What does the customer require? This is the primary concern of most brands. With the constant upgrades and technological advancements in the market, it is tricky to leave an impact. Hence, most brands rely on that one thing that is the backbone of any organisation, the customers.
Rendering a seamless and pleasant customer journey happens with the implementation of a credible business strategy, called customer journey mapping. Between visiting a website and purchasing a product, a consumer encounters many factors. The ever-growing market has intensified user expectations. CJM ensures a brand lives up to that.
Customer journey mapping is a visual representation of all the interactions between a user and the brand. It presents all the touchpoints in the form of a story that gives a deep dive into the level of consumer satisfaction. Understanding consumer preferences and pain points becomes uncomplicated when presented in the form of a story. Raw data may be able to compile trends and reports and help businesses work out how to reduce wismo queries (among other things), and make informed decisions for the future of the business, but it doesn’t replace the concerns and hesitation of the customers.
It is a practice adopted by many companies due to the benefits stated below.
- Increased conversion rates
- Enhanced client relations
- Identify and close gaps between departments
- Acknowledging the drawbacks of a specific service or product
An ultimate guide to creating an effective customer journey map
Setting clear objectives
Before creating the customer journey map, have a deep understanding of the objective that should be achieved.
Asking questions stated below can assist in steering a clearer path –
- What is the primary reason behind mapping the customer journey?
- Who is the targeted audience of the brand?
- Which touchpoints are utilised the most?
- Does my customer prefer real-time interaction through the digital platform?
According to which the next step is to create a dummy persona of an average customer based on the objectives. A persona is a set of information pertinent to all the important details of your users, in this case, a fictitious user. Make sure intricacies like goals, motivation, pain points and end goals from the product are mentioned. This acquired information can help the brand move further and approach the desired audience.
Build profile personas
A responsive method of building profile personas is by conducting surveys. Upon setting a target audience, the brand can start sending out online survey forms for their targeted, potential and active users to fill.
Examples of some good questions that assist in building profile personas are stated below.
- What requirement got you to our website?
- Was the requirement fulfilled?
- How convenient was it to access our website?
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate our customer service?
- Drop in some suggestions that would have improved your experience with us
Getting an insight into such questions helps in developing profile personas that can be segregated based on the most common responses.
Customer interaction
A very impactful marketing strategy of increasing engagement is interaction with the customers. The customer persona built has a lot more useful than just jotting down the points that need to be complied with. Segregate the types of customers based on their preferences, objectives and pain points to personalise the interaction. This builds trust and authenticity in the brand, ensuring they convert as a long-term customer.
Insight into all the touchpoints
All of the places on your site where a customer can interact with you are known as touchpoints. Having deep-seated knowledge of the touchpoints of your website is crucial. Inclusion of the same in the customer journey mapping is highly recommended as it will incur a lot of engagement from the audience.
Customer touchpoints include the visibility of your brand to a customer via an advertisement, website, referral, and retail stores. This can be used to create a map that shows where customers spend the most time. You can then optimise those areas and discover the most effective methods for obtaining maximum customer satisfaction.
Ensure all resources are available
All the customer service tools available on the website become the resources utilised by the users. Implementation of a software or website is prone to some form of errors and has a scope of improvement. Hence, having an inventory of all the resources available and all the ones required in the CJM becomes a pathway for installing the same.
Run trials yourself
The most effective way of understanding the user experience to render higher performance is by running trials yourself. This is considered a test drive that can be practised to understand the tweaks and updates that are required in the system.
The whole procedure of mapping the journey will only be applicable with a full potential if experienced personally.
Upgrade
A full data set of requirements, preferences, roadblocks and procedures is served on a silver platter with the current digital ecosystem. The only needful is to upgrade and tweak the system. This results in a steadfast growth and satisfaction of the customers.
Every pain point should be acknowledged and fixed, no matter how small it is. A customer journey map is always a work-in-process due to consistent changes in trends and requirements.
Parting words
Customer journey mapping is a methodical approach with a single goal in mind: to improve the customer experience.
The curation of a customer journey map need not be complicated. Moreover, with the integration of AI and software, the entire procedure can be streamlined to render a seamless and effective customer journey map.
