Why is #customerjourney a hot topic? Why and how should companies map customer experiences? This eBook presents in detail why and how you are able to discover, research and map your customer journey. With multi-strategy methods and a lot of design thinking, this is a Nordic take on mapping experiences.

1. Mind the Map
Uncovering the Nordic take
on Journey Mapping
NORDIC MORNING
INNOVATION AWARD
W I N N E R
2016RESEARCH

2. 2
Contents
Chapter 1: Journey and destination
Why Customer Journeys matter more than ever before?
The all-in-one, end-to-end introduction to a model of
journey mapping that can start a cultural change.
Chapter 2: Seven Nordic principles when mapping a
journey
What are the Nordic principles that have guided us to
make a new model of journey mapping?
Chapter 3: Fire and Ice
What is not a customer journey? What are the knitty-gritty
details I need to know to convince management? How does
it work in practice? How do you set up a project? How does
it work in terms of data collection and research methods?
Chapter 4: Take a ride
The step-by-step for you to start on your own a pilot
project for Customer Journey Mapping and get that wow
effect over your management.
Chapter 5: Around the campfire
We are sharing selected takeaways from our projects.
Tidbits and useful information that we have learned
along our projects that can be useful and applicable to
businesses, professionals and service providers.

3. Journey & Destination
1

4. 4
Why the
customer
journey
became an
essential tool
for business
Journey mapping was much easier
in two scenarios.
Firstly, the pre-“big data”
time, where assumptions
made around a table were the
source of information, and
would accomplish the map of a
consumer’s journey.
Secondly, when mapping is
restricted to analysts discussing
conversion rates on a website or
digital service.
Both approaches show problems:
the first, based on assumption,
were heavily subjected to
confirmation bias and proximity
bias. People would assume for all
what they would do themselves,

5. 5
and rule out a number of relevant
scenarios.
The sceond, based on analytics, is
extremely precise on measuring
and tracking how consumers
navigate and convert into sales
on web services. However, they
cannot tell why a customer
dropped out of the service, nor
what motivates their choices.
That means they are not
generally able to tell why things
work, and trial and error play an
extensive driving force in this
scenario.
Journey mapping is a cultural
change
Mapping a consumer journey,
however, was seen / is often seen
as a “painkiller”. Even in great
framworks of design thinking,
popular in the Nordics, journey
mapping is often regarded as one
of many items in a tool box to
design solutions that can provide
rapid effect.
Journey mapping in the context
of business design, however,
means something much bigger --
it is a shift from operative, task-
oriented, silo culture companies
to companies who are providing
their entire activities around the
consumer’s needs.
It is no coincidence that
Forrester has boldly stated that
“in 2016, leaders will execute
multidiscipline CX strategies to
change internal operations —
and drive a larger wedge between
themselves and those just
executing CX tactics.”
Journey mapping is evolving
rapidly. The buying journey must
be simplified, widely tracked,
deeply listened, absolutely
personalised. Companies must
track data and actively use
it to improve it. Companies
must prepare to have “things”
enhancing human capability
for the customer’s decision-
making, and seamlessly connect
the identified customer accross
channels.
We are on the way to offer a
Nordic approach to how it can be
done, and sharing what we have
found so far.
Useful resources
Christensen, Clayton M., Michael Raynor E., and Rory
McDonald. “What Is Disruptive Innovation?” Harvard Business
Review, 04 Apr. 2016.
Goodwin, Tom. “The Battle Is For The Customer Interface.”
TechCrunch. 03 Mar. 2015.
“The 2016 Top 10 Critical Success Factors To Determine Who
Wins And Who Fails In The Age Of The Customer.” Forrester.
Oct. 2015.

6. 6
Helping to
uncover a
Nordic take
on consumer
mapping
research
Our take on the consumer
journey map has evolved rapidly
in the past years. We have been
commited to create a “Nordic”
approach to it. This can mean a
number of things. We have been
structuring the development
with a certain commitment to
innovation -- with the attitude,
resources and risks that
innovation entices. But also
reaping the benefits from that.
Our journey mapping projects
have always been focused in going
right towards new challenges
Keeping the focus is on creativity,
paired with the help of technology
and design principles. We also
have prioritised the activation of
local partners, and kept thinking
bigger, across borders, even
when that was not the easy way
out -- our journeys needed to
be relevant even after they are
implemented, even after the
next quarter is done, even when
technology changes and evolves.
Those are all elements deeply
connected to the Nordic business
culture.
The development in our
methods have been also been
fostered by Nordic ideals of
opennes of thinking, freedom
of experimentation, constant
evaluation and challenging
of current and new models.
Furthermore, we kept a dialog
with the society, the market, the
region and the global trends by
connecting to people, research
participants and international
members of our group.
We won a group award in 2016,
the Nordic Morning Innovation
Award. We believe our product
is a lasting one, an open one,
and that can help our clients
to get back in touch with their
customers. Furthermore, when
you map journeys you can see the
details of the big picture -- that’s
a value in itself, and much more
when it’s in an actionable way.
A lot of what we have learned
is published here -- there it
goes another Nordic principle
of transparency and openness.
Enjoy the ride!

