Customer Journey Mapping… Part 1
Over the last several weeks I have been extremely interested in customer experience management and design. I have read about 4 books on the topic and read several articles. To save you time, I am going to review what I have learned and how to apply it in your business. As usual, if you are more interested in the topic I will have relevant links for the books and articles I have read about this subject. Let's jump in...
So what is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer Journey Mapping in basic terms is understanding the path to purchase for your relevant customer segments. The "modern form" of customer journey mapping was seen in a Forrester Report in 2010 where the author defines journey mapping as "documents that that visually illustrate customer's processes, needs, and perceptions throughout their relationship with a company."
Customer Journey Maps can help answer questions like: how can my organization better engage our customers? How can we provide value to promote customer loyalty? What services can we offer that are more relevant to our customers? Journey mapping works for organizations of all sizes and scope.
Now that we have defined what Customer Journey Mapping is, let's answer the question...
Why Customer Journey Mapping is Important?
Customer journey mapping is a strategic approach to better understanding what your customer's expectations are. We are living in an extremely dynamic post-COVID environment and customer expectations are changing based on what other brands are doing. In this environment, your customer experience is going to be compared to brands that you wouldn't expect to be compared to. Mapping experiences is just as important for small and medium-sized enterprises as it is for large organizations.
Customer Journey Mapping is so relevant in today's business landscape because buyers are expecting personalized and relevant messaging from marketers and business owners in an omni-channel approach to marketing and sales. And if you don't understand your customers or how they decide to purchase a product it is impossible to deliver personalized and relevant content or experiences.
Before you start your customer journey mapping initiative, you will need to understand the aspects of a customer journey map and create clear objectives for the map.
What are the aspects and objectives of a Customer Journey Map?
First, the customer journey map is from the point-of-view of a segment of customers, or buyer persona. Next you will need to determine the scope of the journey - is it an end-to-end relationship between a customer and an organization or is it just the path to purchasing a good. When evaluating the map, You will want to focus on the consumer experience and not the business processes that make it happen. Next, how do you want to use the map? Do you want to identify all the customer touch points and determine the most effective? And finally, when you are starting the customer journey mapping initiative who are the relevant stakeholders that need to be part of the process? Customer journey mapping projects need to happen outside the marketing conference rooms. As I previously said, we are illustrating customers' processes, needs, and perceptions. So if someone is key in the creation of a product or service to fulfill your customers' processes, needs, or perceptions they need to be involved and dialed in on the project. That could include your product management teams, sales teams, marketing teams, customer service teams, and leadership team.
Customer journey mapping is such a substantial topic so we will be breaking the topic into a series so you can better understand the process. Look for the next part soon.
Do you have more questions about this topic? Email us at mhbreister@gmail.com.
