Understanding exactly how customers interact with your company across all touchpoints is critical for delivering top-notch customer experiences (CX), boosting satisfaction and loyalty, and fueling business growth. A customer journey map provides a powerful visualized representation of each step in your customer‘s journey.
In this comprehensive guide, you‘ll learn what customer journey maps are, why they are vitally important, step-by-step instructions for creating one for your company, common pitfalls to avoid, tips for continuous optimization, as well as an overview of leading mapping tools.
Let‘s get started exploring the world of customer journey mapping!
What Exactly is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer journey map is a strategically-focused visualization of all the different touchpoints and key interactions that customers have with your brand over time and across channels. This includes both digital touchpoints such as your website, mobile app, online ads or review sites and offline touchpoints like stores, call centers, packaging or word-of-mouth.
Journey maps enable you to literally map out each stage of interaction with your company that a customer experiences as they learn about your offerings, consider purchase options, buy from you, receive post-purchase service and provide referrals or repeat business.
The map itself brings this complex buyer‘s journey to life visually so you can spot gaps in customer experience (CX), identify points of friction, and unlock insights for improvement.
Why Are Customer Journey Maps So Important?
There are a number of compelling benefits well-designed customer journey maps can provide:
Increased Customer Acquisition and Conversion Rates: By knowing exactly what your target customers value and what drives their behaviors at each stage, you can fine-tune acquisition strategies and optimize conversion funnels. Studies show revamping journeys can lift conversion rates by up to 30%.
Higher Customer Lifetime Value: Journey analytics uncover upsell and cross-sell opportunities while post-purchase touchpoints drive repurchases and loyalty. This directly translates to higher CLTV.
Reduced Customer Churn: Identifying pain points for triage combined with more empathetic CX decreases churn risk and helps retain more customers.
Faster Issue Resolution: Spotting failure points through analytics arms CSR teams with insights to resolve complaints faster.
Improved Customer Satisfaction: Holistic understanding of integrated customer interactions facilities continuous CX refinements.
The end result of investing in customer journey mapping includes winning more new customers, keeping them longer while growing their value over time, driving expansion revenue and supercharging referrals – all fueled by stellar customer experiences.
Current State vs Future State Journey Maps
There are two primary types of maps, each with distinct use cases:
Current State Journey Maps: These maps capture a snapshot of the end-end customer journey as it exists right now, spanning initial brand awareness all the way through to advocacy. Granular analysis of current state maps makes visible key problem areas and CX gaps to address.
Future State Journey Maps: These maps present an aspirational view of the ideal customer journey you want to deliver. Building this vision first enables you to then build backwards and identify key initiatives required to fill current experience gaps on the path getting to future state CX excellence.
While current state maps are more tactical and action-oriented, future state maps help drive more transformational changes over longer time horizons. Leading companies maintain both current and future journey maps refreshed quarterly.
Why Omnichannel Perspectives Matter
Customers engage with brands across many different channels, both offline and online. For example, a customer may first become aware of your products via online ads before researching reviews on your website, interacting with a sales rep by email, visiting a brick-and-mortar storefront for demos, completing purchase online, unboxing products at home and finally contacting customer service by phone when they have an issue.
Each channel contributes to overall brand perceptions and deeply understanding preferences and expectations at each touchpoint is critical for CX optimization. This omnichannel perspective ensures nothing gets missed!
Emotions and Pain Points are Key
It‘s crucial not only to enumerate key customer interactions along their journey, but also document the range of emotions experienced at different stages from initial interest and consideration of alternatives to making decisions and sharing feedback with friends after purchases.
Capturing emotional highs like excitement around unboxing new products as well as lows like frustration when encountering errors facilitate building more empathetic journeys. Relatedly, carefully tracking pain points when customers struggle with confusing UX flows or inadequate service also indicates areas needing urgent improvements.
Business Context Dictates Update Cycles
There is no universal fixed rule regarding how frequently customer journey maps should be refreshed and updated. For relatively stable businesses, once or twice a year may suffice. However, for dynamic contexts like ecommerce where new products are rapidly introduced while consumer preferences quickly change, more frequent quarterly or even monthly reviews are advised.
Periodic map updates should incorporate insights from the latest journey analytics, usability studies, customer feedback surveys and CSR reports while also tracking market trends with competitors.
Now that we‘ve covered customer journey maps fundamentals, let‘s walk through a simple 10-step process to create one for your organization:
Step 1) Conduct Customer Research
Reach out to a representative sample of target buyers via surveys, interviews and focus groups to understand current perceptions, behaviors and pain points.
Step 2) Identify Primary Personas
Segment research data to delineate two to four core buyer personas that make up the majority of customers.
Step 3) Map the Buyer‘s Journey
Visually diagram each stage buyers go through including awareness, consideration, decision-making and post-purchase.
Step 4) Document Detailed Touchpoints
Identify specific touchpoints across channels for each persona at each stages down to page level if possible.