7. 7
Against the
blind spots
We mix ethnography, trained
agents, qualitative and
quantitative data to cover the blind
spots that most methods leave out.
That means that as several methods are
combined, they gradually strengthen the
validity of the findings.
For example, we may recruit and train
subjects for a qualitative research and collect
quantitative data about their interaction with
a service. We may ask how their contexts
matter and find common denominators
-- following the tendency to rely less on
demographics and more on common
behavior and meaningful moments accross
the journey.
Furthermore, we are concerned in setting
up your journey to receive and compute
more and more data -- which later on can be
analysed in a variety of ways. We will cover all
those along the pages.

8. 8
The maps
This is one model of the map. It shows the
imaginary client Nordic Morning Coffee
House, a service where you can order coffee
online and pick it at a store without a cashier or
money transactions.
As in the example, maps should be tailored for
customer’s businesses, never from ready-mades
or templates with the usual stuff (awareness,
consideration, purchase, aftermath, for
example).
We include in the map what customers are
doing, thinking and feeling in the context of our
customer’s business, and which moments are
meaningful for the consumer.
Awareness ➜ Familiarity ➜ Appeal ➜ Consideration ➜
TRIGGER
DECISION ➜
USING THE
APP ➜
At the shop ➜ CORE OFFER ➜
DIGITAL FOLLOW
UP ➜
Advocacy➜
DOING
ABILITY/
INABILITY
Can the user engage
with the service in a
continuous way?
Facebook ads
Spotify ads
Sponsored podcast
Twitter ads
Can the user get to the
shop?
Festival brochure
Friends
recommendation
Users are aware and
familiar with the service.
Can they find what
resonates in the service
with their expectations?
Can the user
understand the offer
so that it considers
the service as a
provider? Can the user place
their orders?
WHAT IS USEFUL/
USABLE
Browse, look and feel
Browsing categories
Browsing products
Basket
Pay
Track
Can the user find
the shop?
Can the user locate
their orders?
The coffee is ready.
Can the user find a
place, sit comfortably
and have it at the
store?
Dessert. Can the user place
a second order? Can the
user be categorised in a
profile and browse a
suitable list of follow up
offers?
Digital receipt is sent.
Can the user connect
with the store for
further interaction?
Can the user invite
friends to use the
service?
THINKING
CONFIDENCE/
CONFUSION
“I din’t know they
existed”
“There they are again”
“This must be a good
service”
“Should I give it a
try?”
“Let’s do this” “How can I order?”
“Where do I get my
order?”
“Where’s my coffee?” “What now?”
“What else do they
offer?”
“I think they would like
this service”
FEELING
SENTIMENT
KEYS
Momentum scale
Unpleasant high
energy
Pleasant high
energy
Unpleasant Low
energy
Pleasant low
energy
Experience keys
Peak
Moments of truth
Pain points
Delight

9. 9
Awareness ➜ Familiarity ➜ Appeal ➜ Consideration ➜
TRIGGER
DECISION ➜
USING THE
APP ➜
At the shop ➜ CORE OFFER ➜
DIGITAL FOLLOW
UP ➜
Advocacy➜
DOING
ABILITY/
INABILITY
Can the user engage
with the service in a
continuous way?
Facebook ads
Spotify ads
Sponsored podcast
Twitter ads
Can the user get to the
shop?
Festival brochure
Friends
recommendation
Users are aware and
familiar with the service.
Can they find what
resonates in the service
with their expectations?
Can the user
understand the offer
so that it considers
the service as a
provider? Can the user place
their orders?
WHAT IS USEFUL/
USABLE
Browse, look and feel
Browsing categories
Browsing products
Basket
Pay
Track
Can the user find
the shop?
Can the user locate
their orders?
The coffee is ready.
Can the user find a
place, sit comfortably
and have it at the
store?
Dessert. Can the user place
a second order? Can the
user be categorised in a
profile and browse a
suitable list of follow up
offers?
Digital receipt is sent.
Can the user connect
with the store for
further interaction?
Can the user invite
friends to use the
service?
THINKING
CONFIDENCE/
CONFUSION
“I din’t know they
existed”
“There they are again”
“This must be a good
service”
“Should I give it a
try?”
“Let’s do this” “How can I order?”
“Where do I get my
order?”
“Where’s my coffee?” “What now?”
“What else do they
offer?”
“I think they would like
this service”
FEELING
SENTIMENT
KEYS
Momentum scale
Unpleasant high
energy
Pleasant high
energy
Unpleasant Low
energy
Pleasant low
energy
Experience keys
Peak
Moments of truth
Pain points
Delight
The first page of the map is paired with a second
section, Taking action. We were concerned
when some of our clients were happy with the
results, had their “aha” moments, but were
not on the clear when it comes to act upon the
discoveries from the research.
Taking action
Awareness ➜ Familiarity ➜ Appeal ➜ Consideration ➜
TRIGGER
DECISION ➜
USING THE
APP ➜
At the shop ➜ CORE OFFER ➜
DIGITAL FOLLOW
UP ➜
Advocacy➜
Wanted
behaviour
Expectations
Consumer
should get to
know us
Users should be
trustful towards
our promise
Users should be
knowledgeable
and understand
how we are
useful
Users should
perceive a
specific
occasion
when we are
useful
User needs
are met
User places the
order
Take order,
mingle,
empathy
towards crew
User is able to claim order and enjoy
coffee
User takes
further action
User invites
friends
Momentum
Strategic
actions to be
implemented
Curiosity,
identification,
adventure
Deeper
identification
Persuasion Context Timing
Shopping mode,
excitement
Ambient experience, slow pace
Shopping
mode,
excitement
Shopping
mode,
excitement
Reward
Tactical actions
to be
implemented
1st timer
reward, sense
of urgency
Value for price
Higher
experience
Best among
category
Best viable
option for
occasion
Customership
score up
Experience,
extras
Interaction with the ambient
New offers / promo
Score-based
offers
Score goes up
when invites
convert
Expertise to
be activated
SEO, SEM,
Content
management
Content
management
Branding
SEO, SEM,
Partners
SEO, SEM
Service
designers
Service
designers
Interior
designers,
Training
Taste specialists, baristas, quality
control
Service
designers
SEO, SEM,
Marketing
automation
Further
comments
Coffee industry for millennial tend to be related to
energy, productivity and culture.
Decisions should be activated by other
trigger behaviours according to location, free
schedule, closeness to store, shopping
behaviour, search history.
Follow up offers should
be based on Facebook
friends, past purchase
behaviour, check-ins
from Swarm and other
app usage.
The environment
will play a crucial
role in loyalty and
should represent
contrast to other
ambients, as well
as cultural and
heritage values
Core delivery should be in strict line with brand
promise and service, with rigid quality control
including waiting time, interaction script and active
creation of meaningful moments.
Follow up should be
individually
automated with
relevant offer based
on profile and past
behaviour.
The service should
make users proud,
connect with identity,
“brag on instagram”
and reward in loyalty
membership

