 In this video we're going to answer the basic question, what is a customer journey and what is a customer journey meant? And we're going to use theater to do so. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to do more work that makes you proud by designing and delivering services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. And in this episode we're going to talk about customer journey and customer journey maps or as you might know them as user journeys, employee journeys, patient journeys, passenger journeys, all kinds of journeys. Whatever name you use, the basic concept is always the same. So let's dive in and look at what that is. So in order to understand what a customer journey map is, the first thing we need to acknowledge is that services play out over time. There is, services have a sequential nature. So think about when you need to do groceries. The sequence is you make a grocery list, you drive to the shop, you walk through the alleys looking for the things you need, then you stand in line waiting for the checkout and then you pay. Well, this sequential nature is a key characteristic of services. And it's really important that we sort of accept this in order to understand what customer journey maps are. So having said that, a customer journey map is basically a visual representation of the steps a customer is going through and his or her emotions and experiences during those steps. And especially the last part is really important because without these emotions without this information layer, if you don't include it, you're not making a customer journey map. You're basically mapping out a process and making something like a process map. And that's really different. Now as simple as this might sound, when you google for customer journey maps and look at the images, you'll find all sorts of different visuals. Some maps have like fancy loops or branch out in all sorts of steps. And if you're new to customer journey maps and customer journey mapping, this can be really confusing. But the good news is that there is a general consensus of what the fundamental elements are of a customer journey map. And that's what I want to talk about next. When you look at the fundamentals of a customer journey map, you can often divide it into four different information layers. And we'll dive into each layer more in depth in a minute. But this is the general overview. In a map, you'll find the top layer, which is the customer experience. Then you'll find a layer that is called the front stage. Then you'll find a layer underneath, which is called the back stage. And finally, you'll often see a layer that represents systems and processes, supporting systems and supporting processes. Alright, so let's start by looking more in depth in these layers by using an example of a real service like an airline. And we're going to start off with the top two layers first. And the first layer is the customer experience layer. Most often you'll see that this layer is also divided into three information blocks. And the top information block is in the top information block, you describe what I call stages or scenes within the service. And within an airline, it can be something like really simple before the flight, during the flight, and after the flight. And of course, you can make this more granular as you need. But these are like the main stages of a service. The next layer information layer that you'll find is a really important one. And this one, in this layer, you describe customer activities and situations. So for instance, here you describe what a customer does when we take the airline. For instance, we go on the website of the airline to book a flight, then we pack our luggage, then we go to the airport, then we print our boarding pass, then we stand in the line for security, stuff like that, all these things that our customer actually does. And these are not touch points, which is a word you'll often hear in relationship to customer journey maps. These are not touch points, we'll talk about touch points in a minute. But customer activities and situations are not touch points. And the third information block you'll find in this layer is emotions. So you'll often see this like a squiggly line, and it represents high, so like the positive emotions and the negative emotions during the journey through the service. So in our example, a negative emotion might be that when we're in the car driving to the airport, we always have that uncanny feeling of did I actually take my passport with me. So that might be a negative emotion. And we might have a positive emotion further down the path, because we had a nice chat with somebody sitting next to us while we were waiting at the gate for the flight. If I could only keep one information layer out of the whole journey map, the customer journey map, I would keep the customer activities. That is, for me, the fundamental information layer of the whole journey map. That's how important that information block really is. So the second big information layer is the front stage. And what you map on the front stage is literally how the customer is experiencing or interacting with your service. And this is often divided into channels. So channels can be like physical channels, people, and it can be digital channels like your website. And you can, it can be social media, I can all, it's up to you to divide these channels into meaningful separations. And in our airline example, we would, for instance, in the front stage, say that what we're doing on the website. So how is the customer interacting with us through the website? How is he consuming our service? And further down the journey, the customer journey, we would, for instance, plot that we have a baggage drop-off machine where we can drop our luggage off. And even further down the journey, we would, for instance, map that the customer or passenger is interacting