Are You Creating a Journey Map or a Lifecycle Map?

Today’s post is a modification of one that Annette wrote for CX Journey™ on September 23, 2014.

What’s the difference between a customer experience lifecycle map and a customer journey map? And do you know which one you’re building?

I thought it was worthwhile to clarify because the difference between these two is in the details! Literally.

The customer experience lifecycle map shows the phases of the customer’s relationship with your company. It’s high level and is good for understanding the overall relationship the customer has with the organization, from before he’s even considered a customer through when he is no longer a customer. It typically includes these stages: Need, Awareness, Consideration, Selection/Purchase, Experience, Loyalty, Advocacy, Engagement, Raving Fans. And, unfortunately, Exit. It’s not necessarily linear and often circles back on itself.

This type of map is often handy for your marketing and sales folks to help them understand and identify where prospects or customers are in the relationship with the company so that they can better target communications, marketing campaigns, or sales pitches based on wants and needs at each stage. The problem for those working to transform the customer experience is that it’s a 30,000-foot view; it’s too high level to be able to help the organization understand the customer experience or to effect change that is meaningful to the customer experience.

Lifecycle maps have their place and are important to nurturing the overall customer relationship, but to get to the heart of the matter, to really design a better customer experience, you must map the customer journey.

What, then, is a customer journey map? In simplest terms, it’s a way to walk in your customer’s shoes and chart his course as he interacts with your organization (channels, departments, touchpoints, products, etc.) while trying to fulfill some need or do some job within each stage of the lifecycle.  It allows you to identify key moments of truth and to ensure that those moments are executed delightfully. The map is created from his viewpoint, not yours. It’s not linear either, nor is it static. But it is the backbone of your customer experience management efforts.

This is where the details come into play, though. The journey map looks at each and every step a customer takes in order to achieve some task, i.e., calling support, ordering a product, etc., with the company. It describes what customers are doing, thinking, and feeling at each step in the journey. Lifecycle maps don’t get to this level of detail, and they’re not focused on some task the customer is trying to do.

Why do you need a customer journey map? I believe customer journey maps provide clarity for the entire organization. There are a ton of benefits, including (to name just a few):

  • getting organizational buy-in for customer focus and customer centricity
  • understanding your customer and his interactions with your organization
  • aligning the organization around a common cause
  • speaking a universal language (customer)
  • breaking down organizational silos
  • getting a single view of the customer
  • improving the customer experience

If you’ve done some mapping, take a look at the maps and tell me if you’ve gotten to the level of detail that you need to get to in order to improve the customer experience. Is it a lifecycle map or a journey map? If you haven’t started with personas, described some task the customer is trying to achieve, and validated with customers, you need to go back to the drawing board. Literally.