The growing influence of online purchasing has proven that the digital world continues to evolve, and expectations are higher than ever. Customer experience is everything now for enterprises.
Businesses offering a product or service must bring together their workforce and use state-of-the-art technology to provide the best customer experience.
There is no middle ground for businesses. With the rise of marketing strategies, they either adapt to provide a great experience or fail miserably.
Organizations use customer journey mapping to identify the entire customer experience and help better understand customer expectations. Consequently, it helps identify ways to improve overall business processes.
In this article, we’ll introduce the concept of a customer journey map, its essential components, and its importance for businesses.
What is a customer journey map?
A customer journey map is a graphical representation of a customer’s interactions with a brand. It shows the various touchpoints within a company throughout the customer lifecycle.
It often represents a path customers take as they interact with the brand over time. It begins when someone becomes aware of the brand, continues with interactions, and ends up when they become loyal customers.
MyCustomer’s Customer Journey Mapping Research Report 2018 shows that 248 customer experience professionals said their companies used customer journey mapping.
Today, many enterprises use this map to visualize their customers’ experiences across all channels to identify where they might be falling short or not meeting expectations.
Why is customer journey mapping important?
Essentially, a customer journey map helps businesses understand how customers feel about their brand at each stage — from initial awareness to purchase and beyond.
The insights gained can then be used to make informed decisions relevant to improving experiences to meet customers’ needs and expectations better.
Customer journey mapping can be used at any stage of a product’s development. Here are some examples:
- Product strategy – a customer journey map provides insights to improve products based on customer requirements. It also helps brands prioritize what to build next based on customer needs, not just market trends.
- User research – this is an excellent way to visualize what people need from the product and why they interact with it the way they do.
- Designing new features or improvements – customer journey maps help determine which parts of a product are most important for users, their pain points, and how they would like them solved.
Essential components of a customer journey map
Customer journey maps come in all forms. Regardless of how the maps look, journey maps must have essential components.
Here are the essential components of a customer journey map that businesses shouldn’t ignore:
Customer persona
A customer persona is an individualized description of your ideal customers. It includes information about their demographic characteristics, lifestyle, and motivation.
The most effective personas are based on actual research into real people in the industry. This helps tailor your brand’s message to each person who visits your website or interacts with your brand.
Stages of the purchase journey
These are the stages that customers have with your brand at different times throughout their purchase journey.
A typical stage in the purchase journey may be “researching products” or “looking at reviews.” For instance, a potential buyer might visit your website, sign up for email newsletter and then download your eBook before making a purchase (and may do this repeatedly).
Each step forms part of their overall experience with your business and should be included in the map you create.
Consequently, businesses might have more than one stage in the purchase journey if it takes multiple interactions for someone to become a paying customer.
Customer expectations
It is important to set up some customer expectations.
Brands can’t offer what customers want unless they know what they want. And if they don’t know how customers expect to interact with its products or services, then it will be difficult for them to meet those expectations.
This includes understanding what customers want from the business, what they expect from each interaction, and how they feel when they encounter different elements of the product line.
Customer touchpoints
Every interaction with a company contributes toward building trust and loyalty.
With positive interactions brands provide at each point, customers will likely view brands positively overall.
So identifying all touchpoints enables customers to be aware of the business and become active advocates. These may include things like advertising campaigns, social media posts, and customer service interactions.
The more touchpoints along their journey, the more opportunities they are to engage and be influenced toward becoming loyal customers.
Thoughts, emotions, and actions
Customers’ thoughts, emotions, and actions include both positive and negative brand interactions.
- Thoughts– shows what customers are thinking at each point in the journey.
- Emotions– were there any frustrations or anxieties that arose during the interaction? It shows customers’ feelings at certain points during their journey with the brands.
- Actions– shows what customers do at certain points during their interaction — whether clicking on certain links or scrolling down through pages.
Pain points
Customers may not always know what they want, but they do know what they don’t want. Identify pain points by asking questions like “What has been frustrating about this experience?” or “What would make this process easier?”
The most important part of a customer journey map is knowing where your customers experience pain points.
By identifying these pain points, businesses can use them as opportunities to make changes that lead to more conversions.
Opportunities
Opportunities are also known as “pain points.” These are when customers have reached an obstacle stopping them from making a purchase decision.
Moreover, opportunities are all the possible ways brands can interact with customers during their journey.
Optimize your customer journey map
As customer expectations increase, businesses must make an effort to provide a better customer experience to compete in today’s market.
With customer journey maps in place, it helps organizations understand how to optimize every customer touchpoint. It allows them to solve problems as quickly as possible and retain customers.
Better understanding of overall brand interactions provides businesses with actionable insights into improving their experiences and increasing revenue over time.
