Customer journey mapping needs to be more than just an eyecandy in your product design process. These journeys are ideal when you have to think about complex issues. The output, the infographics are always something to gloat with in front of your colleagues and clients. But sometimes - just sometimes - it’s a little bit overwhelming and not actionable enough. Let’s take a tiny example: I have 8x8 brackets in my journey. What should I do? I can’t take all of these into consideration! Touchpoints are a great place to start but you can also boost these taking newer research into consideration.

UX & the moments of truth

In some cases it’s really hard to understand the context of the usage. This is the part when the micro-moments of truth framework helped me a lot. Originally moments of truth was a marketing term which referred to those few moments when your customers form their impression about the product. For example in this older terminology the first moment of truth was when the customer actually saw the product for the first time.

Times changed and thanks to Google and their enormous amount of data this theory has been revised and refined to suit the digital age and the increasing mobile usage more. Whenever we come across a product we can do our own research and access all the info we need instantly by the help of our smart devices.

The point to take away from here is that in the past there were really special moments with your customers where you could make or break your connection. But excessive mobile usage destroyed this approach because there are so many little instances and cases where you can interact with the customer. This has an effect on our processes too – UX has to provide a holistic view of the experience.

How do micro-moments work

According to Google there are no more big, defining moments. Rather there are small little steps along the way which you can use to be present for your customer. This is the concept of micro-moments:

I-Want-to-Know: this is the moment of curiosity and, your customer is going through the available options

I-Want-to-Go: when the digital and the physical world connects, where the customers can get the thing they want

I-Want-to-Do: this is the how-to moment, when they want instructions for a process

I-Want-to-Buy: when they are ready to buy and make the purchase

The premise is that basically, the customers has become much more conscious. We don’t just use the web sometimes, we live in it. That’s why mobile experience increasingly matters. I still get it from interviewees that they feel uncomfortable when they have to pay via mobile – but the trend is changing. But that’s not the main message right now. The thing to consider here is that they use their phone a lot in all of these phases – even if they make the final purchase on their desktop.

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Customer journey mapping using micro-moments

Create your customer journey on a UX workshop with essential team members

Analyze : revisit the journey and try to elaborate the user’s emotions. Similar to emotional mapping – try to define them emotions at each step to see the highs and lows of the journey

Identify : Analyzing crucial touch points help in finding turning points and possible opportunities (micro-moments)

Brainstorm solutions: put your heads together with the marketing people and come up with ideas to make the best out of micro-moments (the principles of emotional design can help you a lot here)

Make it happen – take action and make changes based on your results 🙂 The process has some difficulties but provides actionable insights – remember there are no happy paths just endless permutations of customer journeys – you can’t keep track all of them but you have to be there and analyze the process vigorously

In most cases we try to lead interviews with our users throughout the project. You can also scan the latest trends and take a look at some customer surveys.

This way, we can provide qualitative and quantitative data to identify the important moments and gather new ideas. For example, when we worked on a flight ticket search engine we found out that our users are not just using the service to find the best deals to go to an exact location.

They also try to get inspired for their next holiday on the go on their mobile. Maybe that’s not really a big surprise, especially with Google stating that the world has changed and we have to adapt to the excessive mobile usage. But it’s always nice to get information first-hand about your own product.

How can we make the exploring more prominent and joyful in the application? These are the questions that we have to answer through continuous discovery and constant iterations.

Food for thought

Customer journeys help departments across the project to understand the exact problems and the whole process in a visually appealing way. Micro-interactions are a great added value to this method because it helps you to stay focused and provide actionable points within the process.

From the marketing point of view, micro-moments are also important because we have to find our audience exactly at the right time. From the user experience point of view, we should take the context into consideration and provide what the users need according to that.

Everyone’s ultimate goal is to design and develop a product with a long lifespan.

Introducing the micro-moments concept from marketing into your UX customer journey can help your product live happily ever after with your customers. This framework helps to bring the marketing and design side of a product even closer together to create a much fulfilling and joyful customer experience.

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