Microsoft Product Director on Customer Experience Insights (Part 2): Customer Journey

High-Level Journey Map

So with that in mind, I want to talk about journey mapping. We’re not going to go deep into the journey mapping process. But if you haven’t gone deep into it, do it! It’s totally worth it. But I’m just going to show you it at a high level. 

So when you make a journey map, the typical way that you organize the map is you start with a customer funnel or the stages of a customer journey. And those are going to be different depending on your product or service. I created a journey map based on a recent purchase. When I decided to take a job back at Microsoft, this past spring, I wanted an electric car. So I shopped around and decided to buy a Tesla 3. 

So when you create a journey map, you must break the experience into stages, and chart out the experience. What are they doing, thinking, and feeling? And then what are their touchpoints with the service each step along the way? The first few stages of my journey with Tesla are truly magical. And the purchase experience is like 10 minutes on a touchscreen and you’re done. There’s no haggling. There’s no paperwork. I mean, it’s just beautiful. 

The Moment of Truth

And so everything was fantastic for me until I hit a moment of truth that did not turn out as I would have hoped. The term “moment of truth” in journey mapping is a term that you can use to describe a really important point in the customer journey. Like when the outcome of an event is going to have a significant effect on the customer’s experience. So when you’re doing journey mapping, always look for moments of truth, because those are the things that are going to reveal opportunities.

And from a data perspective, the journey map really does correspond to a funnel. So take your funnel data and see if you see any unexpected things going on. Perhaps there is a dip in NPS at a certain point in the customer journey that you can hone in on. 

Tesla 3 Moment of Truth

So I’m going to tell you my [abbreviated] story of my moment of truth. Then in the next article, I’ll address how a PM can use the journey mapping technique to take advantage of some “opportunities”. 

Here’s my moment of truth. It didn’t go well. So as I said, the first few months of owning this Tesla 3 were just bliss. Everything was cool. One day, I was driving to work and I’m in the center lane and all of a sudden the car just stopped. 

The battery had plenty of charge. So, it wasn’t my battery. And I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. The center console gave me conflicting information and I couldn’t find the hazard lights. Eventually, I found the customer support phone number and called them, but they told me to call 911 instead. So I did and got towed, which resulted in more pain points. No one greeted me when I arrived at the Tesla dealership. In fact, I was told to check-in through a computer and waited a while before anyone helped me.