10. 10
HELSINKI
Emotion
Restful Impacient Tired Relaxed / PEAK Comfortable Excited Relaxed Relaxed
Interview
responses
patterns of words
“Hurry” “Looking for” “Looking for” “Sitting back” “Eager” “Confused”
Other relevant
correlations
After 40 minutes within
the Journey, the
participant states
“I feel confused”. It's
likely that help would
already be accepted at
this point. A reminder
could also be effective
here.
Decision of seeking
help at 60 min. within
the Journey.
Decision of calling
comes spontaneously,
not planned (like Help
section). Correlation
with reward.
“I’m confused” comes
after 100 min.
Effectively
completion comes in
exact “100 Cal”, 130
min. later.
Control group
research
Did you buy water last
time you traveled?
Control group
results
65% YES
Awareness Consideration Decision Online Homepage Ordering Ancillary Afterwards
Momentum Push for engagement Offer relief Push excitement Offer Reward Offer comfort Push excitement Push ancillary Offer reward
Essential reward
strategy
Attached to purchase Free sheltering good
Kind greeting, surprise
special offer Stimuli to restaurant
Stimuli accepted,
bigger reward
Token, reward next
purchase
Token accepted,
fidelity bonus
Token of exclusivity
Insights
At station Waiting Boarding Online Homepage Ordering Ancillary Afterwards
Triggered actions - - - Buy water Buy coffee Buy dinner - Buy 2nd beer
Essential keys
Essential Journey
Biometrics
EXPANDED CUSTOMER
JOURNEY
Focus service
Guiding questions
What is working and what is not in online restaurant services?
How can the service experience be improved?
How can extra business value be added?
What unseen consumer needs exist during the experience?
What correlations can be useful considering what was tracked, the
level of consumer experience and business value?
Pursued insights
What are the pain points to manage?
Where expectation must be managed, and how?
When is the best time to present offerings?
How to tackle newly identified consumer needs?
Momentum scale
Unpleasant high energy Pleasant high energy
Unpleasant Low energy Pleasant low energy
6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm 12am 1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am
Ability Confident Sentiment
The goal is to get a research-based
picture of the business. It shifted
from assumption: it’s cross
validated and based on customer’s
needs. Companies had insights
about customer acquisition, but
rarely they had information after
that. We could give a detailed
map of interactions, and provide
insight on customers’ needs at
each stage of the process.
It gives a unified, shared vision
of the big picture. And that was
proven to be extremely valuable
for whoever wanted to show that
customer-centrism is the way to
go.

11. 11
Ability, confidence
and sentiment
are three pillars that
can provide you with
incredibly valuable insight.

12. 12
Seven Nordic
principles
when journey mapping
2

13. 13
BIRCH Make it valuable.
The organisation essentials can be understood
in one picture, and each responsible area
understands their own and each other’s role
— killing silo thinking and leaving no room
for excuses.
1.
We have listed seven basic
principles that can hint how
the Customer Experience Map
can benefit the actionable
management of customer needs.

14. 14
“VIHTA” Make it easy-to-use
It does not promote complex theoretical
brainstorms, or by-the-book consultant
reports. The process reflects what happens
in practice, and gaps appear to be filled by
actions.
2.

