How to Explain the Value of Journey Maps to Business Teams

This is the first article in a series explaining how to present journey map elements to a business team. It explains why some journey map elements are more important than others and how to link opportunities identified in a journey map directly to your company's business model.

Introduction

Nashville, Tennessee – Logan walked briskly to Thomas Gallagher’s executive office. Thomas, or "Tom," as he liked to be called, was the CEO of Crescent Forge Industries (CFI). CFI was one of the automation industry’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of advanced machinery parts. Logan was already a minute behind schedule, so he picked up his pace because Tom liked starting meetings on time.

Logan had recently been hired as VP of Customer Experience. He’d only been on the job for two weeks when he had a private meeting with Tom, during which he learned that CFI needed to buckle down and face 2023’s macroeconomic headwinds head-on. Logan would not be able to enjoy his 90-day ramp-up; instead, he would be thrust into executing an important initiative for Tom and the rest of the C-Suite.

Logan entered the executive office and greeted Mary, Tom's executive assistant. She looked up and smiled as he entered the front office. "Go ahead, Logan; he's waiting. You’d better hurry though . . . he doesn't like to be kept waiting." Logan nodded and jogged to the conference room door. When he walked into Tom's office, he saw Tom waiting for him, sitting in one of his more comfortable chairs.

"Good morning Logan; let's get started." Tom motioned Logan to sit in the chair opposite him. "As you know, CFI’s core business customers are the large automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). That segment generates most of our 75M annual revenue." Tom sipped his coffee and continued. "But I need you to look specifically at the SMB robotics manufacturers' segment, which runs adjacent to our core business and currently generates approximately 5.5M toward our annual revenue.

"I've talked it over with the executive team, and we've set an ambitious goal to achieve 20 percent year-over-year revenue growth for the SMB robotics segment. I know this is an aggressive target, but we have much better gross profit margins with that particular segment, so allocating capital to this segment is a no-brainer—we need to move fast." Tom paused and took another sip of his coffee.

He leaned forward, "Our CFO, Kate, has crunched the numbers. Her forecasts indicate that pursuing this customer segment is a chance for real growth, and more importantly, it aligns with our long-term growth plans."

Logan recalled that CFI had lucked out when some robotics manufacturing plant owners had called Tom in a panic because one of their key suppliers had run into financial trouble and couldn’t provide the needed machinery parts. Somehow, the CFI plant managed to manufacture most of the machinery parts for the robot manufacturers, which gave them a foothold with those companies. Over time, that customer segment started to generate more revenue for CFI.

Tom was talking again, "Logan, we want you to identify new opportunities in the SMB robotics segment to help us reduce operating expenses and help the sales team increase order values. We’re ready to allocate capital to invest in the right opportunities to attain a 20 percent revenue growth target."

Tom looked at Logan. "Thoughts?"

Logan processed what Tom had told him and said, "Twenty percent revenue growth is very aggressive. Aren't the best companies striving to hit 10 percent revenue growth?”

Leaning back, Tom smiled. "Yes, 20 percent revenue growth is significant, but we must take this approach because our core business's gross profit margins are declining. We need to find new opportunities to grow our revenue by setting aggressive goals that take us out of our comfort zone and help us look beyond simple improvements. I want you to examine the entire customer experience and work with sales and marketing to find opportunities to get us to that 20 percent YoY revenue growth."

Logan nodded. "How comfortable are you with me and the customer experience team leading this effort?” he asked. “Specifically, with my team driving the effort to spot the most valuable opportunities, building a plan for running discovery, and executing this initiative? In the past, a lot of the opportunity identification work has been driven by the sales and engineering teams!"

Tom studied Logan's face. "We need to know how our customers think, their expectations, and what they need from us. You’re in the best position to lead this effort because you have the best process to identify, assess, and prioritize the most lucrative opportunities for the SMB robotics customer segment.

"We need fresh thinking grounded in the customer's truth, not our biases and instincts. We can't afford to invest in opinions and committee decision-making. We need to grow the SMB robotics segment and can't afford a misstep. Risk mitigation can only be successful if we start by solving the right problems for both our business and our customers."

Tom clasped his hands and faced Logan squarely. "At a high level, walk me through how you will execute this initiative."

Logan Explains His Plan

Logan took a sharp breath and started to rattle off the steps he could pull from the top of his head. :

• “First, I’ll communicate the business problem we need to solve with my team.
• “We’ll mostly leverage customer experience research methods to help collect customer data.
• “Then, I’ll ask the team to build the company's generic customer journey map as well as a buyer journey map with the sales and marketing team.
• “Next, I’ll have the team aggregate all relevant quantitative and qualitative data for the SMB robotics customer segment in one canvas.
• “We’ll sift through the customer data and display only the most critical elements in the generic and buyer journey map.
• “I’ll then have the team build an opportunity backlog, where we will have captured and prioritized the most valuable opportunities the teams will explore via workshops.
• “After that, we’ll. . .”

