Customer journey mapping is a popular tool for visualizing a customer’s experience. These maps provide a visual outline of various interactions that the purchaser has with a brand. It’s become a must for businesses as it allows managers to spot potential problems, going a long way in ensuring that the customer experience is satisfactory and hassle-free. When the customers’ road to conversion is straightforward, they’re more likely to stick with that brand.
In fact, taking advantage of the benefits of journey mapping, according to research published by Aberdeen Group, “Customer Journey Mapping: Lead The Way To Advocacy” the ROI for doing so is 200% greater employee engagement and 350% more revenue from customer referrals. Just imagine the profits and the ability to relocate toward bigger tech cities, such as Austin or San Francisco.
But, for successful customer journey mapping, it must be a collaborative process, with brand managers, markets and customers are included, allowing a manager or owner to form a complete perspective of what’s going on, from the moment the customer first discovers the brand through the buying stage.
In order to get a clear picture of this journey, there are four essential components of journey mapping.
Build It Based on Customer Experience
One of the key elements of customer journey mapping is to create a map that’s from the customer’s point of view rather than from an internal business point of view. The journey should be based on what the customer does, rather than thinking of the steps from a business process perspective. It should include how they feel and think while interacting with your brand across multiple points or stages.
You’ll need to have a research-driven understanding of the customer experience for your brand, ensuring that the journey map communicates exactly what’s being modeled, created on an understand of customer thoughts, behavior and feelings throughout the buying process.
A Journey Map With a Purpose
Any journey map should have a purpose and be actionable, clearly identifying any positive as well as negative emotions throughout the experience, using data to determine any opportunity areas and assess the impact of investments. A brands’ ability to rouse emotion is essential for an outstanding customer experience which means it’s a must to include the emotional state of your customers at every stage.
You may want to evaluate key pain points by assessing the effort and cost of eliminating them relative to the value a better customer service experience will have on your bottom line. One good way to do this is to leverage customer data from call centers and customer satisfaction surveys.
The Design
As customers today have a lot more control over where to give their attention, businesses must create an exceptional, above-and-beyond experience that ensures every interaction is customized to the customer’s needs throughout every stage of the journey.
Incorporating Performance Indicators
One of the most important roles of a customer journey map is identifying the critical opportunity areas based on the understanding of your customers’ perceptions of their experience. This will provide you with the evaluative framework for making the journey map actionable. Think indicators that will reveal positive, negative and neutral experiences.
