Where do customer journey maps come from?

This week,?Neilsen Norman Group?(NN/g), reported a fascinating piece of research, drawing insight from 343 companies to provide a baseline for how customer journey maps are created. In this article, I'll summarise and interpret just two of the leading findings from it.

Which methods are used to collect data for customer journey mapping?

Encouragingly, almost 90 percent of firms conduct interviews with customers themselves and nearly as many include staff member interviews too. Two-thirds of firms still turn to the trusted customer survey, whilst over 50 percent now include digitally sourced information, such as social media or website usage stats.

Yet, what is perhaps more surprising are the methods that are?not?used most of the time, and for some, hardly ever.

For instance, only 40 percent of firms run workshops on customer journeys that actually include customers. What happened to “co-creation”? Did Covid make that too difficult? Or did marketing and UX teams have bad experiences including users in the design process?

Less than a third of customer journey designers still use focus groups. To a degree, I can relate to that – in my own experience of journey map design, focus group input is best for helping to decide whether option A, B or C is preferred, rather than design something from scratch (i.e. give them something to focus?on?– the clue is kinda in the title).?

Only 28 percent include comms logs or transcripts. I’m amazed by that, as complaint logs have long been a rich source of ‘pain-point’ data. Is chatbot data not included either? Is this because such data would need additional user consent for use in research? If so, this seems a huge, missed opportunity for the sake of not adding a tick-box to provide such permission.

And finally, barely 1 in 10 firms use diary studies (a rather out-dated term which these days include all sorts of digital and in-person ethnographic research). Whilst such methods tend to be slower and more expensive than surveys or scraping web data logs, their richness of audio-visual content is amongst the most innovative and authentic customer journey data I’ve ever collected. And today’s tech makes it easier than ever to gather, and (based on my own participant feedback at least) more engaging to take part in than most other methods.

Which roles or teams are involved in journey-mapping projects?

90 percent had dedicated UX or design teams onboard. Of course, that makes sense. I wonder how many client-side firms actually?had?UX job roles before the internet came along??That was traditionally outsourced to agencies even as late as the 1990s - quite a shift and a much needed one.

Nevertheless, these would be cross-functional teams, right? I mean, if we’re going to stick post-it’s on a brown cardboard sheet pinned to a wall, we need lots of different perspectives, surely? (I’m not being entirely impish here – there’s a lot of value in job function diversity here).

Well, NN/g’s data shows that Product, Marketing and Customer Service teams are regular players in journey map projects, but again there are some glaring omissions.

Barely a third of projects include anyone from Business Development, even though they have a clear role in company growth(!). Similarly just 34% included Engineering employees, and only a quarter from IT or Ops. Dare I suggest that these functions have been overly-stereotyped as being largely practically-minded and not so in touch with their creative-thinking skills?!

Lastly, just 6 percent of CJM projects included any HR representation.?

On a genuinely serious note, I find this statistic rather sad. Human Resources represent the organisation’s people. If there are core projects being run that can add benefit, innovation or improvement of experience for the customer and employee, surely HR deserve a seat at the table? Besides, we need CJM project teams to be motivated and celebrated – and for their skills to be recognised, supported and developed. Isn’t that worth having HR folk seeing such work first-hand?

So much for my own personal interpretation of this research regarding which methods are used to create journey maps and who is involved in the process.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this - do add your comments. And to see more findings, head to the NN/g website page:?https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-how/

About the Author:

For over 25 years, Rick has helped businesses and organisations to understand their customers – what matters most to them, what are their unmet needs, and what drives their loyalty. He uses a range of research and analysis techniques – from tried and tested segmentation to cutting edge, AI-driven software tools.

As Founder of insight agency?Customer Faithful, his work has spanned a wide range of industry sectors and international markets, with a particular focus on healthcare, retail, travel and leisure.

Rick also works as a mentor to start-ups and small businesses for?entrepreneurial programmes.