“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day.
We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.
Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
― Anne Lamott
Now that you’ve had some time to understand how and why Journey Maps are created, the real fun begins.
Moving from the concept to construction of a Journey Map is no small task. Although Customer Journey Maps are incredibly useful tools, thankfully the building process isn’t rocket science. It’s just a lot of hard work.
There are five basic stages when building your Map, and each stage encompasses several substages. They are:
- Research
- Define your Persona
- Populate the Think, Do, Stop Model
- Create a hypothesis map, test and design your map
- Identify opportunities based on your research
Before diving in to each stage, let’s level-set with a look at our template Journey Map from earlier in the book.
(You can download a free PDF of this template on CXThatSings.com/resources)
This template is intended to be a guide for one style of Customer Journey Map (of which there are many). Using this template for your first or first draft of your Map is advised. Better to learn from a basic example that covers the fundamentals. You can then build on these foundations to create your own unique bespoke spin on content, structure and design.
In the following chapters, we’ll walk through each step in the process, detailing to-do’s, resources, things to avoid, deliverables, expected outcomes, goals, and typical key stakeholders on the agency and client-side.