15. 15
Cardamom Integrate it in culture.
The organisation starts learning by practice
how to put the customer in the centre of the
business.
At the same time, find the moments
that require new winning strategies, kill
bottlenecks and leap towards a substantially
better experience.
3.

16. 16
Snow Moments are more important
than touchpoints.
Our research method trains agents to collect
information about experiences according to
contextually-aware emotional triggers. That’s
the same principle that the Silicon Valley uses
in their user experience developments, like
Facebook or Google.
4.

17. 17
Simplicity Look for the right
questions, and the answers will
follow.
Correlations for new questions. Looking
into correlations should offer insights. The
insights should raise verifiable questions —
to be answered by control groups, customer
existing data or prototypes.
5.

18. 18
The compass An agile, integrated
portrait of the big picture.
Customer Journey Mapping should be a
spearhead for business and service design
works. The Customer Journey Mapping
is likely to be followed by Ottoboni’s
Management Framework, that starts digital
transformation within companies in a
strategic, overarching level.
6.

19. 19
Aurora Borealis
Emotions are the real drivers.
An Experience is connected by emotions. The
management of emotions is the management
of expectations. These are the real drivers
that deliver change in experience perception.
Emotions can be measured, yes — but more
importantly, emotions can be managed.
7.

20. Fire & Ice
3

21. 21
There is a lot
of things that
journey
mapping
research
is not.

22. 22
It’s not a customer satisfaction survey.
It’s not an usability test.
It’s not focused on customer’s opinions.
It’s not an evaluation of the size of a market.
It’s not a qualitative study of edge cases.
It’s not a way to find statistics about your
customer.
It’s not a listing of what you offer.
It’s not a service blueprint.
It’s not only a qualitative study.
It’s not an assumption of what your customer
experience is. Nope.
So, what is it?
10 things
that your
customer
journey map
is not

23. 23
It’s a field recognition task.And
it’s a multi-strategy method
research.
We are taking established
practices from digital, design and
business fields, and applying to
recognise experiences.

24. 24
The purpose is to understand
what happens when someone uses
your product or service -- which
mounts up to a comprehensive
big picture of all that happens
throughout the interactions
between company and consumer.
In here, experience is an asset that
can be described and managed,
like a store, a website or a
production line.
A thorough,
multi-
dimensional,
real-world,
empirically-
based
field
recognition.

25. 25
Discovering
the real-
world
journey
We make a filtered pre-selection of potentially
relevant customer profiles.
We make qualitative interviews, deep-
listening the context interplay between
subjects and products.
We conduct unobtrusive, real-field
experiences to design the journey map. Screen
recording, camera on subject, stress sensors,
observation, debriefing conversations.
At this point (only), we have the right
questions — so that they can be investigated
further with a high n of respondents.
We then generate informed, research-based
insights to manage the Customer Experience
Journey.

26. 26
HELSINKI
Experiencing the journey
Measuring the level of Ability,
Confidence and Sentiment with
numerous cross-validating
methods (Electroencephalogram,
Electrocardiogram, video, mood
meters)
In order to get companies
back in touch with
customers, we have
developed unique multi-
strategy research
methods to
cover three main fields:
What is customer
behaviour?
What data covers: user
behaviour and analytics
tell what happens on the
site
What is the motivation
behind it?
What data does not cover:
customer sentiment
response, general and
contextual emotional
behaviour
What is the total
experience?
Converting experience
into a measurable and
manageable asset, and
maximising its
possibilities.
Debriefing the experience
Test users go through an
especially designed set of
debriefing interviews, where key
terms are highlighted to better
understand their perception
Cross-referencing
All the data collected is laid
out over a timeline, where
cross referencing happens
to identify the first fact-
based insight opportunities.
Control group
The control group helps us to investigate
and validate quantitatively the value of
each insight
Fact-based insights
High-quality insights are
extracted from crossing
data from the map
1
2
3
4
5
Essential keys
Experience Peaks
Moments of truth
Pain points
Delightful details
Wolds of experience
High & Downs of experience
Momentum
Detail on context and mood
Essential reward strategy
Tells best actions to be
taken according to context
Customer
Experience
multi-strategy
research
Scope of the mapping
experience is defined
Data collection method is
chosen
Agents are trained
Data is collected
Data is processed
Hypothetical opportunities
are created
Questions are sent to
control groups
Control groups data is
processed
Correlations are found
between
Agents
Control group
Business goals
Maps are created
The final document is created,
showing causes, effects and
opportunities between consumer
behaviour, context, emotional
states and business goals.
----
Consumer-centric
implementation and
management begins
Modeling
Our model is based on training a number of targeted subjects to
undergo to the experience of services, perceive and report their own
emotional variations and meaningful moments encountered, and
cross-validated with quantitative methods. Control groups and data-
trackers are placed so that the journey continues to evolve while
projects are managed in order to transform it.

