Today customers engage with brands across multiple channels in a very complicated manner and because of this creating a customer journey map for any business is now more important than ever before.
Buyers are doing their own research before getting in touch with any company. In fact, according to a study, they are usually 57% already into the buying process before reaching out to the company for more information. This shows that if a customer gets in touch with you then it is possible that they might have already established multiple touchpoints on other platforms.
This is where customer journey mapping helps you identify the path that your customers follow to achieve their goals with your company.
Customer Journey Mapping is a process of visualizing how your customers interact with your brand from their first touchpoint till they exist in the company ecosystem.
Using this process, you can create maps that illustrate all the customer touchpoints where customers come into contact with your brand across channels – online & offline.
With a quick look at these maps, you can look at your company, products, sales, marketing & services from the customers’ perspective. With these insights, you can structure the touchpoints for your prospects & customers with relevant communications that lead to conversion.
All said, if you now understand the benefits of creating a customer journey map for your business, let’s create one now.
Step 1: Set your objective clearly
There can be multiple types of customer journey maps based on the end goal that you want to achieve with it. So, before taking any step further and being confused about what exactly you want from the map, set a clear objective.
You can ask yourself these questions to set your thoughts in one direction –
- What problem will it solve for you?
- Who needs it and why?
- What goal do you want to achieve with it?
By getting answers to these questions, I’m sure that you’ll have a clear idea about the map and what to expect from it.
Step 2: Identify Ideal Customer Personas
Now, to understand the journey of your customers, you need to figure out why exactly they even started the journey with your brand. At this step, you need to find out the reasons why your customers chose you over a hundred other brands available out there.
And the best way to do so is by conducting an extensive survey of your existing customers. You can ask the following questions to them –
- How did you come to know about us?
- What problems is our company solving for you?
- How often do you visit our website?
- Do you follow us on social media? Why?
- What was the deciding factor to work with us?
- How does our solution contribute to your team?
You must understand that in B2B purchase, several decision-makers are involved and it’s a good idea to involve all the decision-makers in the survey for better insights.
You can use survey tools like Survicate to conduct online surveys and get consolidated survey data on one screen. Now, analyze the data and highlight your ideal customer personas who you think can most benefit from your solutions.
Step 3: List out all the customer touchpoints.
Touchpoints are referred to as places where your customers interact with your brand at different stages of their journey in the company ecosystem.
Your customers may already have established touchpoints with your brand before you connect with them in person. So, you need to identify all such interaction points that your customers and prospects are using to interact with your brand.
Also, you have to understand that touchpoints are not just limited to your website. You need to evaluate all the possible touchpoints across different platforms online & offline. These touchpoints can be –
- Google search engine Ads. (Online)
- Social media ads. (Online)
- LinkedIn page (Online)
- Trade shows (Offline)
- Cold outreach (Offline)
- Networking events (Offline)
To identify your customer touchpoints, you can do a survey on your existing customers and internal teams within your organization to understand how they interact with prospects at different stages of the buying process.
Step 4: Identify obstacles & pain points in the customer journey
At this stage, put all the data collected at work to identify roadblocks and pain points in the customer journey.
You can also try to find the answers to the following questions to understand the real obstacles that can affect your customer experience –
- What are the main areas of friction?
- What are the main objections your sales team faces?
- Reasons behind lost deals?
- Reasons behind churned accounts?
For instance, say a customer likes how your website and social pages present your product & services but when they connect with a sales representative the communication differs, and that creates ambiguity for your customers to make decisions.
Now, by analyzing these pain points, you can create an effective and efficient process for customers and your team to make sure that the journey ends with a better experience for both parties.
Step 5: Experience the journey yourself.
Once you’ve identified the customer touchpoints and the obstacles in the journey, you should walk in the shoes of your customers -visit your website, and social profiles, download resources, submit a contact form, and engage with the sales team to feel what it is like to be a customer of your company.
Afterward, ask yourself the following questions as a customer –
- Does the current process help you achieve your goals?
- How engaging the journey is?
- Do you find the process easy to follow?
- How can it be improved?
Also, involve others from your team to experience the journey as different customers based on different buyer personas. Then by analyzing the results gained from these experiences, highlight the problems and advantages that customers experience along their journey to ensure that it can be more engaging and helpful for them.
Step 6: Visualize the Journey
Finally, you have all the data that you need to include in your customer journey map but visualizing it is what matters the most so that your team members can understand and use it to improve the customer experience at an individual level.
You can visualize the journey map using sticky notes on the wall, infographics, and even Google Sheets. However, you can also use tools like UXPerssia which enables you to create customer personas and journey maps using real-time data.
Wrapping up
Now, let’s say you have a robust customer journey map for your business but it doesn’t mean that your work is done here.
You have to understand that the customers’ behavior is constantly evolving with emerging new technologies and social channels. That’s why your customer journey map must also keep evolving to ensure its effectiveness and efficiency.
If possible, always run a survey within your team every 3-6 months regarding the customer journey map to identify the gaps and opportunities to keep it up-to-date with current trends.