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Journeys in Qualtrics

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About Journeys in Qualtrics

Across the XM platform, there are many tools to help you track and measure journeys. On this page, we’ll focus on the types of journeys available in Qualtrics:

Qtip: This page does not cover the Customer Journey Optimizer or any other features not listed above.

Understanding Journeys

Every customer and employee goes through a journey when they interact with your company.  Because there are so many different ways people come into contact with your company, that also means there are many different kinds of journeys. For example, the full employee lifecycle, from onboarding to exit, is a journey. So is a customer working with technical supporting, or a customer navigating through an airport to get to their plane. With so many incredibly different journeys, it can feel overwhelming to break these experiences down into quantifiable data, which we can then use to change those experiences for the better.

When you use one of the journey features in Qualtrics, you’ll find it’s much easier to quantify them thanks to 2 concepts: stages and outcomes.

Stages

By breaking down the journey into stages (or milestones), you isolate the specific steps your customers or employees take. By collecting data on these moments, you know where to focus your attention.

Example: Think about an experience you want to study. For example, stages of the customer support experience could include:

  1. Submit a ticket.
  2. Troubleshoot with a representative.
  3. Follow-up offline. (As needed.)
  4. Confirm resolution.

Outcomes

If you want to compare the performance of each stage of your journey, it helps to have a consistent outcome metric. This is the measure you use to determine the “outcome” of each stage of the journey. For each stage in your journey, the outcome metric should be:

  • The same question wording.
  • The same number of scale points.

This is especially important if you are planning to create a journey chart widget.

For example, let’s say you want to study the customer journey at an airline. Milestones include “Check-in” and “Boarding.” In your check-in and boarding surveys, you ask the same satisfaction question, with the same 1-5 scale.

If you asked on a 1-5 scale for check-in and a 1-7 scale for boarding, it’s more difficult to compare their customer satisfaction. If you ask ease of use for one and satisfaction for the other, that adds to the confusion in the comparison, because you’re not comparing the same concepts.

That isn’t to say you can’t ask different questions for each stage, but that you want to make sure at least 1 question is exactly the same throughout each stage.

Steps to Create a Journey in Qualtrics

Regardless of the feature you’re using, there are general steps you’ll follow to create a journey.

  1. Define your journey, its stages, and its outcome(s).
  2. Collect feedback on this journey.
  3. Get your data formatted for reporting.
  4. Report on your journey data, such as with the journey chart widget.

However, how exactly you accomplish each of these tasks can differ based on the product you’re using. For more specific steps, see:

FAQs