WHY do you need to understand customer journeys?
If you want your software to be used by customers then you should appeal to their pain points and needs. Unless you do that, they will not use your software. Put yourself in their shoes. Will you invest in a software that doesn’t give you any value in return?
Some customers directly TELL you what they want. For instance, they understand that they need to invest in more staff or technology. Besides, they might NOT share everything with you. After all you are an outsider.
How do I go about it?
You need to first identify user personas. Remember that you are NOT designing for one customer.
User personas
- Your service could be used by say admin staff or managers etc. Each of them could have different pain points and new needs.
- Start off by understanding what their intended outcomes are. And then you can interview them to understand how they are operating today.
- Others DON’T know what they want yet. When you interview them, then you can give them fresh perspectives on what might be helpful to them.
Data Analytics
- If they are already users of your website or app then you can use tools like Tableau, Pendo etc. to determine how they are using your services today.
- If they are API users then you can also measure the number of calls etc. they are using to determine if they are using it efficiently.
Ultimate goal
- Customers want to have efficient workflows for their users. Unless they have that, they cannot provide quality service to their customers.
- As part of designing te customer journey, set goals based on the
user persona. One of the personas might use the app daily whereas others
may need it once a month. It doesn’t mean that the feature used by the
persona using it once a month is less important. If anything, they might
be more valuable than the daily used feature.
- One size doesn’t fit all!
Final Thoughts
Understanding user journey is important for everyone is important for us to build a good MVP!