Tom held up a hand and laughed. "Okay Logan, it looks like you have your plan to execute this initiative. I’ll look forward to a status meeting and your progress update next week. Be prepared to give the leadership team a quick rundown of this journey mapping method you mentioned." Tom stood up and waved a hand. Logan understood that the meeting was over.

Tom had already walked over to his desk and was on the phone with his assistant discussing his next meeting when Logan exited his office and walked past Mary's desk. He had a lot to think about.

Before we continue our deep dive into journey map elements, if you want to brush up on your journey map knowledge, take a look at this introductory guide to journey maps I wrote for business teams. The guide introduces the journey mapping process and the five steps a team must complete to build an actionable customer journey map.

Navigating Customer Journey Map Elements

Logan returned to his office, taking the long way back. He went through the entire conversation with Tom in his head. He felt confident that, directionally, the steps he’d laid out for Tom were indeed the right way to execute this project. His methodology was sound, and he knew the team had plenty of experience with these kinds of projects.

However, he had a nagging feeling of unease about something. His biggest concern was now about the journey map and the customer data. The generic customer journey map would be the canvas on which he would paint the customer's truth. This critical CX document would ground the team's efforts to identify an opportunity in the customer's truth. He knew what he had to do next.

Once in his office, Logan sat down and pinged Luke, the Senior Director of Customer Experience, and Adrian, the Senior Principal UX Strategist. "We need to meet in thirty minutes. I need you both to give me a walkthrough of the customer journey map elements and how those elements will help us spot the opportunities to unlock high growth. I also need to know how the journey map will help us succeed in our SMB robotics project, which is the most important journey map element, and each element's purpose."

Logan sat back in his chair and folded his hands on his head. He was excited to lead such an important initiative. His whole team would get behind this mission, and he was grateful for them. They had the skills and experience to pull this effort off with minimal stress. He could head home on time, watch his kids’ soccer games, and cheer them on. He knew the methodology was sound and his outcome predictable. Knowing this, he could achieve a balanced work-life lifestyle even throughout this critical project.

Guide to Journey Map Elements

After Logan called for an impromptu meeting with his senior staff, he expected Luke and Adrian to help him craft a message around the journey map elements. Logan understood that a journey map is a technical artifact, but from it, he would be able to craft a powerful story about how it can connect the business with the customer and unlock opportunities that will result in revenue growth.

For this reason, you need to convince your business team about the value of journey mapping and how it’s central to discovering opportunities in which the business can invest. However, you must meet them at their level and show them how it makes them successful. To connect it to their thinking, you must wrap a business explanation around every journey map element. You will have connected the dots for them once they view it in terms of another business method to find value.

In fact, you will have unlocked the most powerful weapon within your organization—influence. If you can exercise soft power through influence, you’ll become an unstoppable authority on customer strategy. Information will flow, and you can decide how to shape the strategy by informing the team which investment opportunities will be most beneficial.

How to Explain Customer Tasks

When you give a business team a journey map overview, start with the customer tasks, but approach it from a status perspective. Let me give you an example.

In the movie Apollo 13, Tom Hanks (who plays commander Jim Lovell of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon), runs into trouble when his spacecraft suffers an electrical explosion and starts to vent oxygen as they’re en route to the moon. When the explosion occurs, sheer pandemonium ensues. Master alarms go off; the spacecraft careens all over the place; it's overwhelming. As a spectator, you feel like the entire spacecraft is about to explode.

In Houston, Gene Krantz, played by Ed Harris, runs mission control for the Apollo 13 mission. He is confronted by his entire team about alarms going off and the spacecraft being in danger; the atmosphere is extremely tense, and he starts to get overwhelmed.

Then, he raises his hand and says what I think is the most important line in that movie: "Can we review our status here? Let's look at this thing from a standpoint of status. What have we got on the spacecraft that's good?" His words immediately bring order, clarity, and calm back into the conversation.

Sometimes, the UX team wants to talk about every malfunction they've noticed to the business team. That's like the guys at mission control just yelling stuff at Gene Krantz while he’s trying to understand what’s working and what isn't. It's overwhelming and counterproductive.

How to Frame the Conversation

When a group of red tasks are clustered in a journey map, the business team will immediately notice where the opportunities are to improve the experience for both the business’s and the customers’ benefit. Don't shotgun your business partners; frame it as a status conversation and go from there.

