How journey maps and process maps work together to improve experiences
Organizations often grapple with aligning their internal processes with the experiences they aim to deliver to customers. The intersection of journey maps and process maps provides a powerful framework for bridging this gap. Understanding the differences and synergies between these two tools is crucial for creating meaningful, customer-centric solutions.
This guide explores how journey maps and process maps complement each other, offering practical tips for integrating processes into journeys effectively using TheyDo.
Journey maps vs. process maps: Key differences
Perspective:
Journey maps: Focus on the end-to-end experience of a customer, employee, or other personas. They visualize major steps, pain points, and emotions across an entire lifecycle, taking an outside-in perspective that centers on user needs.
Process maps: Represent the internal workflows within an organization. They detail the logical flow of activities and handoffs between roles or departments, adopting an inside-out perspective focused on efficiency.
Purpose:
Journey maps: Aim to elicit empathy and an emotional understanding of the user experience, identifying broader relationships and pain points.
Process maps: Focus on procedural clarity and operational efficiency, helping to improve task execution.
Hierarchy:
Both maps operate hierarchically, but their granularity differs. Journey maps provide a high-level overview, while process maps delve into detailed steps. This makes process maps ideal for analyzing and supporting specific journey steps.
How journey maps and process maps work together
Combining these approaches bridges the gap between customer experience goals and operational improvements. Here’s how:
Identifying pain points: Journey maps highlight user pain points, which process maps can analyze to uncover root causes.
Ensuring alignment: Process maps ensure internal workflows align with the ideal customer journey, pinpointing inefficiencies that impact experience.
Informing improvements: Journey insights can inspire process changes, while updated processes can enhance specific journey steps.
Driving prioritization: Linking process improvements to overall journey goals helps prioritize changes based on customer value and business impact.
By integrating these perspectives, organizations can develop holistic solutions that balance emotional and operational needs.
Practical tips for connecting processes to journeys in TheyDo
When integrating processes into journey management, TheyDo helps maintain clarity and avoid overwhelming complexity. Here are some practical steps:
Use the right tools and notations:
For detailed processes, use BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) diagrams to document workflows. Avoid modeling detailed processes directly in TheyDo.
Identify key pain points and bottlenecks:
Focus on uncovering pain points and bottlenecks within the overall journey. These insights highlight specific process optimization opportunities that will have the most significant impact on the user experience.
Use the journey view for orchestration:
Avoid replicating full process maps within TheyDo. Instead, leverage TheyDo’s journey view to orchestrate and coordinate the necessary process improvements across departments.
Link, track, and enable action on process improvements:
Use journey maps in TheyDo to identify key experience issues as “Opportunities”, and model process improvements as part of "Solutions" linked to relevant journey steps. These solutions can then be handed off to operational teams for implementation, while their status updates are tracked within TheyDo. This approach allows stakeholders to monitor progress and evaluate how changes contribute to the overall customer experience and business objectives, ensuring transparency and accountability throughout the process.
Maintain a high-level perspective:
Keep the journey map in TheyDo focused on the end-to-end user experience. Avoid getting bogged down in the complexity of mapping the entire process hierarchy. Instead, focus on linking journey insights to process optimization efforts, ensuring alignment without losing the broader perspective.
The bigger picture: Connecting experiences and processes
Journey maps in TheyDo offer a high-level view of user experiences, while process maps dive deep into operational workflows. Together, they:
Provide a holistic understanding of user needs and organizational processes.
Highlight opportunities for customer-centric process improvements.
Foster collaboration between customer experience and operational teams.
By integrating these approaches, TheyDo enables organizations to transform pain points into actionable solutions, ensuring every process aligns with the customer journey and delivers value.
This approach emphasizes the importance of blending outside-in and inside-out perspectives to create impactful, customer-centric solutions. At TheyDo, we’re passionate about helping teams orchestrate meaningful improvements by connecting the dots between journeys and processes.
If this resonates with you, let’s discuss how we can help your organization succeed with journey management.