Journey Mapping Facilitation Guides

How to Create a Journey Map for ITSM (Without Losing Your Mind or Your Users) Let’s face it—most ITSM diagrams look like a spaghetti chart married a ticket queue. If you want to stop guessing where your users are frustrated and start fixing what actually matters, a journey map is your new best friend. Here’s how to build one that makes IT look like a hero (not the villain): 1. Pick a Journey That Actually Happens ↳ Password resets, new hire onboarding, broken printer meltdowns. Start with something real, not theoretical. 2. Talk to Users—Not Just IT ↳ Ask them what they expected, what they experienced, and what drove them to curse under their breath. 3. Write Down the Actual Steps (All of Them) ↳ What really happens, not what’s in the SOP. Include email lag, portal confusion, and "calling my cousin in IT." 4. Capture the Pain Points ↳ Highlight friction, frustration, delays, and unnecessary approvals. If a step adds no value, it adds user rage. 5. Add Emotions, Not Just Actions ↳ Mark how users feel at each stage: Confused. Hopeful. Furious. A smiley face where one belongs? Rare. But possible. 6. Visualize the Whole Experience ↳ Build a timeline or flowchart. Make it so clear that even leadership says, “Oh… yeah, that’s not great.” 7. Fix It with Users, Not to Them ↳ Co-create the better experience with feedback loops, pilot changes, and check-ins. 8. Rinse & Repeat ↳ Because once you map one journey, you’ll discover five more that need saving. A few of my favorite resources to help get your journey started: ↳ Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) ↳ Annette Franz, CCXP ↳ Lynn Hunsaker, CCXP Journey Mapping isn’t about perfection. It’s about visibility. You can’t fix what you refuse to see. Have you ever gone through your own IT process as a “test user”? What did you find? (And did you survive?) ♻️ Repost to save someone from another broken ticket loop. 🔔 Follow Bob Roark for more no-fluff ITSM leadership tips.

Creating an effective customer journey map requires more than just plotting touchpoints—it needs to connect customer actions to business outcomes at every stage. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀: 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘆𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲. Notice how the template starts with "Journey Steps" and then "Goal." This order matters. You'll first need to understand where your customer is in their decision-making process before deciding what they are trying to accomplish. 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀. The "Needs and Pains" and "Customer Feeling" sections are crucial. By documenting both rational needs and emotional states, you create content that resonates on multiple levels. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗛𝘂𝗯𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀. The journey map directly aligns with HubSpot's lifecycle stages: Subscriber → Lead → MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Customer. This alignment ensures your marketing automation, lead scoring, and reporting are synchronized with the actual customer journey. 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲. Look at how the template captures specific actions, such as "Completes Lead Gen Form," "Expresses interest via cold call," and "Stops responding to outreach." These detailed behaviors provide clarity on what happens during transitions. 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽. The "Process ownership" row clearly defines which team or role is responsible at each stage—from Marketing to Account Manager to Division Manager. This accountability prevents leads from falling through the cracks during handoffs. 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲. The "Technology & Tools" row shows exactly which systems power each customer interaction. For awareness, it might be your SEO tools and ad platforms. For consideration, your webinar platform and HubSpot landing pages. For decision, your quote tool and contract management system. 𝗗𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀. The bottom section establishes concrete metrics for measuring success at each stage. This transforms abstract concepts, like "engagement," into measurable behaviors that you can track in HubSpot. 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀: 1. Gather stakeholders from marketing, sales, customer success, and product 2. Start with blank sticky notes and the framework above 3. Map the current state first, then the ideal state 4. Identify the most significant gaps between the current and ideal 5. Prioritize changes based on customer impact and implementation effort The goal isn't to create another pretty diagram—it's to build an actionable blueprint that improves both customer experience and business outcomes. #hubspot #crm #ops  