Then, once you’ve made them aware of where the problems are, you can talk about the biggest mismatches from a customer perspective. Find the mismatches, fix those tasks, meet consumer goals, and print the money.

Crux elements consist of the following:

• Customer task: A customer task is a specific action a customer needs to perform while interacting with a business. Don’t confuse it with a user task, which refers to a user interaction with a software product or service.
• Customer goal: A customer goal is the final state customers want to reach when they interact with a business. These goals differ depending on the specific customer’s circumstances and needs.

How to Explain a Key Moment

If you’re at a director level or higher, the key moment is an element you should present to the business team. Remember how Logan wanted to speak to Luke (the Senior Director) and Adrian (the Senior Principal Designer)? Beyond the fact that they are all working together, directors play an important role when presenting a journey map. Yes, principal designers are independent contributors (ICs) who do most of the talking when presenting a journey map. Still, they have to work closely with directors because they cover all the journey map's angles together.

As a director, you want to be able to explain to a business team how a customer or user interacts with the business. Why the director and not the principal? Well, because the director usually manages the organizational aspect and shares the strategic workload with the principal. You don't want your principals to do all the talking; demonstrate that your team is a unit that works every aspect of the customer journey together. As a director, you need to be able to articulate the customer story, especially since you contribute to the strategy process and the product roadmap creation.

How to Frame the Conversation

Please note that key moments are a nuanced type of customer data to compile. Basically, you’re evaluating tasks and goals and then mixing in the customer feedback to create a one-liner that perfectly encapsulates what the customer is going through during that step in the journey map. It takes practice.

Once you have an idea of the key moment, though, it becomes an incredibly powerful part of the narrative and enhances the story about your customer. More importantly, talking to your team and broader organization about key moments becomes much easier because a key moment is usually is usually capture in one simple-to-understand sentence.

The communication element comprises the following:

• Key moment: A key moment is a crucial point in the customer experience that significantly impacts their overall perception of a business.

How to Explain Channels and Touchpoints

Usually, your business audience will be very familiar with the concept of channels, which are simply the means through which they distribute their products and services to customers.

Touchpoints, however, are a little less straightforward for them. You want to keep it simple and explain that any time one of their customers interacts digitally or physically with their company, that’s a touchpoint.

Only focus on missing or failing touchpoints; even then, try not to use the word “touchpoint”—name the interaction with the physical and digital object instead. These elements are easier to understand because they’re tangible.

A journey stage can also be a relatively straightforward topic for most business-minded people.

However, herein lies the danger; I’ve seen business teams gravitate toward and focus on these concepts because they’ve organized themselves by channel. As in, one team works on mobile, a different team on the website, yet another on the physical store, email, etc. They also tend to get pigeonholed into thinking only about small areas within a channel because they have biases. Don't fall into that same trap and get caught up in a channel-management type of conversation.

How to Frame the Conversation

The structural elements are comprised of the following:

• Stage: A journey map stage is a group of customer activities that map to specific goals or needs.
• Touchpoint: A touchpoint is a customer interaction or point of contact with a business. Touchpoints occur in all business channels, and they can be digital or physical.
• Channels: Channels in a journey map represent pathways by which businesses communicate and sell their products and services to customers.

How to Explain Customer Needs

The customer needs journey map element is interesting. You want to link it to the customer task status, and then inform the team whether a customer can complete a task with minimal friction. If the task has a lot of friction, it's a code orange or red, and you can assume the customers aren’t satisfied.

Customer needs can be broken down into four categories:

• Functional need
• Emotional need
• Social need
• Financial need

Because the customer need element can be broken down into three needs subsets, the question you can ask yourself is, “How are the customer needs met?” Those needs are primarily either social or functional. You don't want your customer needs section to fixate on whether your company's products meet the customer's needs, as that falls to the customer task element.

How to Frame the Conversation

You want to the team to hone in on the emotional need, as that need is much more complicated and speaks to how the company makes their customers feel about the business, their purchase, and the post-purchase feeling.

The emotional and functional elements are comprised of the following:

• Customer need: A customer need is something a customer must do or feel to complete their goal. For example, if a customer has the goal to buy a phone, they need it to be able to make phone calls and take pictures.

Summary

Now that you have a good idea about how to frame each journey map element’s value to your business audience, you’ll be much more successful in executing your next journey mapping project.

In the next article in this series, I’ll explain why customer tasks are the most important journey map elements. I’ll also discuss how the opportunities generated around customer tasks can be directly linked to business models and why that is important to drive value back into the company.

Written by Leo Vroegindewey, B2B CX Consultant

Get in touch to improve your customer experience and increase sales. Let's talk about how I can help your business grow. Email me.

You can find me on X or LinkedIn.