By: Matthew @BlogCX Thomas
Well, you know how I feel about there being a thousand words for the same concept in business. So, whenever I see the term “customer journey map”, I cringe, because all that is, is a customer experience flow. It was customer experience flow originally, and it will be customer experience flow when the buzz of “customer journey” has subsided to a dull roar. But, for now, I have to put up with that term. Now, given that customer experience is important, and visualization is a useful and much sought after technique, there’s quite a lot of inquiry about customer journey mapping tools.
Well, there really isn’t much to speak of in the way of tools specifically designed for this kind of thing. However, since the maps really are standard forms of flow charting and diagramming, there do exist quite a few tools that are perfect for doing this.
I’ll be suggesting some good versatile diagramming suites as potential customer journey mapping tools here. Again, they’re not specifically for customer experience stuff, but they work perfectly for it.
#1 – Microsoft Visio
Visio is a Microsoft’s flow charting and mapping tool, but it’s also used for making other things like circuitry schematics, floor plans and a number of other technical visual creations.
Visio is used widely for code flow charting, cycle mapping and would, in fact, be perfect for mapping the customer experience quite well. Of course, until recently, this meant you were stuck with traditional software, and had little choice for going SaaS with it.
But, in recent times, Visio has been available as an app and SaaS design as well.
#2 – Zoho Show
Zoho show is a Powerpoint analog created to take advantage of cooperative cloud SaaS frameworks. Pretty much being a web-based cloud version of Powerpoint, its features pretty much mimic it dead on. Now, that may sound like an odd thing to put on this list, but consider that the elements of presentations are geared for, among other things, creating diverse flow charts and diagrams, and even making them lively and animated.
Zoho show is a good way to map the customer experience or customer journey in a progressive step by step way, even.
#3 – LucidChart
This is a Visio analog through and through, and it’s a really good one. Taking advantage of the SaaS nature, it also offers collaboration in real time, image library sharing, publishing to webpages, PDF, JPG and PNG exporting, and much more.
This one’s a really good off the cuff solution for mapping the customer experience quite well. Don’t need the dynamism of Zoho Show, and don’t want to pay the price of Visio? Then this one’s got you covered at a price you can live with, and with features you’ll be quite satisfied with.
These are about the best answer to customer journey mapping tools that you can get, because there really is no reason for something dedicated specifically to mapping that needs to exist. You’ll find you need charting tools like these for a number of maps, processes and other flows as well, so it makes sense to just use a diverse tool like one of these to handle all of them anyhow, right?
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