What Customer Journey Mapping Is and How to Create it
Let’s say that after reading Qminder’s blog about customer experience you decided to improve your business in that aspect and want to have a higher CX position compared to your competitors.
Well, for that objective, one thing that will be of great help is a customer journey map. And do not worry if you have not heard about it before, as today is your lucky day since we will be exploring more details about customer journey mapping and its key elements!
But before we reach our destination — making a customer journey map, we will have several stops to explain the concept in more details. So, on that positive note, let us start our journey!
First Stop: Definition
Until we reach our final destination, it is important for us to understand what customer journey mapping really is.
The concept is easy to understand. Customer Journey Map is a diagram or a set of diagrams that displays the stages of customer’s experience while interacting with a company, from initial contact till the end of the interaction.
One might create it for a specific aspect of the interaction or for an overall review of the complete experience. Another way to think about customer journey map is that it is a visual representation that gives details about the customer’s journey over time and across the channels.
Making such diagram means taking into consideration key elements, feelings, and motivations that clients have with the organization. It most probably will require the cooperation of various departments. Yes, customer journey mapping can be laborious, but the end result will definitely be worth it.
Second Stop: Importance
Do you really need customer journey map? Is it worth the hassle? This section will be dedicated to convincing you that customer journey mapping is an essential part of your company’s strategy.
If you want to visualize the experiences that customers go through when interacting with your business or if you want to understand the core touch points of your clients, you need a customer journey map.
It helps your overall strategy and ensures that your business goals are in accordance with the customer goals. But most importantly customer journey mapping is beneficial to almost every department of your organization
Are you a marketer? It will help you understand the pain points of users and provide solutions to your marketing activities that offer value for your customer to each of their touch points
Are you a copywriter? Customer journey map will show you what are the questions that your audience has and how do they feel about it. It will better guide you with the content that you provide.
Are you a manager? Make sure you use it for understanding how customers go through the sales funnel. Customer journey mapping will give you an overview of your client’s experiences, helping you to identify gaps for improving the process.
Third Stop: Benefits
Every map has a benefit, whether it is guiding you in your journey or helping you to find a hidden treasure. Certainly, Customer Journey Map is not an exception, furthermore, it provides multiple benefits for a business. Here are several of them:
- Better Segmentation – Visualizing the customer can help you to better understand your segments. Obviously, some of your products might be relevant to one part of your segment but not to another.
Mapping this will aid you in providing the best experience to the customers during their journey with your business.
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Increased ROI – Making sure you understand each touch points of your customer will result in more effective and efficiently targeted campaigns. Increasing your return on marketing investment. When using customer journey management, your return on marketing investment increases by approximately 54%.
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More knowledge – It goes without saying that visualizing your customer journey give you more insights. You understand their behavioral patterns more. For example, you can utilize it for identifying the time you clients take for finishing a specific action.
An online website wanted to motivate their users for subscribing to the email list before they would leave the site. By analyzing customer journey maps and combining it with optimization techniques, they were able to accomplish the goal.
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Positive feedback – Satisfy your customer’s needs and they will satisfy yours. It was found that businesses employing customer journey mapping received 24% more positive social media feedback. Furthermore, provided referrals generated 3.5 more revenue to the businesses.
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Better digital strategy – One of the core reasons for a business to digitize is to keep up with the expectations of customer experiences. Nearly 67% of the customer’s journey now digital.
Mapping the customer journey will prove to you the above-provided statistics and show you in which touch points of consumers to use digital to your advantage.
Now that you understand the importance and the benefits of customer journey mapping it’s time to learn how to create one. Make sure you have your notes ready and let us dive into it!
Final Stop: Creation
1. Create a buyer persona
This should be the foundation of customer journey map. If we do not understand the preferences and dislikes of our customer, the whole process will be done for nothing. Make sure you get into the shoes of your buyer.
2. Review the goals
Now that you have identified your buyer persona, it is time for understanding what makes them when using your product or service.
Make sure you identify the motivators and expectations your clients have when going through the customer journey process.
To better master this step, try understanding the goals that your consumer has in every single phase. Such actions will give you a better understanding of the process.
3. Research more
To make sure the second step was done appropriately, conduct a thorough research. Interview your customers and make customer surveys so you see things from their perspective.
Do not forget to use web analytics and social media for identifying your customer behaviors. One of the great tools for customer insights is queue management system called Qminder that also provides in-depth information regarding the behavior and preferences of a customer.
4. Identify the touchpoints
Identifying the touchpoints is not only good for making improvements but also for prioritizing certain processes.
For example, an unpleasant experience when checking-in a hotel can make the whole experience negative. A touchpoint can be checking in the hospital queue and a channel associated with that can be the Qminder system.
5. Sketch the journey
Put together all the generated information and ideas for improving future customer journey and draw it as a diagram. This is one of the final steps. Here, you have already accumulated enough information and insights to visualize the information. There is no fixed rule for sketching the journey, so you can bet as creative as you want.
6. Update and improve
The preferences, touchpoints and the channels are changing at a rapid phase. Drawing the map once and not updating it is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
But changes in the customer should not be the only reason for updating the map, it can also happen because of you. Make sure that you revise the map when there will be some significant updates or improvements to your product/service.
And there you have it! A guide for creating a customer journey map… Now you are ready to assemble your team, brainstorm ideas and with the steps provided above to improve the customer experience by creating your own customer journey map!
