The Radical CPA: Creating a Journey Map

At my firm, New Vision CPA Group, we use a value stream map, a process map and a SIPOC in process mapping. What all of these have in common is that they highlight the process, time, inventory levels and the actors.

However, one key variable they all fail to take into account is the customer’s emotions as they journey through the process. A customer journey map solves this problem.

Journey Mapping: The Design Thinking Side of Process Improvement

Journey mapping is a tool companies use to help them see what their customers truly want. Customer journey mapping provides the intelligence that will form the foundation of a company’s customer strategy. Journey mapping is understanding

• your cus-tomers’ paths,
• the people and the functions they interact with along the way and
• the other enablers and obstacles that people are impacted by when deciding to do business with your firm.

A journey map will provide a complete picture of the customer experience and while it needs to be developed from the point of view of the customer, it is as important to understand how the experience aligns within the internal organization structures.

It is a document that visually illustrates customers’ processes, needs and perceptions throughout their relationships with a company or service(s).

It is primarily an outside-in approach, taking the journey from the perspective of a customer. This approach is important for a couple of reasons:

1. A “normal” map is navel-gazing and self-centered, often focusing only on process and other mechanical variables.
2. Often, customers’ needs are not represented. And, their emotions are often unarticulated in most map models.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Here are a few steps that I’ve taken to effectively create an actionable customer journey map.

1. Identify all the customer touch points, actors and silos. Often, this exercise is called “touch point inventory.”
2. Synthesize current thinking from all stakeholders involved in the customer journey.
3. Map the process – but not like a normal map used in continuous improvement. This time, map the process from their perspective. This is an important distinction. Here’s an example of a process step that I’m describing:

• “Press button” versus “I need to press a button. But which button – the red or green?”
• Notice the difference? In this type of map, we’re actually highlighting the internal dialogue of the customer, and not just the process steps. This approach is much richer, but also more complicated.
• Needs, perceptions, key moments of truth and wants must be known by this point in the process.

Actionable Items from a Customer Journey Map

Since a map is a model of an experience, the end goal of a map is twofold:

1. Gain empathy and clarity on exactly what our customers go through when they interact with our service.
2. Identify key areas where we can improve their experience.

Improving the experience is often almost dictated by their emotions. So, the key is to identify the times when the customer is feeling anxiety, unhappy, frustrated – those are signals where an improve-ment must be made in order to improve the customer experience.

How well do you understand your customer’s experience?

Think about the perspective of how we can add customers in the process so that we give them transparency to these steps in our process. Because the more transparent we can be with our custom-ers, the better off we’re going to be.

How is it that Domino’s can provide a “Pizza Tracker” and its customer can know exactly where its pizza is and yet our customers have this “big mystery” as to where their documents and their tax returns are within our offices? It will ultimately help to encourage trust and intimacy within the relationship. Remember we want to be their partners not just a service provider. Work on your process so that every customer feels the exact same special experience in a standardized way and that is a good experience for the customer.

You want to create a feeling that they are your most special customer in your firm. So when you think about your process, think about each touch point with your customer. Has it been good or bad? Make sure that you develop your process to be good experiences.

This also includes how they “touch” the technology. The technology you select or choose not to implement will have a major impact on your customer experience. You need to make a conscious effort to choose the right technology to protect your brand. This will help with your ability to deliver on value and not a commoditized service. This will also help with your ability to price your services higher.

Originally published on CPA Trendlines. For more content like this, subscribe to The Radical CPA newsletter or buy the book, "The Radical CPA: New Rules for the Future-Ready Firm.