Customer Journey 101: How to map customer journey?

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We all make purchases online or on an app. We go through many products, put them in a cart, take them out, and repeat the process until we finally click on “Buy Now.” To understand their customers’ needs, motivations, and pain points, businesses have to analyze all these steps. 

Mapping the customer journey can help you get a unified image of the customer’s entire experience across the journey. 

When customers interact with your company using multiple devices and channels, they leave a large volume of footprints. It’s important to uncover the signals and understand them to optimize the customer experience. 

Mapping customer journey from the first interaction will help you uncover what motivates their behavior, and purchase decisions and impacts their experience. 

Outline their interaction across every touchpoint to understand why they choose your brand over your competitors, so you can discover how else you can influence their decision. 

Customer journey is a storyline of every interaction

Mapping the Customer Journey is the visual presentation of customers’ interactions and engagement with your brand. It is a process of creating a storyline about customers’ experiences from the first interaction until the last – their key touchpoints, pain points, and more. 

Customer Journey map enables you to understand how your organization fits into your customer’s life. 

A customer journey map helps you see the steps taken by customers when they interact with your brand. 

Customer Journey Map: 

  • 1. Provides perspective & helps uncover the customer journey aspects you don’t see.
  • 2. Offers a better understanding of each persona and their needs. 
  • 3. Reveals roadblocks in the customer journey, thus providing opportunities to overcome the pain points. 
  • 4. Helps understand how customers make a purchase decision to tailor your marketing effort accordingly. 
  • 5. Uncovers customers’ needs and emotions, enabling you to address the issue promptly. 

How to Build a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map involves the process of stitching together customer data scattered across the business and using the insights to deliver a frictionless, consistent, and outstanding experience. 

Journey maps are the best way to see inside your customer’s mind. It helps you gain valuable insights and build empathy towards customers, allowing you to understand how customers feel and the reasons for their behavior.  

Let’s create a customer journey map with the following steps. 

1. What’s the buyer’s persona?

The first step is to understand your customers. And for that, you have to define their persona. 

A buyer’s persona is not the same as a customer segment. A persona is a unique profile that explains a customer type: what they want to solve and how they interact with your products/solutions. 

The journey for each customer will be different. Some may make faster decisions, and some may dwell more. It helps identify the stage a buyer is in their customer journey.  

With a distinct buyer’s persona, you can understand their experience at various touchpoints. It can help you get a deeper sense of each step a buyer takes in their lifecycle with your brand. 

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2. What does the buyer want to achieve?

Understanding your buyer’s goals enables you to understand their needs and what they want to achieve. Build a map around their goal to design a customer experience that helps buyer achieve their goal smoothly. 

A customer’s goal could be fixing an issue with the product, renewing of subscription, researching alternate options, learning about the product, etc. 

You can start by monitoring the path your buyers take. Identify the touchpoints and goals achieved in those touchpoints. 

3. Identify buyer’s touchpoints

Customer Journey 101 Customer Journey

Touchpoints are all the time a customer has interacted & engaged with your business in their entire customer journey. Touchpoints include online and offline interactions. 

Touchpoints account for precise interactions. Monitoring touchpoints tell you the moments that impact their decision-making process & how they feel at each interaction. Identifying the critical touchpoints that drive their decision can help you innovate their experience and ensure customers are satisfied. 

[Related: Read the stages of the Customer Experience Journey]

4. What are the areas of frustration?

Identifying customer frustrations and pain points can help you identify the areas for improvement & design a flawless experience for customers. 

Pain points could be a confusing CTA, a broken payment link, a lack of product information, or a mandatory sign-up to continue navigating through your app. Any such point can cause a customer to drop off your app/website and leave you for a competitor. 

Keep track of the pain points and proactively address them to minimize the friction in the experience and leave them satisfied. 

You can use NPS®, CSAT, or CES surveys to gather customer feedback on pain points they face to achieve their goal. 

5. Let’s fix the roadblocks 

Now, with all data available, it’s time you fix the issues and design a connected and exceptional customer journey. Unify customer data and collaborate across the organization to brainstorm strategies to improve impactful moments. 

Recognize the roadblocks and optimize each touchpoint to push the buyer down the funnel. You want them to move past the touchpoint where they dropped off before and bring them closer to converting. 

[Related: All you need to know about Customer Journey Management]

Customer Journey Map allows you to see the experience through customers’ eyes. 

For the success of your business, you need to become customer-centered. And a customer journey map can help you bring customers to the heart of your organization. 

Creating customer journey maps can outline the areas for improvement while also highlighting what’s working for you. This can help you understand what actions to take to retain them, maximize customer lifetime value, and boost ROI. 

[Related blog: What makes a Great Customer Experience?]

Voxco makes it easier to analyze every step a customer takes in their lifecycle with your business. Schedule a free meeting today to discuss what you want to achieve and how we can help you reach your goal. 

Get started immediately with a survey template that’s right for you.

Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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