How to Create a Customer Journey Map
On the last Kickstart Your Week, we went over the basics of what is a customer journey. If you need a refresher, check out that post before you start building out your customer journey map.
A customer journey map is the visual representation of your customer’s journey – the process they took from the first interaction to conversion and so on. Often times, customer journey maps will be organized in an excel document, but if your customer journey is more complex, you might find it helpful to whiteboard it like a bubble map.
Customer Journey:
The customer journey is the entire process of a customer’s interactions with the brand, from the first moment of contact until the customer leaves. It starts with the awareness phase, where the customer learns about the brand and starts engaging. The customer will then further investigate the brand and make purchases. The customer journey only ends if the customer stops engaging with the brand completely. definition via Adobe
Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
Customer journey mapping can be a challenging exercise depending on the number of touchpoints you have with your customer through the sales cycle, but the long-term and short-term benefits are so worth it.
The goal of this exercise is to improve your customer experience and ultimately your conversion rate. You’re able to clearly see the steps your customer and identify the areas that are working well and the ones that could be improved. It allows you to be proactive in areas of the process that could be pain points. And, it helps your company and teams start customer-focused and create a postive, consistent experience.
Watch: How to Create a Customer Journey Map
Getting Started with Customer Journey Mapping:
- Determine the business goal for which you are creating the map.
- Outline your buyer personas – be specific! Depending on your audience/customers, you may need to build separate customer journey maps per persona.
- Gather data and real feedback for customers and prospects. Look at your analytics to see how people engage with you online and how your website performs. Create surveys to gather customer feedback.
- List out all the touchpoints your customer has with you from the first interaction to conversion to advocacy.
- List out all the actions that can be taken at each touchpoint. (ie On your website, do they download a whitepaper, chat with your sales team on a messaging app, fill out a contact form, sign up for a service, etc?).
- List all the motivators and pain points your customers experience when interacting with your brand.
Once you have all your information together, you can start mapping your customer journey.
You’re going to organize all the touch points you listed out into the 6 stages of a customer journey.
Does that touchpoint fall under: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Experience, Loyalty, or Advocacy?
For each touchpoint, you’re going to answer the following questions:
- What was the customer thinking or feeling at this point?
- What action did they take?
Then you’re going to look at the stage and the touch points within that stage and decide:
- Do any changes need to be made? What are they?
- How are we going to make these changes?
Once you have those questions answered, you move to the next stage of the customer journey mapping. Download the Customer Journey Map template below to start mapping!
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