27. 27
MoodMeter
The
gadgets
We have so far used a number of gadgets and
trackers that can provide us with “qualitative
data, quantitatively” (this is an awesome
term used by Sarah Henry, UX strategist
at Accela Software, during the last Ixda
presentation in Helsinki, 2016).
While the initial setup of design thinking
came from Nordic methods and a few
established ones from the USA, namely the
ones from the Stanford Design Program, the
Columbia Business School and the NYU Stern
programs on data driven decision-making,
the actual data collection comes with a
variety of special gadgets.
For instance, we start by asking targeted,
trained participants to self-report their
emotional variations using journals or,
ideally, MoodMeter, an app with a highly
sophisticated emotional matrix, developed by
the Yale Center of Emotional Psychology.
We further augment the reporting by
gearing up a few of the participants with a
GoPro, so that data is available for meetings,
management and closer looks on what
happens during the service experience.
In a few cases, adding biometric trackers may

28. 28
be of help. We can know, for instance, how
much energy is burned accross the experience
of a service -- and know what food or drink
offers may be of use, and at what point.
Furthermore, with online experiences, for
instance, we are able to measure the Galvanic
Skin Reaction with Mindfield© trackers,
from Germany, and draw conclusions
on mental effort, stress levels and other
information. If not to be considered as
“evidence” alone, skin sensors (as well as, say,
electroencephalograms, which can be used
by Emotiv© technologies, for instance) are
valuable when combining with other evidence
of and indicators of use and experience
quality.
We are even able to further cross-validate
those with a number of services that contain
databases of facial expressions, such as
Affectiva©, from the MIT, with whom we
have been in contact for a few time already.
When consider the current state of data
collection, we are proud to state that our
way of combining qualitative, quantitative,
and “qualitative data, quantitatively” is quite
advanced.
From up: Affectiva algorithm of emotion recognition, Mindfields
eSense galvanic skin reaction, Emotiv EEG sensor and Fitbit.

29. 29
The reports
The final document is a
map that companies can
rely to work across the
organization.
It is a comprehensive document,
somewhere between 25 to
85 pages, depending on the
complexity of the case, where
anyone within the organisation
can understand everything
necessary to work with the
customer journeys in the
business.
The last part of the Customer
Journey Mapping is the DAY
1 of the Customer Experience
Management Framework — a
way of aligning in practice the
organisation with the customer-
centric approach. Projects get
in line, capabilities in place,
KPIs are established and the
transformation can really begin.
With the data trackers in place,
the customer journey is ready to
grow -- in accuracy, reliability
and impact. The graphic shows
how the customer journey starts
from assumptions, gets more
accurate with the empirical
field recognition, and grows
in accuracy as data is tracked
from the journey’s moments
(touchpoints).

30. 30
The n question
One of our differentials is the ability to make
customer journeys with a variety of subject
numbers (“n”).
We can derive statistics from thousands of
datapoints, even millions, when evaluating
journeys through websites with consolidated
uses.
When it comes to brick-and-mortar, B2B
or complex services, other methods can be
applied. We have developed ways to provide
extremely insightful outcomes with less
resources, and very fast deployment.
That is because when seeing the field
recognition as a variation of usability testings,
the results start to repeat quickly, and a low
number of participants start outputing usable
insights early.
Advanced content

31. 31
N (1-(1- L ) n )
Where N is the total number of
problems and L is the proportion of
problems discovered while testing
a single user.
The typical value of L is 31%, averaged across a
large number of projects we studied. Plotting
the curve for L =31% gives the following result:
%ofexperience
problemsfound
Number of subjects

32. 32
This model has been applied since 1993,
reinforced in the year 2000 for digital and
business experiences.
It has been challenged several times, and most
researchers agree upon the use of the low n for
easily discoverable UX issues. Recent articles
restate the economy of resources of a low n for
applications such as the ones in Experience
Mapping.
As a field recognition process, we aim
at finding the physical and emotional
common denominators to the presented
experiences.
The subjects are pre-filtered, having interest
with the product, familiarity with its usage,
minimum literacy with digital usage, enough
similar cultural backgrounds and so on.
Subjects are then trained to learn how to
see and use the product or service, and to
understand how they can best respond to the
research.
Digital
thinking,
business
practice.

33. 33
“We have thousands of customers.” In
experience testing, we focus on functionality-
towards-customers, not on personal
feedback-from-a-customer. The feedback
matrix is pretty simple, yet sophisticated:
Ability, Confidence and Sentiment are simple-
yet-rich insight generators.
“Our business has hundreds of features.”
This is an argument for running several
different tests — each focusing on a smaller
set of features — not for having more users
in each test. You can't ask any individual to
test more than a handful of tasks before the
poor user is tired out. Yes, you'll need more
users overall for a feature-rich business, but
you need to spread these users across many
studies, each focusing on a subset of your
research agenda.
When it
sounds you
need more
research
subjects
— but you actually don’t

34. 34
"We have several different target profiles.”
This argument holds only if the different
users are actually going to behave in
completely different ways. For example, if
you target athletes and coaches, teachers
and students, you may need different testing
sessions.
“ We want to be very thorough” If money
is not at all the problem, there is no harm
in extensively testing. But as research has
shown, functionality and experience is shown
right upfront.
Resource
“Usability & UX Articles from Nielsen Norman Group.” Nielsen Norman
Group.
When it
sounds you
need more
research
subjects
— but you actually don’t

