When a customer engages with your business, they are engaging with your people, systems, and processes – often in ways that may not be visible to them and sometimes in ways that may not be visible to you.
Customer Journey Mapping, as described in Louisa Robinson’s recent blog, reveals customer goals, expectations, decisions, and pain points. It visually shows how customers interact with your products and services, making it a valuable tool.
Customer journey maps reflect only the customer’s view, which may miss what happens behind the scenes—like seeing just the tip of an iceberg. The unseen systems, people, and processes beneath the surface matter too. Stay customer-focused but look deeper to see the full process.
This is where service mapping comes in.
What Is a Service Map?
If a customer journey map answers the question “What does the customer experience?”, a service map answers, “What must happen to enable that experience, both in what the customer sees and what occurs behind the scenes?” This distinction shows how service maps go beyond the customer viewpoint to include operational requirements.
A service map includes several key layers, whereas a journey map only addresses customer actions:
- Front stage: the customer’s interaction layer, including visible touchpoints and actions like clicks or form submissions.
- Backstage: actions triggered that the customer doesn’t see.
- Issues and opportunities. What problem needs to be fixed, and where is there an opportunity to improve the process?
When describing issues and opportunities, it is critical to capture information about the teams, third parties, systems, and data flows involved.
A rough outline quickly exposes internal pain points, and the service map becomes a living document that can be refined over time.
What might this look like? An ATM
To a customer, an ATM is a machine that reads a card, accepts keypad input, and dispenses cash.
A service map shows that the ATM, behind a simple message like 'Your cash will be dispensed shortly,' handles much more than meets the eye.
- Customer actions: insert card, enter PIN, choose amount, take card, take cash, and receipt.
- Front stage: card, screen, keypad, buttons, cash, and receipt—the items customers handle directly.
- Backstage: the machine reads and verifies the card and PIN, connects to the bank, checks cash inventory, dispenses cash and a receipt, updates the bank, and resets for the next user.
The first two layers are often what is thought about from an experience perspective, but the backstage gives a vital view of the architecture needed to make that experience happen.
A Happy and an Unhappy Path
Ideally, the ATM dispenses cash quickly, and the process is smooth. Complaints are minor if the process is only slow or the notes aren’t ideal.
However, we don’t live in an ideal world. Something will, at some point, go wrong. At each step, consider what could fail, how it would be experienced, and what response is needed. Taking this ‘flipside’ view helps identify potential unhappy paths so issues can be addressed proactively.
By proactively reviewing your processes and systems, you can spot failure points and design responses to keep users informed and ensure the experience flows smoothly, rather than the journey stopping abruptly.
- If the issue is user error, a solution aligned with Nielsen's Heuristic Principle 9 (Help Users Recognise, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors) can provide clear feedback on what happened, why, and what a customer can try instead.
- If a system issue allows an alternative approach, such as contacting support, direct the customer to that option.
- If the customer cannot resolve the issue, communicate your escalation process and initiate appropriate actions.
The goal is to return customers to the happy path as quickly as possible.
Mapping these paths in a service map highlights fixes and reveals potential dead ends. If dead ends exist, use them as starting points for improvement.
What might an unhappy path look like? Online Loan Approval
The customer applies for a loan, completing an application with the expectation of an instant decision and funds transfer. Many things, minor and major, could trigger an unhappy path. They may be small bumps in the road or blocking obstacles that prevent the customer from moving forward.
- Whilst completing the form, they provide details of their current address, but this raises a flag that they need to provide up to 5 years of address history, with dates for each address.
- When they enter their phone number, they receive an error message that it is in an invalid format and must be corrected before the form can be submitted.
- Upon submitting their application, they receive a notification that their loan can’t be approved and must go to underwriting, which may request additional information before a decision.
- Alternatively, they could be declined outright for failing a fraud check or for poor credit history.
The first two issues can be resolved in-app with clear guidance; later ones may need offline support or, in some cases, end the journey.
Breaking Down Complex Journeys
If the journey is complex, spans functions within a business, or covers too much of the customer lifecycle, it makes sense to break it down into smaller chunks.
Think of a service map as a tennis match: interactions switch between front and backstage, while handoffs between functions are horizontal, involving data transfers between systems. Whilst these transactions may not be visible to the user, they are critical to the system as a whole. Maintaining data quality and record integrity, and ensuring timely data transfers, are important here.
Focus on data. Improve processes behind the scenes to increase efficiency and improve customer journeys.
Where to start
- Start with an existing journey map and get the relevant stakeholders in the room.
- Even on sticky notes, the journey’s key steps can be broken down into specific actions, but you’ll see the overall picture.
- If it is a complex journey, segment it into clear sub-journeys. Think in terms of single sessions, visits, etc., to focus on tightly related tasks.
- Start with the happy path, but note for each interaction what could happen to push someone onto the unhappy path.
- Work through the backstage actions, any horizontal integrations (we send data off here, we receive data back, etc.), and any feedback or additional actions that are required across both the happy and unhappy paths.
We’ve run workshop sessions to uncover this for multiple clients and are happy to bring a stack of Post-it notes and Sharpies to you if you would like our help facilitating. Whether you want help with Customer Journey Mapping or extending it to a Service Map, Louisa and Phil can jump in with you. Book a 30 minute call with Phil to discuss.