with us as organization through our staff because he needs to check his boarding pass. So that's what you map in the front stage. All the actors, physical, digital, all the channels through which a customer is consuming the service as you will. Now, these are the two top layers, the customer experience layer and the front stage. Like I said, there is a general consensus that these two layers should always be included in a customer journey map. These two layers are fundamental to a customer journey map. The next two layers we're going to talk about, well, they differ much more. And you don't see that consensus, that same consensus with the bottom two layers. So for me, these two top layers are like vital to a customer journey map. And what we're going to talk about next is like something that is really important to make your customer journey map useful and helpful. But it's not like an essential part of the map. The customer journey map in essence is these two top layers for me. So now let's look at what the other two bottom layers described and what you should add to them. So the bottom two layers are also often described as things below the line of visibility. And that is because your customers literally aren't seeing what is happening here. These are the things that happen on the internal side of your organization to actually make the service happen. So for instance, in the third layer, the back stage, here is where you would map things like employee activities. And you can think about people who take the luggage that we just dropped in our drop-off machine, take that luggage and put it in the airplane. You would map how the meals get prepared and get on the plane. You would map, for instance, people who make the flight schedules, all those kinds of things that happen on the internal side to actually make the service possible for your customer. So that is the back stage. And that differs a lot per organization and also how much information and what type of information you want to add there. This can be a really big layer. And the layer below that, the bottom layer, as you will, the fourth layer, is where you map supporting processes and systems. And the most easy example is you would, for instance, map here how the booking process works. So when I go to the website and I book a flight, how is the website connected to our invoicing system? Or how is our website connected to our planning system or stuff like that? But you could also map things related to finance, legal, HR, really all the machines, the processes and systems that you need in order to make the service happen. When you map this layer, and you have the other three layers as well, it almost becomes a service blueprint. So the boundary between a customer journey map and a service blueprint gets blurry when you start adding these layers. Now, if all this still sounds a bit abstract, don't worry. There is one more way we can look at what a customer journey is. And that is, like I said in the beginning, by looking at it through the lens of a theater. So if we look at our four information layers, the customer experience, the front stage, the backstage and the supporting systems and processes and project that onto a theater, a play, literally a play. In the customer experience layer, we would map out how is the audience feeling throughout the play. What are they seeing? What are they experiencing? That is what we would describe in our top layer. In the front stage layer, we would describe what is literally happening on stage. What are the actors doing to play out the play, to make the experience happen? How are things moving on the stage? That is what we would describe in the front stage. Now, below the line of visibility, the backstage. This is literally what happens behind the curtains, what we don't see as an audience. So the people who do lights, the people who do the audio, the people who need to set up the set pieces. So all the ingredients, all the people, all the actors behind the curtains that are vital to actually make that front stage play happen. And finally, the supporting systems and processes. Here we would map out the type of set pieces we need, the type of lighting we need, all that kind of stuff that is also needed to make the play happen. I really like the theater example because it takes something abstract as a service and makes it into something really concrete that almost anyone can imagine. And this works especially well if you're talking to people in our organization who are somewhat more distant from the actual customer. So people from finance, people from IT, if you say to them, okay, listen, you're not on stage. You're not playing the play. You're the lighting guy. But the role of the lighting guy is super important to provide a good experience. If the lighting guy isn't paying attention, if the lights aren't working, the experience of the play will be much worse. So the theater really helps to sort of get people into their mindset that they all contribute to providing and delivering a good customer experience. And that's what I like about this theater example. So I hope this has been helpful and that it gave you a better understanding of what a customer journey map actually is. If there's something that I didn't address here about customer journey maps, just leave a comment down below and I'll reply to every single comment. If you want to learn more about customer journey maps, I've got a whole playlist that you can find over here, which will help you on this topic. And once you're ready to create your own customer journey maps and you want to make sure they don't just end up decorating office walls and that they are impactful, I've got a whole course that will help you and teach you how to create customer journey maps in less time. You can find that course over here. Thanks so much for watching and I look forward to see you in the next video.