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Customer Experience

Customer Journey Mapping for Professional Services

Rob Young
June 2, 2024
9 min read

Learn how to map your customer's journey from awareness to advocacy and identify key opportunities for improvement.

Introduction: Seeing the Big Picture of Customer Experience

For many small professional service businesses, each client interaction – an email here, a meeting there – can feel like isolated events. But your clients experience your service as one continuous journey from start to finish.

Customer journey mapping is a powerful human-centred design tool that helps you visualize that entire experience from the client's perspective, end-to-end.

By laying out every touchpoint (website visit, inquiry call, onboarding, delivery, follow-up, etc.) and noting what the customer is thinking and feeling at each stage, you gain a holistic view of your service.

This bird's-eye perspective reveals inconsistencies, pain points, and opportunities to delight that might otherwise go unnoticed.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is essentially a storyboard of your customer's experience. It's typically presented as a timeline of all the interactions a customer has with your business (touchpoints), coupled with details about their goals, questions, and emotions at each step.

Importantly, it often starts before the customer even directly contacts you and continues after the core service delivery.

Typical Journey Stages

In professional services, a journey might include stages like:

1. Awareness - Client realizes they need legal advice

2. Consideration - They research firms, check websites, ask for referrals

3. Contact - Initial phone call or email inquiry

4. Onboarding - Signing engagement letters, initial consultation

5. Service Delivery - The main work and meetings

6. Completion - Final deliverables or resolution

7. Post-Service - Feedback request, further support, or maintenance

At each stage, the client has expectations and feelings. Research shows that 75% of customers expect a consistent experience whether they engage online, in person, or by phone.

Journey mapping helps ensure that consistency because you can see all the channels and touchpoints in one place and align them.

Example: A Law Firm's Customer Journey

Consider a small family law practice that decided to map out its typical client journey for divorce cases:

Stage 1: Awareness/Research

The client realizes their marriage is in trouble and starts quietly looking online for help.

  • **Thinking**: "Can I trust this firm? How do I even choose a lawyer?"
  • **Feeling**: Scared, uncertain
  • Stage 2: Initial Contact

    The client calls the office, possibly feeling nervous or ashamed.

  • **Pain Point Discovered**: Clients often had to leave voicemails and wait for callbacks while anxious
  • **Solution**: Adjusted staffing so a live person answers calls during business hours
  • Stage 3: Consultation

    An in-person or video meeting where the firm discusses the situation.

  • **Pain Point**: Clients felt overwhelmed with information
  • **Solution**: Created a simple one-page roadmap explaining the divorce process step-by-step
  • Stage 4: Case Work

    Months of legal process with periodic updates.

  • **Pain Point**: After filing paperwork, weeks of waiting created anxiety and clients felt uninformed
  • **Solution**: Implemented weekly brief updates, even when nothing major happened
  • Results

    The results were dramatic. Clients reported feeling more supported and in-the-loop. The firm's reviews improved, often mentioning "they were with me every step of the way."

    By journey mapping, the law firm turned what was a fragmented, sometimes jarring experience into a more continuous and comforting journey.

    How to Create a Customer Journey Map

    Creating a journey map can be done with simple tools like a whiteboard or large paper and sticky notes. Here's a straightforward approach:

    1. Define the Persona and Scenario

    First, clarify who this journey map is for and what goal they're trying to achieve. Pick one scenario to focus on at a time for clarity.

    Define a persona like "Anna, a 35-year-old small business owner seeking help with her taxes." Having a persona with name and context helps keep the discussion grounded.

    2. List the Stages of the Journey

    Break the overall experience into key stages or phases. Use terms that make sense for you.

    For each stage, list:

  • What actions the customer is taking
  • Any channels involved (phone, email, in-person, social media, etc.)
  • 3. Capture the Customer's Perspective

    Under each stage, jot down what the customer:

  • **Experiences**: Their goals at this step
  • **Thinks**: Their questions or thoughts
  • **Feels**: Their emotions
  • Be honest about negative emotions too – fear, frustration, impatience – as those flag where you need to improve.

    4. Identify Pain Points and Delight Opportunities

    As you map the actions and feelings, certain stages will likely jump out as problematic. Mark those as pain points.

    Research indicates that 65% of customers have switched brands due to a poor experience, often tied to feelings like being undervalued or frustrated.

    Use simple color coding:

  • 🔴 Red for pain points
  • 🟢 Green for positive moments
  • 🟡 Yellow for opportunities
  • 5. Brainstorm Solutions and Improvements

    For each pain point, ask "How might we make this better for the client?"

    Common solutions include:

  • Provide more information
  • Reduce waiting time
  • Improve communication
  • Implement online booking systems
  • Ensure information sharing between staff
  • 72% of customers blame poor service when they have to explain their issue multiple times – journey mapping can highlight these coordination gaps.

    6. Implement and Monitor

    Put the identified improvements into practice and communicate them to your team. Journey maps should be living documents.

    Monitor customer feedback and see if pain points diminish and overall satisfaction rises.

    Benefits of Journey Mapping

    Consistency and Coherence

    You'll ensure the customer experience isn't disjointed. If one part of your firm communicates casually and another formally, the journey map will reveal that inconsistency.

    Improved Client Onboarding and Retention

    Many issues occur in transitions between stages. By smoothing these transitions, clients feel cared for and confident throughout.

    Efficiency Gains

    Journey mapping can highlight inefficiencies. Perhaps you discover two meetings cover similar ground, or clients frequently ask the same question at a certain stage.

    Competitive Advantage

    Not all professional service firms take time to understand and design their customer journey. This creates differentiation.

    Conclusion: Continuously Refining the Journey

    Customer journey mapping is not a one-and-done effort. As your business evolves, journeys can shift.

    The beauty of having a journey mindset is that you continually orient yourself toward the customer's holistic experience.

    Remember: A service is only as strong as its weakest link in the chain of experiences. Journey mapping finds those weak links so you can fix them.

    For small professional services, where relationships and referrals are paramount, delivering a smooth journey can be a game-changer.

    Clients who have a positive, low-friction, well-supported experience are far more likely to become repeat clients and recommend you to others.


    Ready to elevate your client experience by mapping and redesigning your service journey? RAVENco can guide you through customer journey mapping and other service design techniques that will set your professional service apart.

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