35. 35
If you want statistics, not insights. Get
statistically significant numbers; tight
confidence intervals require even more
users.
To organise complex information.And
when you want to ask how customers can
organise it themselves.
When discoverability is a problem. If the
experience is highly complex and demand
several hours of testing per user (say, all
financial services of a bank), more users are
likely to find out more issues.
Eyetracking. At least 39 customers if you
want stable heatmaps.
Defining what you want to fix in your
journey. It might not be worth the effort to
improve an experience that users don’t care
about; better to spend the effort recoding
something with that most will notice.
NNGroup, June 4, 2012. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/
And when to
use more user
data and
quantitative
methods?

36. 36
Some of the ways Bryman sees how multi-
strategy research can be used:
Qualitative research facilitates quantitative
research: qualitative research can be used to
generate quantitative studies.
Quantitative research facilitates qualitative
research: quantitative research may tell
how many or how often, and the qualitative
research may seek to answer why.
Researchers’ and participants’
perspectives: qualitative data may give a view
to the perspectives of the people, while the
quantitative information may tell researcher
what they are trying to find
Qualitative research facilitating the
interpretations of the relationship between
the variables: i.e. quantitative research may
identify patterns, while qualitative research
can offer to explain the patterns
Studying different aspects of a
phenomenon. i.e. quantitative methods
might help one research what people thought
of religion and qualitative research might
research how religious beliefs and rituals
affected behaviour.
Resource
“Uses of Multi-strategy Research.” Introduction to Research. University of
Surrey.
Uses of
multi-strategy
research

37. Five users can
be enough – if
problems are
somewhat easy to
discover
Problemdiscoverability(here,p)isthelikelihood
that at least one participant will encounter the
problem during testing. Nielsen and Landauer
(1993; see also Nielsen, 2012) found on average
p=0.31 for the set of projects studied. Based on
that, 5 users would be expected to find 85% of
the problems available for discovery in that
test iteration.
Similarly, Virzi (1992) created a model based on
other usability projects, finding p between 0.32
and 0.42. Therefore, 80% of the problems in a
test could be detected with 4 or 5 participants.
And so a UX guideline was born. For the best
return on investment, test with 5 users, find
the majority of problems, fix them, and retest.
For wider coverage, vary the types of users and
the tasks tested in subsequent iterations.
Resource
http://www.humanfactors.com/newsletters/
how_many_test_participants.asp

38. 38
International Encyclopaedia of Ergonomics and Human
Factors, Second Edition
http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20
to%20Research%20and%20Managing%20Informa-
tion%20Leicester/page_30.htm
Jeff Sauro, James Lewis. Quantifying the User Experience:
Practical Statistics for User ResearchM
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-
to-test-with-5-users/
http://www.humanfactors.com/newsletters/how_many_
test_participants.asp
http://www.simplifyinginterfaces.com/wp-content/up-
loads/2008/07/
http://usabilityetc.com/2011/06/alan-dix-usability-test-
ing-five-users/faulkner_brmic_vol35.pdf
http://www.measuringu.com/five-users.php
https://uxfactor.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/five-users-
will-find-85-of-the-usability-problems-wrong/
More
resources

39. Take a ride
3

40. 40
Check facts, processes and gather
the information you need to leap
from theory to practice
The first thing you want to do to get your
experience journey mapped is to scope what
you are going to map.
Some fields are especially complicated. Say,
for instance, you work in the financial sector.
We have even developed a special product
for this type of customer -- we called those
services of high complexity. It has little to do
with the complexity itself, but with how it is
perceived by the customer. You know what
you will go through when ordering coffee,
but many people don’t have a clue of what to
expect when signing up for insurance.
Choose one specific product or service, and
write down the steps that take in theory for
it to be delivered.
Depending on your expertise, you will have
something between a service blueprint or a
list of touchpoints that your customer goes
through to use your service or consume your
product.
Getting
started

41. 41
Rewrite your notes, using them for
reference, but writing like a journal or
report from a customer
This is where most consultants drop the ball.
They end up commiting a series of mistakes
that the traditional mental models of marketing
consultants did not account for.
For instance, the proximity bias (being too close
to the project to see different points of view),
the confirmation bias (looking only into things
they already thought to be true), bias from liking
(choosing what they like over what others like)
and so on. These bias and interferences are still
potential threats to research, but they are much
more overtly present when working only with
assumptions.
That was the crucial problem, and the main
different from research-based journeys and
assumption-based journeys. While mapping
journeys by assumption rendered a technical list
of touchpoints, empirical research can give you
insights you would definitely not account for.
Thus you need to start writing it down from the
perspective of a day in your customer’s life. In the
first time, you may leave out the pre-awareness
and consideration phases, and concentrate on
the moments your customer may first need your
product or service.
Shift the
perspective

