Customer journey map

Customer journey map or customer experience map is a design thinking tool that visually allows you to analyze each of the phases or stages that a customer goes through to achieve the desired objective of the company (generally the purchase of goods or services).

In other words, it is a tool to keep track of each of the stages, actions, channels and elements that a customer goes through until they have completed the purchase or paid for a good or service. Following the process from the first to the last point of contact with the customer, to make sure we are meeting their objectives and if not, to try to improve our internal sales processes.

1. Design a customer journey map

Depending on each project, the design of the customer journey map will vary, and there are no master formulas for it, but there are a series of unavoidable basic steps to design a customer journey map, which are:

– Map objectives. You will have to define the purpose of the map. The motivation can be very varied, from determining possible purchase barriers, to whether an email marketing campaign will be effective or the best way to launch a new product.

– Identify our buyer persona. It is essential to know what our target audience is really like, so that the customer journey map will provide us with valid data.

– Understanding the points of contact. We have to determine the moments in which the customer interacts with our brand. Before meeting us (to discover how they have met us), the contact while they stay with us (to understand what attracts them to our business) and the contact after they have purchased (to learn what their shopping experience was like).

– Mapping. Based on the particularities of the business, the focus will be on the aspects that have been detected as necessary to correct them, making the customer’s journey as satisfactory as possible.

– Analyze and test. The best way to analyze the customer journey map is to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and start testing whether everything is going according to plan and thus have a “real picture” of the different processes involved.

– Make changes and start again. With the critical points already isolated, it is necessary to make the changes that resolve them and periodically review the customer journey map, since new problems may start to affect the process again.

2. Advantages of the customer journey map

As it is a valuable tool for measuring customer experience, it can be used as the basis on which to forge their loyalty, it is very importante to understand how customer experience maps can help us:

• It increases the brand experience we offer to customers.
• It detects and identifies the stages of the purchase process and allows us to improve the ones that are not working as expected.
• It allows us to understand our customers’ needs and emotions.
• It helps to work with effective cross selling and up selling actions.
• It improves customer retention and loyalty.
• It is possible to identify interaction points and allows us to enhance them independently.