Mastering this technique will do miracles for you, your customers and your company
12/04/2024; 3 min to read;
Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool to understand the customer’s perspective like diagnose existing customer journeys and improve clients' experience. In the same time it is a tool for designing seamless experience for any new product or service which company will launch. Based on the journey map company processes backstage might be adapted in a way to support memorable and seamless experience for clients.
Understand journey mapping basics
Journey mapping is transversal exercise which requires contribution from different stakeholders across the company. These maps put the customer needs at the centre of the design & innovation process, which makes them strong tools for a customer centred approach. This is valid for designing new journeys but also for mapping of existing ones in order to analyse and improve when/if needed.
To provide an excellent customer experience a customer journey map must seek to answer: |
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Customer journey map creation
In the begining it was the persona. Understand customers and define personas is a very important stage in order to build specific journey map.
Journey map is a process of forming a visual representation that reflects each customer's step along the process of buying and / or using company products and services. It also reflects clients' perceptions throughout their interactions with company, potential painpoints (obstacles which customer experience here and there, if any) and ideally consider the emotions which customers experience at those steps.
To be comprehensive journey map also consider touchpoints which customer “meets” in his experience with the company. That might be solely physical, digital or both (so called phygital) touchpoints like mobile app, contact centre, office/shop/branch, website, etc.
It is also possible to have third point of view if company interacts with partners while providing product / service to its own customers. In that case, experience with the partner actually impacts experience with the company.
Simply said, journey map helps you understand the steps customers take – the ones you see, and don't – when they interact with your company.
Attention point is that the experience with the company starts even before customer become real client or when they break up with the company. Example for that is interaction with the brand in social media. So the steps before the onboarding (research/awareness) or after cancellation (word of mouth/feedback) have to be considered as well.
Key takeaway: Customer journey map needs to be created considering client persona and their particular behaviour. Different personas might have different experience so understanding and / or improving their experience needs different mapping.
Mortgage loan buying and usage journey
Customer journey map validation
Good customer journey mapping process includes real customers feedback as for example complaints, front staff experience and also company expert knowledge about the process.
However testing journey maps with real customers or potential ones is crucial. Any kind of feedback is valuable however the most powerful one is test with clients.
Preparing for that step requires visualisation of the journey steps with very deep level of details from customer point of view and result of that is a valuable picture which helps organisation to realise what they are offering to their (potential) customers. Good customer journey map is like a wake up call for company's stakeholders in order to realise their impact over the customers - very useful even for functions which never personally meet clients like accountants, IT, compliance people, etc.
This exercise helps a lot for improving employee experience as well as it gives quite clear view what frontline staff experience during (sales and/or after-sales) interactions with clients.
After test with real people it is very much possible that mapped or designed journey might need some adjustments in order to reflect client emotions, painpoints, expectations.
Customer experience compromises
Sometimes companies have to make compromises due to inability to reflect client expectations for seamless experience (i.e. high investment needed for digitalisation or regulatory requirements which make process heavy) but good map is like a guiding light what efforts need to be done, at each stage, what step, addressing which pain point. Altogether, with good planing and adequate projects best version (or dream vision) of any journey is achievable.
This is an insightful article!