 In this video we're going to look at different journey mapping tools, the advantages and downsides to them so you can decide which one is most suited for your situation allowing you to journey map like a boss. Let the show begin! Hi I'm Marc 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. In this episode we're going to talk about journey mapping tools and these days it seems that everybody is doing journey mapping which is well an okay thing because it helps people to focus and think from the customer perspective. We've talked a lot about journey mapping on this channel already and I even have a full masterclass on customer journey mapping essentials which you can find over here or down below in the show notes but what we haven't addressed yet is journey mapping tools and the reason why it is important to talk about journey mapping tools is because having the right tool, the tool that is suited for the job will make your life so much easier. What I see happening is that people stick with very basic tools they already are familiar with to create journey maps they're afraid to explore or set up criteria for new tools it can be overwhelming really quickly but the consequence is that if you are stuck with basic tools and don't look any further you might have a hammer which will allow you to create a hole in the wall but it might be helpful when you know that there is out there like a drill and when to use a hammer and when to use a drill and the same applies to journey mapping sometimes you need basic tools but in other situations it's really good to have tools that are dedicated for the job. Using a sub optimal tool is not only a pain in the ass for you and your team but you're probably also wasting a lot of time and the end result is probably also below average. What we also don't want is investing a lot of time learning a new tool just to realize at the end that it didn't make your life easier but might look as a quick solution right now could end up costing you a lot of time in the end so I'm here to help you make a more informed decision and make your life easier. What is your favorite journey mapping tool and which ones have you tried already leave a comment down below and let's learn from each other so for me there are three categories where journey mapping tools fall into we have the basic analog tools we have the online digital all-in-one hybrid tools and we have the dedicated digital power tools let's go over them one by one and see what the advantages and disadvantages are so the first category of tools are the basic analog tools these are your posters your sharpies your brown paper who doesn't love them right we've all used them I've used them extensively and I still do they are great for when you're doing a workshop with your team the advantages are obviously they are disposable they are cheap they are super flexible you can use them probably in any situation which is also the downside they don't provide any structure and it's really hard to document the outcomes of these tools as you probably know after doing a customer journey mapping workshop the second category is what I call the digital anything goes tools the hybrid tools I'm talking here about things like InDesign, PowerPoint, Excel, Keynote these are the tools that people usually start using when they want to digitize the outcomes of a journey mapping workshop I've used them I've used them a lot I'm not ashamed of it I think we've all used them they are pretty crude it's like the hammer that allows you to create a hole in the wall but the hole won't be pretty polished and neat but it works you can get the job done when you might be thinking okay what about things like mural or real-time board I still consider those to be like the hybrid tools or there anything goes tools of course you can use them for journey mapping they are pretty decent but they are not tailored for making journey maps so what are the advantages to these all-in-one tools well usually people start using them because they already know how to use them so you can leverage that existing knowledge they already have a license for this it's installed on the computer so we can start really quickly you can create a first draft really quickly but I think there are more downsides to these tools than there are upsides so the downsides are usually there are the outcomes of these tools are terrible to maintain usually they are also terrible for collaboration with exceptions of tools like mural and real-time board it's it's better there but it's still a challenge they don't give you any guidelines or structure either so you're when you make when you have a journey map in I don't know excel or PowerPoint you're always reliant on the person who thought of the structure and when that person leaves you have no idea how the map is supposed to work also things get lost with these tools files get lost file names are different it it becomes a chaos really quickly the third category of journey mapping tools is what I would call the dedicated digital journey mapping tools and I'm talking about tools like Smapply and Custolens more and more of these tools are popping up and I might do an in-depth comparison of these tools in the future and you know these tools are great because I think like a professional we are professionals that deal with customer experience we need our professional tools as well there's a reason why professional construction workers use tools from brands that we as consumers don't even know of you know they have their own specific set of tools that are tailored to actually getting the job done of a construction worker so the same I think applies to anyone who calls themselves a customer experience professional so what are the downsides to these dedicated journey mapping tools well one of the downsides is yeah you need to learn a new tool which requires time and the other challenging thing is that the tool needs to be purchased which I actually I think is a benefit you need to invest in the tool your time and money so what are the advantages well you know maybe one of the biggest advantages is that the knowledge that you start building in in these dedicated journey mapping tools that knowledge sort of stays around it doesn't get lost the next time you need to work on a journey map you can use the journey maps that you made before there's a really clear structure you can find the journey maps you can explain to new employees how these journey map maps look how the system works so it's it's much more coherent and probably much more effective in the end okay so now the big question which tool should you use should you always be using professional journey mapping tools well probably not it really depends on how serious you are about customer experience within your organization if you're just playing around with it then I probably wouldn't recommend starting with these professional tools if customer experience on the other hand is seen as vital for your business then you're probably better off investing the time and money in these tools because it will pay off in the end on the other end like I said if you just want to explain to your teammates what journey mapping is and how it works and you want to do it in a small workshop where the results of the workshop will be tossed away after the session just use postage and brown paper you'll probably be fine so I hope this helps you to pick the right tool for your job and I'm really curious which tools that you actually prefer to use and which tools have you tried which ones work the best for you make sure to leave a comment down below if you want to learn more about journey mapping like I said I have a masterclass on journey mapping essentials which you can find over here so sign up for that and if you haven't subscribed to the channel already be sure to do so thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing in the next video