What Is A Customer Journey Map?

Customer journeys may appear simple on the surface—you provide a product or service, and consumers pay for it. But if you have been paying closer attention over the past few years, it is clear that the consumer journey is getting more complicated. 

The average consumer currently uses different channels to engage with firms, changing customer expectations daily. It becomes more challenging to consistently deliver a great customer experience due to all these connections, which leads to more complicated customer journeys. 

According to a survey by Salesforce, 80% of consumers now value their interactions with a brand as highly as their purchases. Furthermore, 69% of customers say they prefer real-time communication with businesses. Customer expectations are surely changing significantly as a result. So, the issue is, how can companies match these demands and guarantee a seamless client experience? Customer journey map is the best way to understand and optimize customer experience.

This article talks more about customer journey maps and how to create a customer journey map. 

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map represents a customer's interaction and general experience with your company. They are images that depict the tale of how a client progresses through and experiences each phase of engagement. Touch-points and moments of truth, as well as potential consumer reactions (such as dissatisfaction or misunderstanding), should be included in your customer journey map and any actions you want the customer to take.

Customer journey maps are frequently built on a sequence of events, such as a customer's first visit to your website and their progression toward their first in-product experience, purchase, onboarding emails, cancellation, and so on.
Your customer journey maps may need to be customized for your company or product, but the best approach to finding and developing these phases is to talk to your consumers. Study your target audiences to see how they make decisions, make purchases, and so on. 

A customer journey map will not guide you to success unless you have a solid grasp of your consumers and their demands. A well-constructed and studied customer journey map, on the other hand, may provide you with insights to significantly improve your company's consumer experience.

How To Create A Customer Journey Map

1. Set Smart Goals

Without a clear goal, it will be hard to assess whether your customer journey map will have a real impact on both your consumers and your company. You will probably need to identify your current and potential customers so that you can develop goals that are particular to each step of their journey. 

Consider connecting your company's main stakeholders, many of whom probably have a hand in various aspects of the customer experience. Cross-functional collaboration is necessary to establish a rational and feasible goal. Obtain distinctive viewpoints and insights regarding every aspect of the current client experience, as well as where improvements are required and how they will be assessed.

2. Describe The Consumer Touch-points

The core of your customer journey map is made up of consumer touch-points. They define where, how, and how people connect with your brand. Be sure to include information that addresses actions, emotions, and potential difficulties as you conduct research and map your touch-points. 

Depending on the type of organization, there will be a variety of touch-points on your customer journey map. For instance, a customer's experience with a SaaS firm will naturally differ from one at a coffee shop. Simply pick the touch-points that truly represent a customer's relationship with your brand. You can start organizing your touch-points on your customer journey map once you have defined them.

3. Map The Current Customer Journey

Create what you think to be the present state of the customer journey or customer experience. Start organizing your data and touchpoints with a visual workspace or customer journey map tools. To guarantee accuracy, solicit feedback from stakeholders and create your customer journey map collectively. 

Again, there is no "right" way to organize your customer journey map, but include the touch-points, activities, channels, and assigned responsibility of each touch-point at each phase along the trip timeline (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Then add pictures, colors and form variations to your diagram design to better visualize the many activities, emotions, transitions, and so on.

4. Map Future States

Now that you understand how the customer journey may look, your map will likely show some gaps in your customer experience (CX), information overlap, bad transitions between stages, and major pain points or obstacles for customers. With customer journey map tools like Hotjar, Google Analytics, Heap, it is easy to map out possible solutions and compare the current state of the customer journey to the ideal future state. Present your findings to the whole company so that everyone is aware of the areas that need to be improved and has a clear idea of how their roles will help improve the customer journey.

Conclusion

Companies implement customer journey map to give customers better experiences when interacting with their products and services. We hope the information shared in this post helps you better understand how to create a customer journey map. Do you need to hire a professional freelance UX/UI designer and web developer for your software development project? Our site hosts some of the best experts in the industry. Check them out.