Figure 10-2. A customer experience map An experience map is a strategic tool, rooted in user research, for capturing the complete experience a person might have with a product or service. It documents the experience from the customer’s perspective. What they’re doing. How they are doing it. How they feel about it. I use experience maps to help me understand the end-to-end experience a customer has with a brand. It helps me to see where the brand is creating value for the customer and where it is not. Ultimately, it’s a tool that helps determine the best strategy for delivering a seamless customer experience across multiple touch points. I use customer experience maps to help focus a client on the customer. I bring stakeholders from across the business together and take them through the map. It’s a great tool for helping them understand the experience from the customer’s perspective and can be used to help build consensus on how to best serve customers at each touch point. Depending on the nature of the engagement, I also might create a service map. It’s similar to a user experience map but from the business’s perspective. It captures how the business services the customer at each touch point. I layer this over the customer experience map to help understand what the business is doing, as a way of contextualizing the customer experience. Each map tends to be a little different because they’re based on research, the