The Nonlinear Journey Map
Customer Maps and Decision-Making
In a recent blog post, I argued that there is a distinction between journey mapping, as most people use the term today, and experience mapping. I also shared four different types of journey maps and made the case for mapping exercises that focus on the job the customer is trying to get done, not the process the company is trying to impose on the customer. Most experience strategists today would contend that they don’t want to impose their company’s processes on their customers and that journey mapping is an exercise in understanding the customer’s pain points, needs, and decision-making process.
The journey map is the most customer-centered strategic document the majority of companies ever create. The exercise to map a customer’s experience creates an important visible plan for meaningful experience design.
And because mapping the customer experience is critical, we need to find better ways to define, design, and execute our maps.
Customer Journeys Aren’t Linear
A key assumption that journey mappers make is that the best way to represent the customer’s journey is to show a linear progression. There’s a start, a middle, an end, and in some cases, a loop back to a new start. Linear maps do two things for the mappers: they make the customer’s decision-making seem logical and they help to ensure that the map aligns well with the company’s processes for engagement with customers. Yet, our research shows that even in cases where the customer is literally going from one place to another (like travel), their choices, their situations, and their needs shifted continuously. Consequently, customers rarely followed the same path through an experience unless it was prescribed by the company.
People meander. Always present technology encourages them to. We need mapping tools that represent the customer’s situational needs without reinforcing a forced march through the company’s procedures. Companies who don’t account for the customer’s meandering risk alienating their customers.
We need a better way.
The ‘While’ Moment and Modes
There are a lot of ways to represent what customers want to do that don’t require you to create a linear progression. Here’s one of my favorites.
About 7 years ago, we were studying in the Collaboratives the impact of always present tools (apps, AI, etc.) on customer decision-making. One of the key insights from our research is that people use technology to create ‘while moments.’ A while moment is a moment where you are doing one thing while you are also doing something else. Watching TV while shopping, for example. Or checking social media while working—not that anyone ever does that!
We combined the insight about while moments with another insight: people get into modes. A mode is a mindset and set of behaviors that people get into temporarily. For example, beast mode, mommy mode, work mode, or yoga. With these two insights, we could map in a nonlinear way the behavior of customers. We identified key activities that companies wanted their solutions to be a part of and then we created a technique for identifying whether or not customers would ever be in the mode while doing those activities.
In this chart, which is a nonlinear experience map, you can see the different modes that the target audience gets into and the ‘while’ occasions/moments that matter to the customer and the company. The yellow boxes are things that the customer does regularly. The blue outline boxes are things that the customer doesn’t do. Getting into socializing mode while watching TV is something the customer does. Getting into giving mode while working at home is not something the customer does. The next step is to identify those opportunities where the customer will see the greatest value from the company and the company can effectively execute. The red outlined areas represent those opportunity areas. By doing so, the company doesn’t try to overreach and do too much. The focus becomes on the moments and modes that are most important to both the company and the customer.
The final step, not represented here, is to detail what the experience should look like for the key opportunity areas—the mode/moment opportunity. Each described opportunity helps the company define the requirements for the best customer experiences.
What is absent from this example is linearity. The company can focus on key moments to build experiences that matter, but it doesn’t have to prescribe the sequence. Whenever the customer is in a mode or having a while moment, the company has a solution. Done!