What You Need to Know About Customer Experience Maps

A mistake people often make is in assuming that customer journey maps and customer experience maps are the same thing. There are distinctions, Costa points out. The customer journey map, he explains, is typically more concerned with one person's attempt to achieve a specific goal.

A Starbucks customer journey map available online illustrates the typical experience of a young man, dubbed "Eric," as he tries to get coffee. Eric, a male college student, enters the crowded store located near his campus with the intention of getting a drink and sitting down for a few hours to study. Along the way, he has a number of reactions to the stages he undergoes before sitting down with his beverage. Upon entering, he notices there aren't many seats available, which is a concern. While he's waiting in line, he feels rushed because the baristas and cashiers are working quickly to keep the customers moving along and getting their drinks, so he doesn't take much time to read the drink menu and customize his order. Though he's able to find a place to sit and study, while enjoying the added benefits of the Starbucks environment (people-watching and music), he also isn't pleased that the store closes at 10 p.m. and he's forced to relocate and find a new study spot.

These are important factors to keep in mind, if Eric makes up a large portion of the company's clientele. But if he represents a negligible percentage of the customer base, his experience might not be worth paying close attention to.

Hewitt suggests it's important to have a manageable number of ideal customers, and that typically the number happens to be between five and seven. Starbucks seems to be doing well enough as a whole, so for every Eric, it stands to reason that there's a George or Karly who is satisfied with their experience. Karly, a hypothetical longtime customer, might know exactly what drink she wants before even getting to the store, so she might appreciate that the line moves quickly and doesn't wait for newbies. Furthermore, her drink also might be more expensive than Eric's plain coffee. She might not want to stick around, but is just picking it up before studying at home.

Because there are so many types of customers, and plenty of angles from which companies can approach the customer experience map, having multiple journey maps isn't necessarily a bad idea. It helps to keep track of the areas of experience a company should focus on. This information can all be applied later to the customer experience map, which covers the overall relationship of companies to customers, beginning with customers' first interaction with a brand and ending with their final goodbyes.

THE DANGERS OF A MAP

As with any map, the main thing users want to avoid is being led astray. Customer experience maps are called customer experience maps and not company assistance maps for good reason. The idea is to help the customers—to offer them an enjoyable and simplified process whenever they interact with you. To get back to the board game metaphor: We can't treat customers like pieces we're moving with our hand, and thus take away their agency.

One of the pitfalls, warns Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder of ThinkJar LLC, a customer strategy consultancy, is that companies lose sight of the customer when they’re creating their maps. "Instead of letting the customer do what they want to do, we give them options, but they are controlled options, so we know what's going to happen and what we need to do, and as a company we think we're more in control. But, at the end, the customer doesn't get what they need, which is they need to create their experiences any way they want."

In other words, we shouldn't ever compel customers to do things in a way that is most convenient for us, simply because that's the way it was laid out for us on a map. If there's one thing a company should avoid doing, it is to create a map that puts down a restrictive path—one that customers must follow to get their desired outcome.

Associate Editor Oren Smilansky can be reached at osmilansky@infotoday.com.

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