Journey maps and personas are powerful tools for service design, but they are not static or isolated. They need to be aligned with your business goals and metrics, and validated and updated regularly. In this article, you will learn how to do that in four steps.
Before you create or revise your journey maps and personas, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Your goals and metrics should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. They should also reflect the needs and expectations of your customers, as well as your value proposition and competitive advantage.
Once you have your goals and metrics, you can map your customer journeys and personas. A journey map is a visual representation of the steps, emotions, pain points, and opportunities that a customer goes through when interacting with your service. A persona is a fictional character that represents a segment of your target audience, with their characteristics, motivations, goals, and frustrations. You can use various methods and tools to create your journey maps and personas, such as interviews, surveys, observations, workshops, and online platforms.
After you have your journey maps and personas, you need to align them with your goals and metrics. This means that you need to identify how your service delivers value to your customers at each stage of their journey, and how you can measure that value. You also need to check if your personas match your actual or desired customer segments, and if they have clear and realistic goals that align with your service offering. You can use tools such as impact maps, value proposition canvas, or OKRs to help you with this alignment.
Finally, you need to validate and update your journey maps and personas regularly. This means that you need to test your assumptions and hypotheses with real or potential customers, and collect feedback and data to verify or improve your service design. You also need to monitor the changes and trends in your customer behavior, needs, preferences, and expectations, and adapt your journey maps and personas accordingly. You can use tools such as usability testing, analytics, customer feedback, or A/B testing to help you with this validation and update.