What is a Customer Task in a Journey Map?
This insightful read will discuss the difference between customer and user tasks in a journey map.
What are Customer Tasks?
Different Types of Customer Tasks
Many customer tasks happen before or after they interact with a software product, which is why the go-to-market team (GTM) and general business teams like operations and customer support tackle customer tasks to improve the customer experience.
Common examples of customer tasks:
- Customers will take time to evaluate whether they need a product.
- Before customers make a purchase, they must decide how much money they’re willing to spend on a product or service.
- Customers will often compare different products or services before they make a purchase decision.
In the Triangle Offense post CX versus UX, I discuss the cultural gap in large companies and how the product teams take ownership of user tasks and the other teams (GTM and business) take on the customer tasks.
In the long term, this cultural gap between who manages which tasks and how those tasks are managed could become a barrier to creating a seamless experience for a business. (If you’re aware of companies that simultaneously manage customer and user tasks well, please let me know.)
The Difference Between Customer Tasks and User Tasks
This table illustrates the subtle difference between customer and user tasks. Customer tasks are broader in scope and include decision-making tasks beyond interacting with a software product, whereas user tasks are focused on users interacting with a software product such as a website, web application, or phone app.
Table of Customer and User Tasks
| Customer Tasks | User Tasks |
|---|---|
| Choosing a product to purchase online | Searching for a specific product on a site |
| Learning to use a newly purchased software | Configuring settings in a software |
| Contacting customer service via a web form | Submitting a form on a website |
| Purchasing and reading an eBook | Downloading an eBook |
| Signing up for a subscription service | Creating an account on a platform |
Why are Customer Tasks Important?
Understanding customer tasks is crucial for several reasons:
- It Improves User Experience: By knowing customers' tasks, designers can create a more intuitive and efficient user experience, which allows customers to reach their goals more efficiently, thereby increasing their satisfaction.
- It Identifies Pain Points: Understanding customer tasks can help you identify where customers might be experiencing difficulties or frustrations. You can then address these pain points to improve the overall customer experience.
- It Informs Product Development: Understanding the tasks that customers are trying to complete can guide product development and ensure that new features or services align with customer needs.
- It Enhances Customer Journey Mapping: Customer tasks are integral to the journey map. They help you visualize customers' steps when they’re interacting with a product or service, giving you a better understanding of the customer journey.
- It Aids in Decision-Making: Understanding customer tasks can inform business decisions, from marketing campaigns to customer service practices.
- It Increases Engagement and Retention: When the products and services involved with a customer experience align with customer tasks effectively, customers are likely to be more engaged and loyal, as they find value and ease in their interactions with those products or services.
When Do Customer Tasks Occur?
Customer tasks occur throughout the journey map, from the first stage of identifying a need to evaluating options, finally buying a product, using it, and hopefully returning to the business to purchase more products and services.
Please note that many customer tasks generate user tasks and are linked together in one chain. Suppose one of the chains in the experience is broken, or worse, missing. In that case, a customer will have difficulty completing tasks and may stop interacting with a business altogether.
Where are Customer Tasks Observed?
The GTM teams dominate the journey map’s early stages because many customer tasks occur in the typical retail customer journey map’s initial stages. When customers are figuring out their needs and evaluating a business and its products, the GTM devises sales methods and marketing campaigns to appeal to them. Once a customer has purchased their products, more tasks appear, and the customer may want to call support and talk to a service representative.
Why I Wrote This Post
When I was learning to break down and understand the customer experience, I struggled with the difference between a customer task and a user task. I would use the two terms interchangeably and thought nothing of it. Only when I asked myself how other teams managed parts of a customer experience did I realize that the go-to-market (GTM) and general business teams (operations, etc.) actively worked on customer tasks around marketing, selling, and support within the customer experience, while I worked on improving the user’s product experience and primarily focused on user tasks. Mind blown.
The distinction between the two types of tasks can be confusing and even blur across lines at times. However, when it came to journey mapping, I realized that a typical customer journey map displays customer tasks and will show user tasks when a customer interacts with a software product (web, app, etc.). However, when I build a user journey map, I only map the user tasks because I focus on user interactions with a software product.
UX Designers, CX Practitioners, and Business Professionals
When you work for a large company and you share the responsibility of improving the user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) with other teams, understanding which tasks those other teams are targeting for improvement is beneficial.
For instance, if you’re a CX practitioner or business professional, you’re most likely targeting customer tasks, and if you’re a UX designer or someone working on a product team, you’re probably working to improve the user friendliness of certain user tasks.
This explanation sounds straightforward until you manage more extensive customer experience areas, including software products, in which case the customer and user tasks may blur to become one giant task. This post aims to provide clarity for those who target both the customer and the user tasks of a customer experience as you work to improve specific tasks.
Journey Maps
I mentioned journey maps a lot. Journey maps are valuable tools to visualize and help analyze every customer task during interactions between that customer and a business. For those readers who may not be entirely up-to-date on this important topic or who need a quick refresher, I encourage you to check out my post, "The Ultimate Guide to Journey Mapping." The guide offers an introductory overview of the journey mapping process, including standard journey map elements.
Summary
Now that you've got a good handle on customer tasks and how they differ from user tasks, your next journey mapping project should improve. You should be able to clearly identify customer or user tasks and then link them back to wherever gaps are found in the customer experience.
Identifying them should make planning with the other teams easier because you’re working on improving the same customer tasks. In your subsequent journey mapping sessions, I encourage you to help others grasp the difference between the two types of tasks, so your peers have a common understanding.
Written by Leo Vroegindewey, B2B CX Consultant
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