42. 42
Get someone to use it, someone
who’s not so familiar and who
won’t be entirely biased. Tell them
to pay attention to what they feel
along a few steps
When you have your basic idea of what will
happen, which places your customer will
stop by, which procedures your customer will
go through, get someone to actually use it. At
this point, in order to get things going, you
can do it yourself.
But the important thing is not to map
touchpoints or run a “customer satisfaction”
to evaluate if the team is sharp or if the
delivery is fast.
The crucial thing is to look into what changes
your mood along the experience. You can
focus on the moments that your mood shifts,
and mention what was influencing the
changes at each place and time.
In that way, you will have a list of influencing
factors, such as your schedule, the weather,
the surroundings of your shop, the place to
park, the length of the line and so on.
Through the
grapevine

43. 43
They will quickly start to fix your
service. Forget that. It’s not a
customer satisfaction. Rely on
your documentation
Later on, you should discuss what was
written down with the subject, or then
debrief your own notes.
Avoid start fixing small things at the time
you do that, such as “we need more cashiers,
the line was long”. That’s not accurate nor
the level of strategic thinking you want to
develop for the project.
Instead, stay focused on the emotional shifts
and the needs of the customer in each step
of the journey. Start asking how your service
or product may affect the customer’s day and
their needs, even if they don’t seem entirely
related to your business at this point.
Rationally you are able to recall and write
down what you were thinking, doing and
feeling at each point.
What you were doing reflects each of the
touchpoints. What you were thinking reflects
your focus of interest and the decision-
making process. What you were feeling
concerns the level of general satisfaction to
that experience -- within and outside your
business boundaries.
Filter the
attention

44. 44
Work with a matrix of keys and
values to understand what
matters for the customer along
the journey
You can start by assigning what was
the experience peak, that is, the most
remarkable moment during your experience.
Identity the moments of truth: the moments
that trigger strong and long-lasting
impressions customres will retain from their
experience.
Then, establish which are the delightful
moments, that is, moments where the
experience was significantly higher than the
expectations.
Add also the pain points: where was the
customer significantly frustrated?
Lastly, spot which points could hold
opportunities to influence perception or
open new sources of revenue.
Add the
journey keys

45. 45
The second part of journey
mapping is planning your action
Once you understand the influencing keys
and what you were doing, thinking and
feeling at each point, you may write down
what is the expected behavior at each of
these steps.
Each emotional state will give you an idea
of what kind of “momentum” you have. Is
it time to offer something new? Is it time
to ask if everything is going smoothly? Is it
time to upsell?
While momentum is a strategic and abstract
approach, rewards are tactical and concrete.
Both, however, are essential to master.
With a momentum of good high energy (like
excitement), the reward may be “more of
what you’re getting”. With a momentum of
bad high energy (like frustration), the reward
can be an alternative product instead.
Planning the
action

46. 46
How should the experience be
managed: changing assets or
influencing expectations?
You will then need more data to evaluate
business feasibility to each -- how can you
track data at that given moment of the
journey? What customer data would be
useful to understand the impact of this
moment into the business? That’s when
projects start to need real structuring, and
the customer journey comes alive.
A common temptation is to “fix all
problems”. That’s not so simple, because
consumers will always say they “more for
less”.
Compare,
contrast,
evaluate

47. 47
You have a map, but what now?
Usually what needs to be evaluated at this
point is:
a) Is this key (i.e., moment of truth, delight,
pain point) significant in the business level?
b) Should we focus in changing the asset
(product, service) or the expectation
(promotion, promise)?
c) What teams need to be activated and what
expertise can help me in this?
d) What KPIs will make these changes
relevant to the business?
At this point, you are way ahead the scope of
the customer journey, fostering a customer-
centric culture and actually becoming an
agent of change.
Things don’t
happen on
paper

48. 5
Around the campfire:
Some of our findings

49. 49
Experience is an asset — and entity, which
is manageable and can be tweaked, moulded
and modified according to each customer.
Assets like “an experience” are by nature
abstract, but should be treated as objectively
as possible. In a lean-agile environment, they
are constantly shifting, in a networked chain
of elements happening along time.
That means that the experience is highly
manegeable, malleable, and may go unstable
with the slightest malfunction.
Having this in mind is an essential view, as
important as the notion that the experience
orbits the customer, not your product.
Those are cultural approaches that should
be kept in mind in order to successfully
deploy the ideas that you, your team or your
management have in mind.
Your main
asset is the
experience

50. 50
While everyone knows that customisation
is the new bar, we have noticed that
customisation is currently more relevant
than detailed demographics. After
digitisation and data trackers are in place,
demographics will be seamlessly created by
customer big data.
Personalisation
comes after
digitalisation

51. 51
Experiences happen in tension & relief
cycles. For example, boarding the train is an
important moment of truth because there
are several tensions involved until boarding
(weather, time, luggage, coordination). On
a digital scale, it is the confirmation of the
purchase that releases the building tension.
Capitalising these moments is a way of
reinforcing relief and closure, such as
indications of welcoming, readiness,
preparedness, new start, beginning.
Tension/relief
cycles

52. 52
The experiences shown that when on longer
in-person buying journeys, consumers tend
to have a cycle of openness (to services,
offers, novelty) followed by closed cycles
(work, conversation, phone usage, hunger,
thirst, physiological needs).
Coordinate offerings at ease in the beginning
and estimated breaks, according to stops and
destinations. In multiple stops, notifications
and alerts can customise suggested breaks.
Spirals of
behaviour

