The best way to understand a process isn’t by going to the experts who designed it. Rather, it’s by asking the people who use it.

PenFed Credit Union in Tysons, Va., recently completed a journey map of what members experience when opening a new checking account.

“We wanted a holistic view of what the potential member was going to experience when looking for a new checking account,” says Lauren Kessler, digital strategist at the $25.1 billion asset credit union. “The journey map maps everything from what the customer or potential member’s actions are from the time they have the trigger or need all the way through to converting and obtaining a new checking account.”

PenFed contracted HCL Technologies to conduct the in-depth interviews and gather information about the process to create the journey map, Kessler says.

The map looked at why people wanted a new checking account—whether they had just relocated to the area or had moved to an area without access to their previous financial institution—as well as their familiarity with credit unions, Kessler says.

But the journey map also looked at the application process itself, Kessler says, and performed a funnel analysis to identify the steps that were hang-ups, where individuals were most likely to abandon the application process.

“The neat thing about a journey map is that it can be about marketing at the awareness and consideration phase, but it also looks at it from the operational perspective,” she says.

Since completing the journey map, Kessler says PenFed has decided to review its application process and queues to find out what changes it can make in the process so people no longer get stuck at certain points and abandon their attempt to open the new checking account, but instead can continue the process.

This may involve sending an email or having a member service representative call the individual to assist.

“We’re trying to understand it from the user’s perspective,” Kessler says. “It helps us get out of the perspective of being in headquarters and thinking of the process as a PenFed employee.”