The Customer Journey Mapping Series:
1. Stop losing customers to bad experiences – You are here
2. How to create a customer journey map
3. The business case for creating customer journey maps
Businesses often function in silos, with each team focused on their own tasks. But from your customer’s perspective, they’re interacting with multiple parts of your company—sometimes all in a single engagement. When was the last time your sales, product development, marketing, and account management teams worked together to fully document, validate, and refine every touchpoint of your customer’s experience?
In this three-part blog series, we’ll dive into the value of customer journey mapping and how it plays a critical role in crafting an exceptional customer experience (CX). We’ll break it down into three key areas: what a customer journey map is, how to build one, and why it’s a game-changer for your business. In this first post, we’ll start by defining what customer journey mapping is all about.
What is customer journey mapping?
Customer journey mapping is a visual tool that illustrates a customer’s interactions with your company over time. Some journey maps capture the entire experience, from discovery and evaluation to purchase, usage, and support. Others may focus on just one stage of the journey. These maps offer valuable insight into the customer’s perspective, highlighting pain points and uncovering opportunities for improvement. How you think your experience has been, and your customer’s thoughts on how the experience has been, is often different. By visualizing this journey, your company can enhance the overall experience, driving higher satisfaction and, the ultimate goal, loyalty. Simply mapping the journey and developing a plan to address pain points can be a game-changer in preventing customer loss due to poor experiences.
Key components of a customer journey map
A well-rounded customer journey map includes several key components that help you understand the full scope of your customer’s experience. Here are a few examples:
- Customer persona: The specific profile of the customer you’re mapping the journey for.
- Stages of the journey: Frameworks like Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Retention, and Advocacy help define how the customer progresses through their relationship with your brand.
- Touchpoints: These are the various interactions a customer has with your company—whether it’s through your website, emails, social media, in-store visits, customer service calls, or even word-of-mouth. Each touchpoint shapes the customer’s experience and their perception of your brand.
- Customer feedback: Gathering feedback is essential for identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement. This is where you can also perform a Gap Analysis. Identify where there are gaps in how you think you’re performing versus how your customers think you’re performing.
- Moments of truth: These are the critical interactions that can dramatically shape a customer’s perception of your brand—either positively or negatively. It’s at these moments that a customer decides whether to continue their journey or abandon it altogether.
By mapping these components, you gain the clarity needed to refine and optimize your customer’s experience.
DETERMINE WHAT TO MAP
Customer journey maps come in various forms, each tailored to serve different business goals. The first step is to clarify your main reason for creating the map, and then choose the type that best aligns with your objectives. If you’re new to journey mapping, it’s best to start simple with a current state journey map.
Current state journey map
- Definition: Captures how customers currently experience your business.
- Purpose: Pinpoint pain points and identify areas for improvement.
- Example: Mapping the customer’s journey from discovery through to purchase, use of the product or service, and ongoing support.
Future (or ideal) state journey map
- Definition: Imagines the perfect customer experience after enhancements are made.
- Purpose: Shape new strategies and drive improvements.
- Example: Designing an ideal future experience for a product launch, focusing on eliminating existing frustrations.
Day in the life journey map
- Definition: Explores a customer’s typical day, including interactions with your business and other aspects of their life.
- Purpose: Gain a full understanding of your customer’s life context and needs.
- Example: Mapping the daily routine of a working parent to see how your product or service fits into their schedule.
Service blueprint map
- Definition: Offers a detailed view of the customer journey along with the internal processes and systems that support it.
- Purpose: Align internal operations with the external customer experience.
- Example: Blueprinting the steps of booking a flight, including both customer interactions and the backend processes like ticketing and baggage handling.
Marketing journey map
- Definition: Maps out how customers engage with your brand’s marketing efforts, from awareness to post-purchase interactions.
- Purpose: Optimize marketing touchpoints to improve engagement and conversions.
- Example: Tracking the journey from seeing an ad to visiting your website, receiving email newsletters, making a purchase, and ongoing brand engagement.
KEY TAKAWAY
Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for truly understanding and enhancing your customer’s experience. By visualizing their journey, businesses can spot pain points, minimize friction, and optimize each interaction to create a seamless experience across every touchpoint. Many companies unknowingly operate in silos, lacking alignment around the customer, and while this might go unnoticed internally, customers certainly feel the disconnect. This is where customer journey mapping makes a difference—it ensures every part of your business is working together to deliver an exceptional customer experience (CX), so you don’t lose customers to unnoticed missteps or frustrating interactions.
Interested in learning more about how customer journey mapping can help your business? Give us a call or connect with me on LinkedIn.
The Customer Journey Mapping Series:
1. Stop losing customers to bad experiences – You are here
2. How to create a customer journey
3. The business case for creating customer journey maps
