This article explains lanes in a customer journey map. What lanes do you need for it to make sense and be useful?
The basic elements for lanes in a customer journey map
The basic elements of a customer journey map are customer steps, insights and customer emotions. Insights contains e.g. needs, behaviours, quotes and emotions contains e.g thinking and feelings.
Once this is mapped you will have a good starting point. But, and this is important, to be able to make something out of the map, i e make decisions on activities that create change and drives value – you will need to add something more. This “something” that you add, will determine what you will be able to accomplish with your map. So, the lanes you add below emotions are the change-driving lanes. Understanding lanes in a customer journey map is crucial for creating actionable insights. These are the lanes that will enable you to use the journey map as a tool to go from insights to actions that will create value for your customers and your business.
For instance, you might add lanes that contains potential opportunities and ideas & solutions. Then you get a customer journey map that is useful for idea generation and innovation. Effective lanes in a customer journey map can guide this process.
Connect the lanes to solutions and touchpoints
By now you have a good basic map. But to understand how your customer’s journeys are affected by your organization’s activities, you also need to connect the customer journey lanes to the organizations solutions and touchpoints. Like this:
The lanes you add below the customer journey depends on your organization, team and project goals. CX leading organizations manage to fully connect operational activities with the customers’ perspective, while CX laggards fail in doing so. Check out our templates for more inspiration and know-how or have a look in our how to create a journey map step-by-step guide.
For more foundational insights into customer journey mapping, check out this guide from the Nielsen Norman Group on customer journey mapping.Understanding lanes in a customer journey map ensures a complete picture of customer interactions.
By Daniel Ewerman
