As the economy of 21st century becomes more and more connected it has never been more important for companies to deeply understand their customers, and to cater towards their customers’ needs. One of the most effective methods in understanding the customer experience is through Customer Journey Mapping.
Let’s look at the basic steps of Customer Journey Mapping.
“A customer journey (or buyer journey) encompasses all the steps users, prospects or customers go through in engaging with a company as they consider a product or service and then become users of these products or services.” – IBM
First, identify your buyer personas.
It’s important to remember that different customers have vastly different experiences when dealing with a company. Therefore, it will be beneficial to first create a set of unique buyer personas. These personas should include the needs, wants, goals, and expectations that make these buyers who they are. The best way to collect this information is through customer interviews, surveys and observation.
The timeline.
Once you have your buyer personas you can create a timeline highlighting the typical customers journey while interacting with your company. It may be helpful to split this timeline up into segments to highlight the different phases and interactions your customers experience. Here are a couple examples of what the phases could look like:
- Discovery, engagement, conversion and reward.
- Awareness, interest, decision-making, purchase, and renewal.
Touchpoints.
Once you’ve created your timeline and highlighted the different phases it’s time to add all of the interactions the typical customer has with your brand, which channel these interactions take place in, and the emotions they feel during these interactions. These critical interactions that customers have with your company are typically called touchpoints. Successfully completing this aspect of the process will require gathering solid research such as web analytics, customer surveys, social media logs, etc.
Beware of being narrow.
While it can be beneficial to identify and understand your customer touchpoints, it is equally as important to not become narrow-minded when dealing with the customer experience. The amount varies depending on the product or service you offer, but most of the customer experience happens without direct interaction with your company. Take a digital service provider for example, once a customer purchases their product the interactions have only just begun. Now they must monitor the customer experience and provide guidance to ensure that the consumer is satisfied. It’s important to monitor and provide guidance after the initial purchase, because a customer’s perception of your company is still being formed long after the major touchpoints.
What’s in it for you?
One of the most beneficial outcomes of creating detailed Customer Journey Maps is gaining valuable insight into how consumers perceive each and every aspect of your business. By doing so, companies will be able to identify the various interactions that lead to negative emotions for consumers and can then work to create a better overall experience. Ultimately, creating a Customer Journey Map requires time, effort and money but could potentially assist you in developing lasting, meaningful relationships with your customers.
If you’re ready to being your journey with customer mapping and would like to learn how Stap can help drop us an email at hello@stap.com
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