Flowcharts are important visual aids that help people understand processes or workflows, and because of this, they have many different applications. With these applications come different templates and structures, which will all have slightly different use cases. In this article, we will walk through 10 different flowchart examples and talk briefly about their various use cases.
Outlining a Customer Journey Map
One easy application for a flowchart template is outlining a customer journey map. Before creating a fully formed journey map, there are multiple phases that have to be accounted for including brainstorming, outlining, and organizing.
During the outlining phase, using a flowchart template is a great resource to help your team understand how to break up a customer’s journey into manageable steps. Diagramming a journey in this format helps provide direction, clear steps, and places to improve their journey.
Often this outlining process occurs in tandem with brainstorming because as you create steps in the brainstorming process and highlight which actions correspond with certain responses, your flowchart template will begin to become more clear. The flowchart helps provide a birds-eye overview of the customer journey while the brainstorming phase details the specific feelings of the user. This way they both combine to paint a full picture of the customer’s journey.
Planning Freelance Projects
One big thing that can help freelance workers communicate with their clients is showing them flowchart examples before a project has begun. This helps to overview the process that they will take to reach completion.
Especially when these projects are specific and the client might not be knowledgeable on what goes into the finished product, it can be really helpful to show them an easy visual overview that explains each step in the process. This will in turn make them feel secure in their decision to hire you for the project and will give you both a communicable set of expectations throughout.
Managing an External Workflow
Similar to creating a freelance project plan, managing an external workflow is a place where clients can provide a workflow expectation to people they work with outside of their internal process.
Creating a workflow is a great way to communicate clear steps and goals en route to project completion, and can provide a collaborative relic for people to access and view throughout the project.
This is especially helpful when there are strict internal restrictions around budget, timing, and process that the external service needs to abide by. In this situation, having a clear flow of tasks and expectations is critical, and flowchart templates provide a great solution.
Creating Streamlined Internal Processes
Just as creating a flowchart for an external process is important, doing so internally is also crucial. Especially when you have many roles working collaboratively, providing them a central flow of operations can be a critical marker for success. One important way companies handle internal processes is through task management, but flowcharts provide another layer of direction that can be very helpful.
Internal flowchart examples are important for multiple reasons, but mostly they give people a very rigid system to self-monitor their tasks. When there isn’t a flowchart or workflow template in place, people may feel lost with their tasks or can become complacent with what happens next.
When using a flowchart template, however, there is always a clear next step that can be acted upon immediately. This gives people more motivation to accomplish their tasks in order to progress to the next phase and eliminates any clarity issues around their responsibilities moving forward.
Streamlining the Onboarding Process
Another scenario where documenting internal processes is important is when onboarding new members to a team. One of the biggest barriers of the hiring process is getting people up to speed with their role, how the organization operates, and what their individual expectations are. Especially in terms of understanding their specific role, it can take people months to develop a nuanced understanding of where they fit and what they’re responsible for.
Giving them a simple visual diagram upfront is one of the best ways to clear up their job description and communicate the required steps they take in their daily tasks. This gives people a sheet to reference when they have questions about what comes next and helps set clear end goals.
Additionally, having documented flowchart examples is very helpful when looking to the future because it provides some standardized documentation for people to reference as more people are hired, giving everyone a shared understanding of how the organization operates.
Creating an Outreach Plan
Creating an outreach plan is an important workflow to visualize because it’s usually very formulaic. You track customers in their progression through your product/service and reach out to them based on where they are and what their goals are.
This maps well into a flowchart because you can note several different stages and point them to unique endpoints, showing exactly what kind of message should be sent to a specific customer.
This could apply to email campaigns, sales outreach, gathering specific customer feedback, or any other customer-facing outreach plan.
Managing Healthcare Services and Treatment Options
Healthcare is a sector where clarity is very important, but often lacking. Giving patients and caretakers a simple visual guide as to what care they can expect and how to go about getting it can be very helpful and can eliminate much of the headache around deciding which option is best suited to a patient.
On the patient’s side, understanding what’s covered, what’s available, and where you fit can be a nightmare. Breaking this down into a visual aid where you can clearly track your options to the right end result is super helpful and guarantees you will end up with the correct care.
From a provider’s side, it’s also super helpful because they can plan their own unique flowcharts around the process of providing care. This takes into account the many different steps that go into achieving care successfully and what happens after that’s finished. Documenting this can be really helpful and can set a positive precedent moving forward.
Creating a Hiring Workflow
Similar to onboarding, having a flowchart template for the hiring process can demystify some of the headache behind scheduling and selecting candidates. The flowchart would track users through the hiring pipeline so you could quickly see, based on their status, what the logical next step would be.
Classifying candidates like this is an easy way to sort them into groups without having to dig into each one individually. This also provides a helpful template for any future hiring process that needs to be done.
Updating a Sales Deck
Having a clear sales deck with multiple options is really important for creating your optimal sales pitch, and while accessing a flowchart during a sales call is not an optimal strategy, it can be really helpful in preparation.
Diagramming the multiple questions you ask and preparing for the different kinds of answers is crucial to having a smooth and effective sales call, and a flowchart template is a great way to do that.
This helps create a standardized diagram for the many conversations you will have about a product/service and can be updated as you learn more in the discovery process. Additionally, as you gather more responses to your questions you will build a larger sample size to base your responses on and can update your flowchart accordingly. This is all a part of building a successful sales deck and flowchart examples can provide a valuable visual aid.
Building a Business
Building a business is an incredibly complex thing to accomplish and there are a ton of different variables that go into it. With so many new challenges and unique things to consider, having a visual aid to diagram what each path looks like can help a lot when prioritizing what to do next.
Prioritizing effectively is critical as a business owner because you can only do so much at once. Having a deep understanding of how your tasks today relate to your overall goals is super helpful to planning ahead, and this is made possible by using a flowchart template.
Conclusion
Regardless of your specific goals, using a flowchart template can help visualize a process in a ton of different ways. This list of flowchart examples specifies some of the most obvious cases, but there is always more exploring to do with flowchart templates. If you liked this post, make sure you learn more about how to create your own flowchart template with Fresco.
