Most often - and for natural reasons, we read the customer journey horizontally and visualize how the customers move through your service and the steps they are taking.
But equally important is to think of the vertical ways to use a journey map. In this video, we are talking about the importance of connecting the dots and creating main themes top-down in your customer journey map. By doing so, you will not only be able to create a coherent customer-centric storyline but also getting people to better understand the customer insights, pains and the reasons behind ideas and solutions.
The key take-away in this case is to make sure to connect the insights to the conclusion (pain points and problem areas), all the way to the solutions, tests, and the changes that you want to implement.
In effect, you are then creating a logical path, that not only goes from left to right in the map but also top-down, starting with the customer perspective. This will enable you to communicate the customer journey better, helping your team to understand why you have arrived at the key issues, painpoints, and solutions that you'll want to take action on.
Pro tip!
Create a story from your customer journey map, where you describe important insights and explain how and why the solution ideas and concepts were created.
Use colors and icons for the status and progress of the ideas or solution you are testing.