Step 5) Integrate Quantitative Metrics
Enhance understanding by appending key usage metrics from analytics to relevant stages.
Step 6) Note Emotional Highs and Lows
Call out emotional connections associated with different interactions through journey.
Step 7) Pinpoint Top Friction Points
Spot pain points negatively impacting key funnel conversion or retention KPIs.
Step 8) Conduct Ideation Workshop
Brainstorm innovative solutions to address identified customer experience gaps.
Step 9) Prioritize Opportunities to Test
Determine top 2-3 initiatives with largest potential business impact.
Step 10) Construct Improvement Roadmap
Detail out 12-18 month plan, owners and resources needed to enhance CX.
While individual journeys will differ substantially based upon business contexts, these steps represent best practices adaptable across use cases.
Effective customer journey management should be viewed as an ongoing discipline rather than one-off project.
Here are six tips for continually enhancing your maps over time:
Continuously Gather More Customer Insights: Check-in with buyers via quick pulse surveys and regularly host in-depth customer advisory panels to solicit qualitative feedback for map enhancement.
Test Out New Experience Concepts: Rapidly build out low-fidelity user flows or prototypes of new ideas and use tools like Validately to run quick UX tests with target segments for input.
Conduct In-Moment User Research: Use session replay tools like Hotjar to peer behind the scenes as buyers interact with touchpoints and note areas of confusion.
Leverage Analytics For Optimization: Instrument key conversion funnels in Google Analytics with goals and drill-down on fall out rates between touchpoints to diagnose sore spots.
Keep Tabs on the Competition: Sign up for competitor email alerts and monitor their website/apps for new features your customers may expect.
Formalize Regular Reviews on Calendar: Update journey maps every quarter as a standing agenda item to maintain with continuous improvement program.
While customer journey mapping yields manifold benefits, realizing the full potential requires sidestepping these classic mistakes:
Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration: Failing to involve different teams across departments can result in skewed perspectives or important blindspots. Marketing, Sales, Services, IT and UX designers should all actively contribute insights.
Only Listening to Current Customers: Understanding why prospects choose competitors also represents crucial feedback for improving targeting and positioning.
Forgetting Mobile and App Experiences: With over 50% of traffic now mobile, ensuring intuitiveness across mobile and web touchpoints is key.
Not Having Clearly Defined Goals and KPIs: Lacking defined metrics for each lifecycle stages makes prioritizing lowest-hanging fruit opportunities tougher.
Assuming Mapping is One-Time Project: The work doesn‘t end after initial map is created. Continual iteration and enhancement is critical for driving ongoing gains.
Avoiding above miscues accelerates traction in using journey analytics to guide both incremental and breakthrough improvements over time.
Overview of Leading Journey Mapping Tools
Given complexity of documenting and visualizing highly dynamic customer journeys across channels over time, specialized software tools can dramatically enhance efficiency. Here are the top CX mapping tools:
| Journey Mapping Tool | Key Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Visio | templates, visual workflow design |
| Canva | graphic design, presentation focus |
| Mural | sticky notes, workshop style collaboration |
| UXPressia | quant data integration, analysis tools |
| Smaply | focus on identification of pain points |
| Touchpoint | omni-channel view with analytics |
| Quadient | highlights moments of truth |
| JEEFY | identifies revenue opportunities |
Core capabilities differ across the category leaders highlighting opportunities for buyers to cherry pick based upon their unique needs. Broadly, Microsoft Visio continues to excel for those seeking robust diagraming while Canva leads in collaboration around journey visualization artifacts. Relative newcomers UXPressia and Touchpoint shine a light on critical behavioral analytics.
The Bottom Line Business Impact
Beyond better addressing customer needs, overhauling journeys based on keen insights unlocked via mapping efforts can profoundly improve business KPIs in the following areas:
- Increased Customer Retention Rates: Journey analytics identify at-risk customers while prescribed initiatives boost retention 5-15%
- Higher Customer Referral Rates: Enhanced advocacy and loyalty post-purchase drives 2x+ morereferrals
- Shorter Time-to-Value for Onboarding: Smoother onboarding helps new customers achieve their first "aha" moment 40% faster
- Decreased Volume of Customer Support Cases: Defusing pain points decreases cases by ~30%, enabling CSR savings
The financial equation comes down to more satisfied customers that buy more, have higher lifetime values and eagerly provide referrals. Plus lower overhead costs through CSR efficiencies.
Here are the key lessons to remember when embarking on committing to improving end-to-end customer experiences:
- Holistic Journey Maps provide complete visibility into multi-channel customer experiences
- Clear Owners and Plans are needed to drive continuous optimization
- Updating Maps Frequently ensures they represent latest customer behaviors and preferences
- Spotting Emotional Inflection Points illuminates new opportunities
Great customer experiences don‘t happen by accident but rather by intention. Customer journey maps represent an invaluable blueprint guiding teams towards CX excellence mile after mile!
