Why a Customer Journey Map is a Must for Any Modern Business

Today’s customers not only seek high-quality products and services when shopping online. Their best online experiences to date have driven them to expect a memorable customer experience (CX) whenever they interact with your brand digitally. 

To get to the bottom of whether your CX is serving the needs and expectations of your customers, an extensive analysis of your customer journey is a must. More than just mapping the path from offering a product to a customer purchase, this exercise must consider the full complexity of a modern consumer’s interactions with your business. 

Customers have more ways than ever before to communicate with your business and access your site. They use various touchpoints, such as messaging apps, websites, emails, and other channels, which make it more challenging to ensure that your customers have a great customer experience every time.

Creating a data-driven customer journey map is a perfect exercise to help your business understand your customers better.
​​​​​​​_________________________

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A  customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps, or touchpoints, that customers take when interacting with your business, such as buying a product or  making an appointment. It helps you understand how customers interact with your site and any gaps or points where the experience is failing, making clear how you can improve their overall experience.

Having a customer journey map is also critical if you want to learn how your customers experience your brand in general.

There are several templates you can use when creating a customer journey map for your business. Depending on your priorities and needs, your customer journey map can take any of the following formats:

• Current State Template: This is the most commonly used type of journey map. It allows you to highlight what your customers experience when interacting with your touchpoints, how they feel, and what they’re thinking. If you want to take a closer look at the existing pain points of your customers, this is the format to choose.

 

• Future State Template: With this template, you can predict what your customers will do, think, and feel when they interact with your touchpoints. This format is useful if you’re planning on launching a new product, service, or experience.

 

• Day in the Life Template: If you’re looking to create initiatives for your business, you need to examine your customers’ unfulfilled needs. With this template, you can examine not only how your existing customers behave, think, and feel, but also how they interact with their peers in your area.

 

• Service Blueprint Template: This template involves adding a network of people, procedures, technologies, and methods to your current or future state journey map to simplify your CX. It is great for building an environment that will allow you to launch a planned experience for your target audience.

When creating a customer journey map for your business, it’s best to work with your company’s marketing specialist or an agency. Doing so will help you discover the different rooms for improvement that you can explore to provide your customers with a better experience whenever they interact with your touchpoints.
_________________________

Use a Customer Journey Map to Improve Your Brand Experience

Creating a fully-realised customer journey map might seem like an excessive or time-consuming step for your marketing strategy. However, having a detailed customer journey map at hand can provide you with a range of benefits that will help various parts of your business in the long run.

Understand Your Customers Better

The most obvious benefit of creating a customer journey map for your business is that it allows you to view your brand from your customer's perspectives. It’s easier to empathise with users' experiences and understand why some individuals don't behave the way you expect them to when they visit your online shop or interact with other touchpoints.

With a customer journey map, you can drill down to give  separate overviews of specific journeys within your CX, such as the different steps your customers need to complete before  booking an appointment, buying your product, or paying for your service. This will help uncover where they might struggle to complete certain actions, become frustrated, and leave your site.

Additionally, the customer journey map can help you identify and address any issues and pain points that customers have when dealing with your brand and develop strategies to resolve them.

One company that used customer journey mapping to further empathise with its customers is  Hotjar. According to them, they added two more rows to their customer journey map dedicated to pain points and happy moments. They also made their map flexible so they can update it accordingly whenever their customers’ needs changed or they gather new information.

 

Identify Gaps in the Customer Journey

Identifying the gaps in your customer journey is another important step in improving your CX. With this tool, you can identify some of the most common gaps businesses often encounter:

Identifying the gaps in your customer journey is another important step in improving your CX. With this tool, you can identify some of the most common gaps businesses often encounter:

·        Gaps Between Personas: This happens when you assume that all your target audiences are the same and have similar needs. Finding gaps between your personas will allow you to create a unique journey for each one based on their specific needs.

·        Gaps Between Identities: Your branding may have gaps if you don’t have a consistent identity across your touchpoints, including your website and social media pages, which may confuse your customers. With a customer journey map, you can discover inconsistent identities and come up with ways to align them.

·        Gaps Between Devices: Your brand’s mobile experience should be as good as your website if you want to reach different customers. By using a customer journey map, you can reveal how well you’re performing on different devices and fix any compatibility issues that you find.

·        Gaps Between Online Platforms: A customer journey map helps you determine the platforms your target audience is using to look for you. With this knowledge, you can start working on these platforms and using the right channels to connect with your customers.

·        Gaps in Digital Marketing Efforts: Using a customer journey map allows you to discover your missed opportunities in digital marketing. This includes gaps in your SEO and social media marketing efforts.

Addressing these gaps is essential since they will ensure that your customers have a smooth and enjoyable experience every time they visit your online store and interact with your touchpoints.

 

Understand Multi-Channel Interactions

An average user typically interacts with brands using multiple channels. This means that your customer journey map will need to take into account various touchpoints, such as email, websites, Facebook marketing, and apps.

A customer's preferred touchpoints may also vary depending on their age. Younger generations are more likely to come from social media channels and look for video content while older users are more likely to find your website via search engines. Older customers are also more likely to interact with more traditional engagement channels and content—such as articles, print media, and referrals—when deciding whether to buy or not from a website.

This factor makes creating an excellent experience for every customer much more complicated. Since you have a lot to consider, having a customer journey map can help you understand which touchpoints customers prefer and craft strategies to market accordingly. You can do this by dividing your target audience according to their age group and analysing how they interact with your touchpoints.

 

Create Personalised Experiences

Modern customers are always looking for personalised experiences that are tailored to their needs. A customer journey map can help you identify opportunities to personalise the customer experience and offer services or products that are specifically suited to the customer's needs. Some ways you can achieve this is by using your customers’ names whenever they interact with your touchpoints, analysing data to recommend products and services that align with their interests, and giving freebies and special discounts to repeat buyers.

By understanding which touchpoints your customers prefer and creating personalised campaigns for them, you will be able to increase engagement and create loyal customers. You can also use customer journey mapping to identify where customers are dropping off and why, so you can make the necessary changes to improve their overall experience.

 

Improve Your ROI

A customer journey map can help you determine how much money you are spending on different channels and track the return on investment (ROI) for each one. This way, you can focus your efforts on the channels that are providing the highest ROI and reduce or eliminate those that are not as effective.
​​​​​​​_________________________

Achieve More With Customer Journey Mapping

Overall, customer journey mapping is essential for understanding how customers interact with your business. By having a detailed overview of the customer journey, you will be able to identify gaps and optimise your efforts. This will help you increase engagement, create personalised experiences, and improve your ROI.

You can also use customer journey mapping to get a better understanding of your customers and create an excellent experience every time they visit your website. With this method, you will be able to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience and achieve your goals.