What are user-centred service journeys?

User-centred service journeys are a way of defining what a business does from the perspective of the people that use your service, (rather than the business).

They allow you to present your business offer and its processes beyond just what your service, department or business might be responsible for or how they think things might happen.

This process can also be used to understand internal operations and the experience of the operational journeys frontline. This can help to include undocumented workarounds, barriers or new ideas from the ground up. 

Many organisations may not consider a customer's experience outside their service as useful, but this is a great way to both identify unexpected issues and find new business growth opportunities.

For internal journeys, this can help to visualise for leaders and organisational architects how the real-life operational delivery experience plays out. In my experience working with delivery teams, this can be quite different from what was mapped in business processes and the people doing the work always have a good understanding of why. 

Starting your user-centered service journey

This can be done in a few different ways, often it is exploratory or discovery research within strategy workstreams, organisational change or digital transformation programmes. One way of showing these is to make a systems map that shows what's happening mapped and created via insight from primary/secondary users, system maps and expert staff. 

This type of journey is mapped at a high level from the point of view of the user or customer objectives (rather than what the business wants them to do). It should show all the actions needed to achieve each step until they are delivered and the final goal is achieved. It should include all possible routes of service including, failure loops.

It kind of looks like a user journey on steroids! Covering many paths in one map broken down into a system.

A user-centred service journey is going to look different depending on the scale or the service you are mapping. This one has lots of processes without defined triggers so the green processes can be done at any time.

Defining a user-centred service journey

• It begins with a user intent or goal and ends when it is achieved.
  It can also show what happens afterwards; sometimes this can be important to the experience. It follows a timeline that connects the whole journey based on user needs as they progress.

• It shows possible 'service' outcomes, not a single journey.
  Sometimes it might contain other service journeys.

• It breaks user journeys down into a system of parts.
  Some of these are user needs, actions, delivery methods, triggers, time, outcomes, process, decision moments, possible failures, pain points and success moments.

• Its focus is on objectives rather than process and delivery.
  Throughout the journey, the aim is to map user intention rather than how it is delivered.

• It is broken into larger objective-based stages.
  These are like epics where the user needs to aim to achieve the same high-level objective. The user moves on when this objective is achieved. These often contain many smaller discrete tasks.

• It places existing services and procedures in the user journey.
  Putting it in the journey can show how and why people use them. Qualifying these steps by what they do rather than what a procedure is called.

• It can show the many players in a journey.
  These might be other users, 3rd parties or other businesses that play a role. For example in 'I want to buy a flat' the seller, estate agent, mortgage provider and many others will be a part of the journey.

• It can vary in scale depending on what is relevant.
  Some journeys might be shorter or more narrow which allows more detail, and others bigger with a more systematic view of things.

• It should show any existing validation and insight in the context journey.
  This can include things like details around a process, existing questions, cost/profit, the volume of use, market size and quality of experiences like pain points or success moments.

What it is not…

• It is not an internal process map.
  Although you can start adding internal processes, systems and interactions, it shouldn’t be to the detriment of the user-centred part! The focus here is to understand the possible user journeys, not internal business processes or systems. Anything you add should not detract from the focus.

• It is not a single-user journey.
  The user-centred service journey shows everything together. It is not zoomed in on one path but is a journey decision tree that shows all outcomes.

• It is not just about customer interactions.
  It is more zoomed out than this. Think of it more as users’ objectives, actions, triggers and outcomes. You can show how users interact, but the focus here is on why they are doing it. For example, if the need is 'I want confirmation of my booking' it can be delivered many ways by email, text, or website link... the important thing is they need 'confirmation' you could then tag the channels available to this. 

• Life events are not services.
  They are the ‘context’ around them and can be mapped where relevant. Often they can be triggers or key influencers in the journey. For example, a 'new baby' might make you want to look to find a new home, but the UC service journey is still 'I want to buy/rent a flat'