Safety Innovation Advent: Day 4 - Create a Journey Map for a Safety Process In the lead-up to Christmas, I’m sharing an insight, activity or practical tip each day to help you innovate in health and safety. Today’s activity: Journey map a safety process First: what is journey mapping? At it's core, journey mapping is a great tool to visualise the steps, interactions, and emotions that people experience when engaging with a process. It’s commonly used in customer experience design, but it’s equally valuable in health and safety to highlight pain points, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement in your workflows. By mapping the journey, you gain insights into how well processes support frontline workers and identify opportunities to simplify or enhance them. Here's a high level overview of how to create a journey map: 1️⃣ Choose a process to map Pick a safety-related process that impacts your team, such as: Reporting a hazard | Onboarding a new worker etc. 2️⃣ Define the journey start and endpoint Clearly outline where the process begins and ends. For example, a hazard reporting journey might start when a worker notices an issue and end when the issue is resolved and communicated back to the team. 3️⃣ Break it into steps List every step involved, such as filling out forms, getting approvals, or communicating with others. Be specific; this helps identify bottlenecks or unnecessary complexity. 4️⃣ Identify touchpoints and tools Mark where people interact with forms, technology, or other systems. For example: A worker fills out a paper form (touchpoint: paper form). A supervisor enters the report into a digital system (touchpoint: software). Notifications are sent to a team for resolution (touchpoint: email). 5️⃣ Uncover the pain points: Ask yourself (and your team): Where do delays happen? Are there any confusing steps? What causes frustration or errors? Equally you can do the same for the things that are going well... 6️⃣ Visualise the map Sketch or create a visual representation of the journey, using arrows to show the flow and notes for each step. This can be as simple as a sheet of paper, a whiteboard sketch or a diagram in tools like PowerPoint or Miro - my personal favourite is to use Lucid Charts. Why this matters for safety innovation: A journey map reveals opportunities for improvement and enhances the user experience, making processes more intuitive and effective. Workers who find safety processes easy to follow are more likely to engage with them, leading to better outcomes for everyone. To practice feel free to do this alone, but to employ this approach in your workplace you MUST involve frontline workers when mapping the journey. Their firsthand insights will uncover their unique challenges and ensure the solutions work for the people they’re designed for. Stay tuned for more practical tips in this series by following my profile and the hashtags #SafetyInnovationAdvent #SafetyInnovation #SafetyTech.

Time for the Summer reading list. People Experience has great tools and methods and they come from User and Customer Experience and are based on Human-centered Design, Agile & Analytics. If we want to see new/better business results, we have to get serious about learning & applying these tools and methods: do better research on how and where people do their best work, map their experiences, Moments that Matter (interactions with outsized impact) and other KPI's, and then build and test prototypes to ensure success. Here are my Top 5 books on Human-centered Design, Analytics and Agile – I emphasize books that help if you want to set up and facilitate a workshop or do research or design. If you only have space to pack 2 books, take the first 2 along: 1- This is Service Design Doing – Stickdorn et al – A comprehensive overview of every kind of tool and method at every phase of research and design. Simple and well-explained. This book takes Service Design Methods and puts it in a framework with even richer context and explanations. These first 3 books are like 101, 201 and 301 university courses. 2- Design Thinking Metrics & Analytics – Lewrick et al – the latest in their series now with how to set up and measure the impact of what you create using Design Thinking, with tools (lots of illustration) and practical guides for how to use them e.g. in facilitating a workshop, this is a great book. 3-  This is Service Design Methods – Stickdorn et al – if you want one book that explains all the tools in all the phases on how to DO Experience Research and Design, this is your book. The detailed guide for facilitators is my favorite feature. 4- Mapping Journeys – Kalbach – the best, in-depth guide on how to design, create and use Maps. Chapters on Visualizing Value, and how to create Service Blueprints, Journey and Experience Maps, Mental Models and Spatial Maps. 5- Universal Methods of Design – Martin, Hanington – An exhaustive guide to 125 Design Research methods (2 pages each), with a quick outline on when to use each one, great illustrations, and where to get more information. Other favorite books on Human-Centered Design, Analytics and Agile –with great examples of how to use and apply methodology and tools: The Design of Everyday Things, Emotional Design – Don Norman The Design Thinking Toolkit - Lewrick et al Experience Design – Liedtka et al Sketching User Experiences – Buxton Designing Interactions – Moggeridge Excellence in People Analytics - Ferrar & Green Qualitative Research Practice - Ritchie, Lewis et al Sprint – Knapp Scrum Fieldbook – Sutherland Lean UX - Gothelf What are your favorite books and resources? Where have you applied and learned from these sources?

Day 4 - CRO series Strategy development ➡ Customer Journey Mapping Most businesses think they know their customers. Few actually map their journey. Here’s how to do it the right way: 1. Define Your Objectives Before mapping anything, ask: ◾ Are you optimizing conversion rates? ◾ Enhancing customer satisfaction? ◾ Streamlining internal processes? A clear goal leads to a more effective journey map. 2. Identify Customer Personas Who are your customers really? Develop detailed profiles that include: ◾ Demographics ◾ Preferences ◾ Buying behaviours ◾ Pain points A journey map without personas is just a guess. 3. Outline Key Stages of the Journey Customers move through distinct phases. Break it down: ◾ Awareness → How they first discover your brand ◾ Consideration → Researching and comparing options ◾ Decision → Making the final purchase ◾ Post-Purchase → Engaging with support or becoming a repeat customer Each stage presents different challenges and opportunities. 4. Map Customer Touchpoints Every interaction matters. Identify where customers engage with your brand: ◾ Website visits ◾ Email campaigns ◾ Social media engagement ◾ Customer service interactions ◾ In-store experiences Understanding these touchpoints helps refine the overall experience. 5. Gather Data & Insights Data removes guesswork. Use analytics to uncover: ◾ Drop-off points in conversion funnels ◾ Pages with high engagement ◾ Customer service trends Insights from real user behavior guide smarter decisions. 6. Identify Pain Points & Opportunities Not all interactions are seamless. Look for: ◾ Friction points (abandoned carts, slow response times, confusing navigation) ◾ Opportunities (upsells, loyalty programs, personalized experiences) Even small optimizations can lead to significant improvements. 7. Create the Journey Map Make it visual to improve clarity. Use: ◾ Flowcharts ◾ Diagrams ◾ Interactive tools A clear, easy-to-share map aligns teams and drives action. 8. Collaborate Across Departments Customer journey mapping isn’t just a marketing exercise. Involve: ◾ Sales ◾ Customer support ◾ Product teams Cross-functional input leads to a more comprehensive strategy. 9. Test, Iterate, and Improve Your first map won’t be perfect. Keep refining based on: ◾ New data ◾ Customer feedback ◾ Business growth A journey map should evolve as your company and customers do. Why This Matters: ✔ Deeper Customer Understanding – Know their motivations and challenges ✔ Improved User Experience – Reduce friction and increase satisfaction ✔ Higher Conversion Rates – Optimize the buying process ✔ Stronger Team Alignment – Get every department on the same page See you tomorrow! P.S: If you have any questions related to CRO and want to discuss your CRO growth or strategy, Book a consultation call (Absolutely free) with me (Link in bio)

