My 7-Step Guide to Build a Customer Journey Map in 1 Week (Lessons Learned)
- 1. 2018 7-Step Guide to Build a Customer Journey Map in 1 Week Nasti Susnjara Europe 15 Nov 2018
- 2. "Delight your customers” What does that even mean? This idea that has become so entrenched that many business managers stopped examining it in detail. It has become something everybody says they do, but in reality, we're all witnesses of too many bad or even awful experiences every day. 95% of customers share bad experiences and only 87% share good experiences with others.
- 3. Customer experience — both good or bad — has an impact on your revenue. Omneechannel, 2018
- 4. It is crucial to understand your customer journey and possible friction points which you can improve. Because there are so many different channels and touchpoints where customers can interact with you and your company nowadays, it has become very confusing and impossible to keep the whole overview in your mind.
- 5. This is why we use Customer Journey Map, a tool that helps you visualize your customers' experience.
- 6. Consumers today are well connected, they have access to all information they need and most importantly, they have a choice, so companies need to look at customers' priorities and put the user in front and center of their thinking. A customer journey map helps us to understand the user's context throughout their experience with our company, our services, and our products. It helps us understand their motivation, goals, feelings, and thinking which all change as the customer moves throughout the journey. Having a customer journey map helps us prioritize what we'll work on based on data and not assumptions (or even worse - wishes!) of a senior management. Stop thinking about what YOU want
- 7. There are always many things you and your team want to work on, but you need to understand where your business is failing the expectations of your customers so you can focus your efforts where it matters the most. Omneechannel, 2018
- 8. Don’t get intimidated by the complexity The main reason for concern is thinking that a customer journey map has to be a 100% accurate representation of every single moment of the customer experience. Which is almost impossible and the sooner you are okay with it, the easier it will be for you to start. Because the customer journey can no longer be represented in a linear journey from A to B - buyers often take a back and forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey - the mapping can be hard to visualize. — Hubspot
- 9. There are many ways of representing the journey from post-it notes on a boardroom wall to Excel Spreadsheets, to infographics. The most important thing is that your map makes sense to people who'll be using it. Do it in a way that fits best to your needs
- 10. A small part of my first real customer journey map from December 2016.
- 11. 1. Collect data from your customers and prospects 2. Define your personas and their goals 3. Define stages of your customer journey 4. Add your customer actions, thinking, and emotions 5. Define key highlights and pain points 6. Write down what you can do to improve 7. Prioritize and execute changes 7 Steps to Create Your Customer Journey Map Omneechannel, 2018
- 12. Collect data from your customers and prospects 1 Talk to your customers. The important thing is to only reach out to actual customers or prospects. You want the feedback of people who are actually interested in purchasing your products and services and who have interacted with your company before or plan to do so.
- 13. Collect data from your customers and prospects 1 Gather the numbers. Check your website analytics to understand your visitors, and social media to see if there are any mentions of your name and if they are positive or negative, deep dive in demographics of your audience, see which content is the most popular among each customer segment etc. Surveys — still a very valuable tool to get insights into your customers’ thinking. Gather your usage metrics. How frequently your product or services are used? How people use your product or services? Which features or certain services are the most popular?
- 14. Mapping your customer journey is a team effort. Therefore, the best way to start is to host a workshop or a series of workshops with realistic goals and attended by people who understand the customer journey and those who do not but are influencers in the organization, i.e. senior management. Omneechannel, 2018
- 15. Define your personas and their goals 2 Define who your target audience really is and who are their typical representatives. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in B2C or B2B space, there is always a person on the other side buying from you. If you have multiple target groups, focus for a start only on those that are most important for your business (e.g. bring you the most value over their lifetime).
- 16. Define stages of your customer journey 3 During the workshop, your goal is not to map out all the details but rather to put together an overview of the journey your customers experience when they engage with your brand, your product or your service. BASIC 1. Discovery 2. Research 3. Purchase 4. Delivery 5. After sales COMPLEX 1. Awareness 2. Knowledge 3. Consideration 4. Selection 5. Purchase 6. Set up 7. Use 8. Troubleshoot 9. Retention/Loyalty 10. Advocacy/Referral
- 17. Add your customer actions, thoughts, and emotions 4 We call all these “user stories” — their thinking and feelings when they are doing a specific action. Write user stories for each stage. Each user story is one touchpoint with your brand. Touchpoints — How does the customer interact with us at this point? Goals— What is the customer trying to achieve at this stage? Questions — What does the customer want to know at this stage? Emotions — What is the customer feeling at this stage in the process?
- 18. Stages, user stories, and touchpoints are a part of the customer journey grid you create for your specific case.
- 19. Define key highlights and pain points 5 For each stage think about what you’re really good at and where you really suck. Many of your highlights and weaknesses you probably already know intuitively but this step will not be possible without proper data and insights for each stage. Relying only on numerical data is dangerous and might lead to wrong interpretation. Therefore it is crucial to combine numbers with actual anecdotes of your customers.
- 20. Write down what you can do to improve 6 Define for each stage and each touchpoint what are the specific things you can do to improve your customer experience. If there are things that you know have a negative impact on customer experience, but unfortunately you are not able to change them, suggestions for improvements can be a different expectations management.
- 21. Prioritize and execute changes 7 In this step, you have to understand where your biggest issues are and focus only on fixing that touchpoint. When you fix it and eliminate frictions, you can move to the second worst performing touchpoint. You should always avoid fixing multiple touchpoints from multiple stages at the same time.
- 22. Mapping out customer journey is something that takes time but is definitely worth it. Once you have, it will not only align your team but will also give you clarity of where you should focus your efforts first and how to do it to really move the needle. Omneechannel, 2018
- 23. Read the full article on Omneechannel. Want to get in touch? nasti.susnjara@gmail.com /in/nastisusnjara @nastisusnjara