If you’re new to this concept start with our previous blog on the subject here, which explains the basics and importance of the customer journey. The final part of this series can be found here.
Mapping the customer journey means visualizing the interactions customers have with your business before they take action: making a purchase, downloading a whitepaper or leaving a review, for example. A customer journey map gives a better insight on where and when those interactions might take place, how you can best guide the customer onwards, and where there might be friction in the experience.
Like any journey, the customer journey is rarely a straight line from discovery to purchase. It winds and twists and there are many points where interactions are possible. These seven steps will help create your customer journey map.
1. Set your business goal first
Before digging into your clients’ goal, first define what your business goal is. For example, getting customers to sign up for your subscription based service or buying not one, but at least four products per order. That way, the customer journey doesn’t just help your customers reach their goals, but will also allow you to achieve the results you are looking for.
Next, establish your customers’ goals by creating buyer personas for your different target audiences.
2. Create a buyer persona and define their goals
Buyer personas are fictional representations of target audiences. For a customer journey map to work, it’s necessary to zoom in on only one specific target persona. Because, the map tracks the experience of one customer, who’s taking a very specific path with your company, grouping too many personas into one journey won’t accurately reflect their experience and won’t lead you to success.
Besides creating detailed buyer personas. it’s worth interviewing existing customers to learn about their experience and motivations in interacting with your company. Ask how they found you, what convinced them that you were the best option, and what difficulties they encountered while purchasing.
3. Identify the customer journey touchpoints
Based on the experience of your existing customers and your buyer persona, begin listing all the touchpoints your target customer goes through on their journey: pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase. This information is vital in determining if you are providing your customers with the right information at the right time and are smoothly guiding them towards their and your goal.
To establish all touchpoints look at your website, social channels, email marketing and ads you’re running, and dig into your Google Analytics to understand where your traffic comes from.
4. Are your customers taking action?
Next, with the touchpoints established, list when these moments of interaction actually lead to action. Action is not necessarily a sale: it could be opening your newsletter or landing on your website through a Google search.
This overview will show if people are actually taking the action you were expecting them to take at each touchpoint. Fewer actions than expected might mean a touchpoint is missing to guide them onwards. Too many actions – such as clicking through different pages to finally land on the checkout page – could mean your website is too complicated.
5. Identify and remove obstacles
Establish the pain points your customers encounter on their journey and consider how to solve them. For example, if customers get stuck on your website trying to find specific answers to questions, get your customer service team involved and start a chat function to guide them, or work with designers to improve the user experience of the site, or add an FAQ page.
Add these new interactions to your map to help predict how they will improve the customer journey and your business.
6. Take the customer journey yourself
To be sure the customer journey corresponds with what you envisioned on paper, experience it yourself. Google a problem, need or question, which you know many of your customers have, and let yourself be guided along the path you’ve established.
Afterwards, review the communication touchpoints you encountered. Did they work well? Did they help you complete your journey? What was missing? And to step up your game, try the same thing with your competition. See what they do differently and what improvements you can make accordingly.
7. Visualize your customer journey map
To get your whole company involved in the customer journey, it can be worthwhile to create an actual, visual map with the many datapoints representing the journey, perhaps with post-it notes on a wall or spreadsheets and infographics.
This visualization helps the team understand their role in the customer journey and opens the floor to collectively brainstorm new ideas for communication at each touchpoint. A visual customer journey map might also push you to revisit it more often. Journey mapping shouldn’t be a one-time exercise but a yearly event at least: you might introduce new products, customers shift their preferences, and technology changes constantly. The customer journey map should be an evolving project to help you achieve your goals.
Sources:
- https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-journey-map
- https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-loyalty
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/customer-journey-mapping/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/covid-decision-journey/
- https://hbr.org/2021/05/designing-customer-journeys-for-the-post-pandemic-world
- https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/customer-journey/
- https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2016/03/customer-journey-mapping-explained.html
