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© Tr e s t l e s2014/Pr e par e db yRe b e c c aHo r t o n
INTRODUCTION
Customer journey maps are visual tools used to help businesses understand, design, and retool customer (and sometimes staff) experiences. Ongoing visualization of the customer experience is particularly important for service design work, which is often messy and typically necessitates integration across business units, stakeholder groups, delivery platforms, and customer types. Visuals like journey maps support change management work that is not always well-received by all staff in an organization, and can function as recruitment tools to get business stakeholders “on board” with a new way of doing things. In the design process, journey mapping can be used at every phase of work: problem identification, customer research, synthesis, concept development, detailed design, user testing, and implementation. During any one project, several journey map formats may be used. For example sketch-like, low fidelity journey maps are ideal for brainstorming, validating hypotheses or gathering consensus. Meanwhile, high fidelity journey maps are helpful as action tools to guide technical teams, operational staff, and line leaders through the process of developing, delivering, and optimizing customer experiences. Depending on their function, journey maps can be high-level and comprise only three to five steps, or they can be incredibly detailed and involve fifty or more touchpoints across a multitude of service environments. Offered herein are five sample journey maps, which range in terms of fidelity, function, and degree of detail. They are intended to “give a taste” of the ways we approach journey mapping and to demonstrate why “polished deliverables” are not always the goal of service design work.
SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: LOW FIDELITY JOURNEY MAP/BLUEPRINT SKETCH (LIVE)
THE SURGE SLIP-UP SITUATION 1. Prep cooks prepare food earlier in the day but do not prepare enough food. 2. People slowly start to enter The Coupe. 3. The prepared food starts to run out so line cooks must be taken off of the line to prepare more food. 4. As more and more people enter the restaurant, the kitchen begins to get backed up because not enough people are on the line. 5. The kitchen is now so backed up that the host must establish a wait because a sudden surge of people have come into The Coupe. 6. This causes customers to get angry because they do not like to wait, see that there are empty tables and are not getting the food they ordered (if they are already seating). 7. This also makes servers uneasy because they have empty tables are not not making money and are unable to fulfill orders that their already seated customers have placed. 8. The host must take the brunt of the customer complaints, but is powerless to help.
This graphic is based on a compilation of our staff interviews, research data, and shadowing observations. It represents a “best guess” at what is happening, which should be validated through additional kitchen observation and front of house observation. At the end of the day, we believe that better communication beween front of house and back of house staff could remedy this situation.
9. This impacts staff morale because they feel like they have no control over the situation- they eventually get burnt out and potentially qut and this negatively contributes to high staff turnover.
LIVE SKETCH WITH NARRATIVE: DIGITAL COPY In presenting research findings to one of our restaurant clients, we used live sketching accompanied by narration to articulate the restaurant’s biggest challenge when it came to interfacing with customers. Less than three months after delivering this presentation, the challenge was solved: the restaurant discontinued a 24/7 schedule and began closing every evening to allow more time for recovery and prep between the evening and morning shifts. Customer satisfaction during the brunch shift has dramatically increased as a result of this operational change. This example illustrates how simple, low fidelity visuals can be just as effective at facilitating change as polished, labor intensive ones.