53. 53
Certain sequences of emotions tend to
“snap” to each other, creating positive or
negative fields that are hard to break — the
“no matter what you do” moments.
It’s important to anticipate known pain
points and manage the expectations right
before and after them, so that they don’t
“snap” to more pain points.
Emotional
fields

54. 54
Context and surroundings, as well as other
agents non-related to the service provider,
directly make a direct influence on the
service provider’s perceived experience.
These variables should be accounted in
the overall experience delivered, and taken
in consideration as possible scenarios of
experience. Seasons changing, weather
changes and even the political zeitgeist are
elements that should be actively embraced by
experience management.
The
matter of
context

55. 55
Assets may change in value perception
along the journey. If a customer is nervously
waiting at the bank for a long time before
being served, a cold cup of coffee may
significantly affect the experience perception
in combination with the also negative
experience of the long wait.
Conversely, a not-so-warm coffee right
before a great deal of a lifetime closed is
exactly meaningless.
In practice, when a research participant says
“the coffee was a bit cold”, the main takeaway
is not “let’s offer hotter coffee”, but “at that
point of the journey, it mattered”, and look
for understanding why it matters.
The
“hot coffee”
rule

56. 56
Our research method trains agents to collect
information about experiences according
to contextually-aware emotional triggers.
That’s because, as useful as it is to know
where your touchpoints exist, it’s important
to understand how customers are feeling
when they reach those touchpoints, and how
you can affect their emotional states.
That’s the same principle that the Silicon
Valley uses in their user experience
developments, like Facebook or Google’s
concept of micromoments.
Idle time is a growingly scarce asset. In the
USA, people check their phone about 46
times a day. When customers are idle when
waiting for service, it’s usually important
to consider how to keep them informed,
entertained or interested -- even before they
pick their phones.
Resources
Eadicicco, Lisa. “Americans Check Their Phones 8 Billion Times a Day.”
Time, 15 Dec. 2015.
Meaningful
moments
and idle time:
valuables

57. 57
It’s often overlooked the fact that customers
claim your offer in very advanced stages of
interaction.
Think of an airline -- first you consider
traveling, you browse for alterantives, you
are exposed to the brand, you browse their
site, make the reservation, book the tickets,
go to the airport... and the core offer of the
airline -- air travelling -- is only claimed after
the customer lands in their destination.
This moment -- the moment of the core offer
being claimed -- is an emotionally charged
one. The interaction has come to a closure,
and there is a sense of accomplishment
shared between service provider and
customer.
The client is recollecting the journey in
several ways, finalising proceedings,
preparing for their next action. It is
important the service providers can act
accordingly towards these emotional states
and anticipate what customers will do next,
in order to support them in their next needs
as well -- by providing information, forging
partnerships or even expanding your own
offer.
Wrapping-up is an
emotionally-charged
moment

58. 58
Moments of very low expectation can create
delight when they are charged with high
delivery.
Delight details result in stronger effects than
their initial investment would suggest, with
relatively low investment.
In one case, we have noticed that delight
was created when an attendant gave special
attential to a child. Our suggestion was that
a new policy should be introduced: children
under a certain age would always get special
attention.
In that way, impact from delight was not
created only by the action itself, but in the
perception of other customers towards the
special care and attention given to more
vulnerable passengers.
“Delightful
details”:
balancing
high & low

59. 59
It’s not always necessary to change the
offer or the assets — expectations can be
effectively managed to correct the pain
points and reinforce delight even when
facing negative experiences.
For instance, when the internet does not
work in a cafe, users may understand that “it
happens”. They don’t expect perfect wifi, but
they do expect free wifi.
We have noticed in a number of cases that
customers can be quite forgiving, as long
as they are informed and are not taken by
surprise. In a nutshell, expectations should
be kept strictly on track -- when they cannot
be managed, asset management may have to
be taken into the mix.
Manage the
expectation,
not the assets

60. 60
Do you know
Dinko?
For more information about Ottoboni you can
contact Dinko for a visit, a meeting or a good-
old football match.
Dinko Kortzanov
Client Service Director
+358 40 579 0690
Pssst!
We are gathering people interested
in joining discussions around the
consumer journey.
Trendwatching, co-creation and free,
actionable sessions.
If you are part of a company, we can even set
up a workshop to inform you -- most likely free
of charge.
You can also visit us anytime. Write us and we
will invite you to our lab!
research@ottoboni.fi

61. 61
Ottoboni
Research & Insight
Sérgio Tavares
Senior Researcher, phD. candidate
sergio.tavares@ottoboni.fi
+358 40 4878989
Laura Andström
Research & Insight Director
laura.andstrom@ottoboni.fi
+358 50 5810797
Teemu Takala
Business Strategy Advisor / CEO
teemu.takala@ottoboni.fi
+358 40 8085819
Ottoboni Finland Oy
Vilhonvuorenkatu 12
5th Floor
00500 Helsinki