 Are you using or making customer journey maps? Well, you're not alone. They can be a great tool to find actionable insights on how to actually improve the customer experience. But not all customer journey maps are used to the full potential. In this video, I'm going to show you the five common mistakes I see people making when creating maps. And of course, how you can avoid them, allowing you to make more valuable maps faster. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This channel is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people's lives and are good for business. And one of the most common tools used to design these services are customer journey maps. I've seen and created a lot of them in my career and the truth is not all of them are that useful. I think we've all seen them. The customer journey maps that end up as a pretty picture decorating the office walls. So what can you do to increase the chance that your customer journey map will actually be used to create value for people? Well, if you can avoid these five common mistakes, you'll be able to make better maps and save time in the end doing so. Are you using customer journey maps in your work? Let me know by leaving a comment down below. The first mistake I see people make is that they don't define the customer who is going through the journey, especially the needs and desires of this customer. The problem with these anonymous maps is that it's almost impossible to define actionable insights on how to improve the service experience from a customer perspective. Just think about the mom with two kids going through a grocery store compared to a student who just needs a quick snack. Although the journey might be the same, the experience will most likely be really different. So when you don't define the customer, you're basically creating a process or a system map, not a customer journey. And most likely you're optimizing the process, not the experience. A better process might occasionally lead to a better experience, but customer journey maps should have a different starting point. The second mistake is that you start mapping the journey from the company or system perspective, not from the perspective of the customer activities. The great thing about this mistake is that it's really easy to spot. Imagine a map visualizing the journey of a hospital emergency room. When this map just describes formal steps like filling in forms and doesn't describe activities like waiting, it's probably not based on actual customer activities. The problem with these maps is that it's very likely that you'll miss moments of truth for your customer. Waiting in the emergency room might be the moment that has the biggest influence on how a patient actually experiences the whole service. And if the waiting experience is literally not on your map, you'll likely miss out on this opportunity because experiences aren't just created in the formal interactions with a company. Mistake number three is starting your journey when your in-house processes start, not when your actual customer journey starts. Once I was in a project where we had to think of ways on how to improve their visit to a museum. Really quickly, we discovered that every improvement that had been suggested up till now focused on things that happened inside of the walls of the museum. When we started to map the journey by shadowing museum visitors throughout the city, we found tons of opportunities of how the visit to museum could be improved before the moment somebody actually entered the building. This was a huge eye-opener and completely changed the perspective on our project. So make sure your journey starts when the real journey of your customer starts. The fourth mistake you should try to avoid is creating a map that is limited to a single communications channel. So for instance, creating a customer journey map where you only take into account the interactions your customers have with your website. Now, of course, an important part of the Airbnb or Uber experience takes place online. But think about how much the offline aspects influence the total experience. And I'm not just talking about the moment that you actually visit the room you booked. But I'm talking about the selection process and the associated conversations you will have with your boyfriend or girlfriend, wife or husband. So maps that are limited to a single channel tend to ignore what has actually happened in the real life of your customer. They look more like flow diagrams instead of customer journey map. And if that's what you're after, that's fine, of course. But if you want to find opportunities to make an impact on your customers, embrace the complexity of real life and don't just limit yourself to a single channel. The final mistake is a classic one, I guess. And that is basing your journeys on assumptions rather than actual research. There are occasions where you're encouraged people to visualize a map based on the knowledge that's already inside of them, just to quickly visualize what's in their head. But the next step is always to go outside and collect data from your customers to support your assumptions or to challenge them. There are two big problems when you don't have any research data to back your journey up. The first one is that you are very likely to end up in endless discussions with people who have a different perspective on the journey. Having research data helps you to avoid these conversations because it's not anymore about what you think the journey is but what you actually know from research. The second, and I guess bigger problem is that you might end up making bad decisions where you end up losing time, resources, and energy if your assumptions end up to be wrong. The solution here is to find ways that allow you to get a research data no matter what. Remember that a short and simple interview with a few customers is always more valuable than sitting inside your office debating with your team whose perspective on the journey is the right one. All in all, there is no excuse for not doing research. So these are the five common mistakes I see people making when creating customer journey maps. I hope this video helps you to avoid them so you can make better maps faster. Let me know down below in the comments if you're using customer journey maps and what are the common mistakes you see people making. This video is part of a growing playlist specifically on customer journey maps so make sure you check out the whole playlist if you're interested in this topic. And if this is your first time here make sure to subscribe to the channel so you won't miss any of the new episodes. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.