🥪 Service Blueprints From Scratch (https://lnkd.in/dCeutXvu), a neat practical guide on how to turn research insights into a service blueprint, make front stage and back stage visible — and cover roles, processes, systems and data. By Marco Torrente. --- 🔶 1. Painting a Broader Picture To start with, we map the complexity of a system by looking at a broader picture. The real world is complex, contradictory and often riddled with dependencies, undocumented decisions and data flows. So we get together with stakeholders and map across 6 layers: Front stage ⚬ Customer / User ⚬ Experience / Channels Back stage ⚬ Organisation / People ⚬ Performance / Processes ⚬ Assets / Systems ⚬ Data / Information The goal here is to understand and visualize how a service is currently running (at a high level) and what friction points or challenges are involved in delivering that service to a customer. Afterwards, we structure relevant themes according to when they happen in time. --- 🔹 2. Diving Into Details Marco suggests to build the journey by laying out the phases and steps horizontally and the layers vertically. We map customer actions as steps or activities — similar to how we would do it with customer journey maps. However, a journey is never enough because the experience needs to be delivered from the org effectively. So we need to involve the project team to add back stage items (org, performance, systems, data) as they hold deep domain knowledge. It helps understand where and why customers experience friction. --- 🔹 3. Right-to-Left Thinking Personally, I add a different twist to that mapping process. Journey maps often represent ideal user journeys that people should take, but rarely do in practice. There is a lot of complexity and chaos that they hide — from back-and-forth to external factors that influence their decisions. Often many things must happen at the same time, coming all at once, and working together towards the shared goal. As we aim for that goal, we also need to map risks, blockers, opportunities and unknowns. One way to do that is by applying right-to-left (R-L) thinking (also called “backcasting”) to your work: 🚩 Right-to-left → Start from the goal, then move backwards to start. 🎯 Expose complexity → Map a path that maximizes chance of success. 🧱 Map what happens → Known success moments, frequent blockers. 🪜 One step at a time → Always focus on immediate previous step. ❓ Mark unknowns → Flag strong assumptions for research to-do. 🚀 Prioritize work → Choose key blockers/successes to work on next. It takes a lot of grit to change a way of working in organizations. But we can frame your work around the desired outcome and use right-to-left thinking to enforce critical thinking — instead of focusing on 1000s of details that might matter short-term, but won’t make a difference at scale. Details: https://smashed.by/rtl ↓

I absolutely LOVE customer journey maps. So much information can be discovered by walking through your ideal customer's actions and emotions - especially when you go upstream and think about what your customer does BEFORE engaging with your business. If you've never done an exercise like this before, here is how we typically approach this process at OTM: • First, start by taking your marketing funnel and aligning it with stages of your customer journey - horizontally along an axis (these are your columns) • Then identify what swimlanes you need, common ones we use include actions, emotions, obstacles, opportunities, tech enablement, customer service touchpoints, and sales processes (these become your rows) • Get to mapping! Fill out your map from left to right (through each stage of the journey) and top to bottom (related to each swimlane) - it does NOT have to be perfect, and if you have data (i.e. HubSpot past customer journey data), incorporate that into your map to give it context • From there, you can align action items and strategies (for whatever you're trying to solve for - whether it be improved marketing, sales, or overall CX) with your opportunities and against your obstacles and look for areas where you can ADD fuel, REDUCE friction, or both! How do you know if you've done it right? I don't think there is a "right" way to map your customer journey. Instead, figure out WHY you're doing it first, and that why should guide your efforts. The 3 main reasons we go through this process are to: 1. Understand a Customer’s Journey 2. Ensure Marketing Alignment 3. Better Nurture Existing Customers Here's a look at the OTM customer journey map that Bridget and Katelyn have been working on... it's not done yet, but I am excited to see how we can improve our customer experience in 2024!