The Basic Customer Journey Template Explained

Learn about the elements of a basic customer journey in TheyDo.

Using the steps and lanes introduced in this guide, you can create many different types of journeys. In this guide, we focus on the buildup of a basic Customer Journey. For an overview of all possible journey types, have a look at our guide on journey templates.

Anatomy of a basic TheyDo Journey

In general, any journey can be summarized into 3 key parts:

1. A layer describing the customer experience.

2. A layer focused on identifying improvements using Opportunities and Solutions.

3. As a bonus: a layer focused on the front end, back end, and supporting systems and processes making journey steps possible.

Let’s walk through each of these parts with an example of several lanes of a great customer journey you can follow to create your first journey.

Creating the top part: the customer and their experience

The top part is where the customer experience lives.

1. Add a persona lane. Once you have identified what a journey is about, you want to define the customer on that journey. While steps can be generic, it’s the persona (a.k.a. need-based profile of a group of customers) who are the actors in the journey. Using personas, you can also indicate how different customer segments experience your journey steps differently.

2. Add the experience curve – Based on the feelings and thoughts people have at every step, you use the personas to define what they experience. The values for every step translate into a graph that is easy to scan for frustrations and delightful moments. This is a key element of a readable journey.

3. Add Insights – using an insight lane is the easiest way to add more customer insights. You can store any valuable insight from your research right below the personas. This is especially useful as the persona summarizes the experience, or where the quotes underpin their feelings.

 
Adding the middle part: the possible improvements

4. Add an opportunity lane – Now that your journey is showing the customer experience, chances are you have already identified problems you want to solve.

5. Add a Solutions lane – Add a solutions lane to indicate ideas or concepts for improvement. You could also add another solutions lane to indicate solutions that are already live. A big part of TheyDo is to track the different products, (micro) services, flows and communication you have in place.

Adding the Bottom part: the supporting processes.

1. Service blueprint lanes – Again using the Solutions lane type, you could add a third level of detail to every journey by showing which things your company does – from employee actions to automated processes that get initiated. It’s easy to extend the journey as a service blueprint by adding the typical Front-stage, Back-stage, actions and processes as separate lanes, all drawing from the solutions repository. The things the customer doesn’t see: processes, data capture, and backstage actions. If you want to learn more about service blueprints, have a a look at our guide: Creating a Service Blueprint.