User Maps - a better tool to help you build better products

Personas, customer journey maps and other such tools are useful... but how do they really help you build a better product or service?

In this video user research expert Laura Klein demonstrates a tool called a User Map to help product owners answer important questions they need to answer about their customers.

Make Customer Experience Management easy for real people

It seems like the world has suddenly woken up to the concept of "the customer journey", the idea that users have specific processes and tasks that they go through to achieve their goals via multiple touch-points & channels.
I must have heard the phrase more in the last few months than I have in the preceding 10 years. It's like every middle manager thinks they have only just invented the term... But that's OK, these people can catch-up with the online industry. We've been using: personas, customer process flows and transactional funnels for over a decade, with great success.

But now things have changed in that time. The idea that the user follows a linear journey is a simplistic model that takes no account for the multiple user types, needs, loyalty, etc. There's also a lot more data available via analytics now can be interpreted, analysed and even processed in real-time to create a dynamic site experience (e.g. product recommendations and multivariate testing) and automate various marketing processes (retargeting, etc.).

However, for all the fancy integration and mathematics behind the scenes, these complex systems still need a non-technical person to manage the experience day-to-day. Normal humans (not rocket scientists) are needed to change assets, conduct conversion experiments and approve content updates. In short, the very person who has now got excited about the improved user experience, now needs a simple way to manage the data-driven customer experience.

Yes, but do you build websites?

On a call with a business prospect a few weeks back, I began to get the feeling they really didn't understand either what they wanted or what myself & my team could offer.

Why? Well here's a rough precis of the conversation I had:

Them: "So why should we hire you?"
Me: "We are a team of digital consultants and delivery experts, who have a wealth of online experience across the creative, user experience, commercial, marketing and technology disciplines".
Them: "So tell me about your recent experience with Internet technology"
Me: "Oh, that's a pretty big topic and I don't know what technology we are talking about yet, so I'll talk conceptually"
Them: "So you don't understand about Internet technologies then?" [some scribbling].
Me: "Yes of course we do... however I don't know the details of your systems so cannot dig into the detail. Would you like me to give you an overview of our systems experience?"
Them: "Oh, I thought you understood about these things" [rapid scribbling]
Me: "Yes... Err, we do. Do you have a specific piece of work in mind?"
Them: "We need to improve our customer journey"
Me: "Great, we can review your key personas and user flows, then identify the major drop-off points to optimise your goals"
Them: "So can you tell me how you would improve our customer journey?"
Me: "Oh, as I said... we'd look at your conversions, acquisition paths, hopefully review your analytics and suggest quick wins as well as longer-term improvements" [a small scribble]
Them: "We've been told that we need to improve the customer journey and that we need a content management system. What you've told me doesn't sound like a Content Management System"
Me: "Err... No, what I've explained is our process to deliver site improvements. We can also deliver a CMS for you, design and develop a multi-channel interactive platform and ensure it is delivered then marketed in the right way to meet your KPI's"
Them: "Yes, but do you build websites?