via phone • i p t at
• Create online scheduling system Id ss im ed
that doesn’t require phone call on e rio ist
’t h us ic
to the experience it is trying to capture. This one is a straightforward

ly
with the actions she takes along the way and pinpoints opportunities
visualization of Jen's experience as she attempts to solve an issue she’s
having with her cable service. It reveals her emotional state in correlation

av wr
• Waits for technician •
There are many ways to construct a journey map and each can be tailored

• Use SMS comm instead of et on

Ih im g.
phone call op ef | C
et or
he an on
• Give customer small gift/ • Technician troubleshoots • y’r
e o n
ce
rn
Ya sit ed
thank you for their patience y! on
tim e . |
Th
ey e. O ve
’re | S rw
• More parts carried in tech truck • Problem found, missing • he k
Yo re! e pt
he
lm
part needed ud
| E ica ed
on
’t h a ge l
• Create online scheduling system • Schedules 2nd onsite • An a ve r
that doesn’t require phone call ot
he
th
ep
ro ar
• ns t?
• Confirms arrival time ite
Ple ? | A

Resolution
as | E nn
eb xa oy
eo sp ed
• Technician arrives • Ple n e ra
tim te
as
e fi e. d
na | I
mp
• Provide discounts for service • Problem resolved • Fin
lly at
fix ien
downtime all it . | t
y fi
xe Ca
• Provide incentive for survey • Asked to fill out survey • Ug
d! ut
iou
| R
completion h, eli sly
a e ve op
su d tim
rve
y? ist
I’v ic
eg
ot
so
me
inp
ut
| E
xp
res
siv
e
9
Put your journey map into action
At last—it’s time to take action on your insights! Identify the
appropriate owners of issues and opportunities and publicly track
the progress of resolution. At this point, customer experience
leaders create actionable tasks and track progress on them in a
cross-department management system. They drive accountability
and ownership of all tasks and manage them to final resolution.

And don’t stop there. Now that you’ve successfully created your
first customer journey map, you can replicate the process with
other important service scenarios or personas. Have fun and enjoy
solving your toughest customer service issues with additional
journey maps.

10
Best practices for successful
journey mapping
Journey mapping is a newer customer experience methodology,
yet it is already yielding outstanding results in customer service
departments in a wide array of industries. These best practices
will help ensure your organization gets the most out of your journey
mapping commitment:

• Secure executive sponsorship and buy in

• Involve stakeholders from departments across the organization

• Determine the most important customer service scenario,

and do that one first

• Focus on only one persona at a time

• Involve customers to validate and provide additional information

• Don’t treat it as a one-off activity—have a plan for mapping

multiple users and processes

• Consider opportunities to be proactive in guiding the customer

on their journey

11
In conclusion
Customer journey maps can help your customer service organization improve its customer
experience. By taking an outside-in view of the customer’s experience for a specific customer
service scenario, journey maps identify areas where things can and do go wrong, as well as
opportunities for improvement.

All of this information gives your service organization a leg up in transforming the customer
experience and increasing customer satisfaction. The journey map should serve as a
blueprint for aligning your processes with customer expectations and closing gaps in both
customer engagement and backend service operations.

Click below to discover how ServiceNow can help you in this next step of delivering a
seamless customer service experience from start to finish.

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