Creating a perfect customer journey map can enable your customer support team to focus more on specific issues rather than problems caused by a less personalized customer journey.
Definition: A customer’s journey is a map that tracks the buyer’s experience. The starter’s block is the point of the first contact with the seller, and the purchase order represents the finish line. The journey traces the process of engagement.
Contrary to popular belief, however, customer journey mapping does not end with the client placing an order. It’s also about a long-term relationship, mapping a customer's behavior after he receives his product, and mapping the customer journey.
Ideally, a customer journey map is presented as an infographic to make it easy for key members of your company to understand.
But whatever its final form, the aim is always to teach organizations more about their customers.
The customer is at the center of every B2C and B2B company, and a map of the customer journey gives managers a ringside view of how customers and leads move through the sales funnel.
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Two things will happen because of the map: The manager can identify opportunities or identify weak points in the funnel to enhance the buying experience.
In today’s digital world, it will also demonstrate to a company how to adapt to mobile, social media, and the web in line with customer behavior.
Here Is How To Map the Customer Journey
Tip 1: Start With Research
To map out your buyer’s journey, you need to get to know your customer. And for that, research is critical. Most B2B and B2C companies already have some user information in their databases. That can be the starting point. The other way is to collate data from various sources, such as website analytics, social media, and other sources, to understand your customers better.
There’s a simple equation at work here – customer value = business value. This is why your Enterprise needs to focus on customer value by understanding buyer preferences. That becomes a key input in customer journey mapping.
Tip 2: Get Feedback From Within Your Company
That’s right. To truly understand your customer, you also need to get input from your team. This information can then be used to add another stratum to a customer journey map. Especially, feedback from every touchpoint.
Just as getting the ‘insider’s view’ is necessary, getting the ‘outsider’s view’, too, is crucial. Customer feedback is a significant input into a customer’s journey map.
Tip 3: Talk to Your Customers
At the fundamental level, have a feedback form circulated to your customers. Get ‘Support” to call them, even. Most companies don’t do that, thus missing out on crucial info or “outside” perspective. Without an outside view on what’s working and what’s not, the journey map will be “missing an angle” and so accuracy.
Like any other task, mapping a customer’s journey is tied to your Enterprise’s overall goals: some specific, some long-term. But always try to understand a customer in relation to your business goals. The journey mapping, thus, is to be viewed from two perspectives—the customer’s and your Enterprise’s. The aim is to understand what your buyer wants and what your Enterprise is (or wants to) provide.
Tip 4: Define Your Goals For Customer Journey Mapping
Define your goals – why you are mapping your buyer’s journey. They could be:
- The most obvious one: To record end-to-end customer experience.
- To map not only the journey but also the touchpoints. (This helps you to identify/prioritize investments in experience/touchpoints).
- For drawing up a customer-oriented marketing plan.
- To look at weaknesses in your CRM process
- For inputs in developing new products and services.
Mapping a client’s journey more often than not reveals their motivation for interacting with your brand – what they want and what they expect from your company.
Rule of Thumb: Any knowledge is useless if not shared. Customer journey maps need to be shared across your Enterprise with key members.
Tip 5: Create, Share, Take Action
Create easy-to-understand maps that record the positives and the negatives. These should also illustrate quick fixes and opportunities. Share the map with key stakeholders, and take feedback. Based on all of that, close performance gaps. That’s how you bring in best practices.