A customer journey map is
a visual representation of the steps a customer takes when interacting with a
company. For example, one journey map might illustrate all the paths a customer
could follow if their initial contact was with the company's website. Another
journey map might illustrate all the paths a customer could take if the initial
contact was through a phone call to customer service. Companies often need to
create several customer journey maps to arrive at a 360-degree view of how
customers engage with the company.
Customer journey maps help
stakeholders in the business understand how customers move through the sales
funnel and interact with the company post-purchase. The information revealed
from journey map analysis can be a valuable tool for determining how to get new
customers, retain them and turn them into repeat buyers. The process of
creating customer journey maps is also useful for revealing impediments that
prevent different departments within the company from sharing customer
information in real-time.
Designing
the journey map
To be effective, customer journey
maps should be visually appealing, data-driven, comprehensive and
understandable. When designing a customer journey map, there's no set standard,
but there are best practices.
The journey map should focus on
how a customer actually experiences interactions with the company, not how the
company perceives those experiences will take place. The map should
illustrate a variety of possible paths, accounting for the fact that customer segments
may interact with products, brands and services differently. Each map should
reflect all potential touchpoints through which a customer could connect with a
company and be able to depict every possible sequence of steps a customer could
take.
Customer
personas and journey maps
An essential tool in customer
journey mapping is the creation of behavioral customer personas that represent
small groupings of customer expectations, needs, motivations and frustrations.
Each persona typically represents a limited number of behaviors that different
parts of the organization care about.
Software can help stakeholders
manage multiple views of individual personas from a centralized dashboard. When
purchasing software, is important for the application to be able to accept
input from all stakeholders who use the persona. This way, if a change in
underlying data changes the persona, then the customer journey maps that use
the persona will update as well.
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