Stop Guessing, Start Mapping: The Definitive Guide to Building Customer Journey Maps

Uncover Hidden Insights and Craft Winning Customer Experiences

The importance of articulating a clear vision and strategy for customer interactions has never been greater. Creating a customer journey map is one of the most effective ways to identify your current state and what you want to achieve in the future. While working with innovative technology companies from various industries, including eCommerce, mobile loyalty, marketing technology, blockchain, and Foodservice over the last ten years, I’ve had the privilege of participating in the customer journey mapping process several times. I say privilege because the insight garnered through this process makes you better at whatever role you play within the company. While it may seem like a relatively big commitment considering you don’t see an immediate ROI of customer journey mapping, in this post, I will explain what customer journey mapping is, the many benefits it provides, and how you can construct your own.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

Customer journey maps visually represent how a customer interacts with your brand. They tell a story about what each interaction phase entails and how the customer experiences each stage. A customer journey map should include touchpoints and moments of truth, as well as possible customer feelings, including frustration and confusion, and any actions you want them to take. A customer journey map typically shows how a client progresses from his first visit to your website to his first in-product experience, purchase, onboarding emails, and cancellation.

The best way to identify and refine these phases is to speak to your customers. Your customer journey maps must be tailored to your business and product. A customer map will not lead you to success if you do not research your target audience and understand how they make decisions, decide to purchase, etc. You can, however, dramatically improve your business’s customer experience with a well-constructed and researched customer journey map. Here is an example of a customer journey mapping exercise my team and I did at 150birds:

The Benefits of Mapping Your Customer Success Journey

The customer journey map will demonstrate how your organization interacts with various departments, including sales and customer support. Thus, every team member will be able to work together to improve the different steps of the customer journey and ensure that your customers’ goals are always at the forefront. A customer success journey map has several benefits, the two main are:

1. Improve your understanding of your customers

Customer success journey maps outline all the steps your customers take to achieve their goals with your product. They focus on the customer’s experiences and priorities rather than looking at the customer journey from your perspective. Your goal throughout the customer journey will be to understand and answer the following question: What are our customers trying to accomplish with our product?

2. Increase your customer retention rate

In a customer success journey map, you can visualize your customer's entire journey with your product. When you have a complete view of the customer’s journey, it is easier to identify areas for improvement. As a result, you are more likely to be able to identify when customers are not having success with your product, thereby reducing the risk of churn. The earlier you identify them, the greater your chances of retaining a percentage of those customers who would otherwise have churned.

Additional benefits:

• Optimize channels to increase customer engagement
• Optimize the customer experience at moments of truth
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints and increase retention rates
• Shift from a company to a customer-focused perspective
• Break down silos between departments and close interdepartmental gaps
• Target specific customer personas with marketing campaigns relevant to their identity
• Understand the circumstances that may have produced irregularities in existing quantitative data
• Assign ownership of various customer touchpoints to increase employee accountability
• Make it possible to assess the ROI of future UX/CX investments

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

You can make customer journey maps complicated if you don’t stay focused. Choose one persona and one customer scenario at a time to research and visualize.

1. Set goals

A customer journey map will not be able to be evaluated without a goal to determine whether it will have a tangible impact on your customers and your business. To set specific goals for those audiences at each stage of their experience, you must identify existing — and future — buyers. For a logical and attainable goal, cross-functional teamwork is essential. Gather the key stakeholders in your company, many of whom probably touch on different aspects of the customer experience. Find out what needs improvement and how those improvements will be measured in each part of the customer journey. Create buyer personas if you don’t already have them to help you focus your customer journey map on the specific types of buyers you want to attract.

2. Conduct persona research

Depending on the maturity of your business, you may only have a few records, reports, or other pre-existing data about the target persona, so make your customer journey map as detailed as possible. A rough draft of the customer journey can be created by compiling your preliminary findings. However, the most insightful data can be gathered from customers or prospective customers who have interacted with your brand in person. Use any of the following methods to collect meaningful customer data:

• Conduct interviews
• Talk to employees who regularly interact with customers
• Email a survey to existing users
• Scour customer support and complaint logs
• Pull clips from recorded call center conversations
• Monitor social media discussions about your company
• Leverage web analytics
• Gather Net Promoter Score (NPS) data

Look for information that references:

• How customers initially found your brand
• When/if customers purchase or cancel
• How easy or difficult they found your website to use
• What problems your brand did or didn’t solve

By incorporating qualitative and quantitative data into your research process, your business can make data-driven decisions based on real customer feedback.

3. Define customer touchpoints

The majority of your customer journey map is made up of customer touchpoints. You should include information regarding action, emotion, and potential challenges when researching and plotting your touchpoints. Touchpoints are where and how customers interact with and experience your brand. You must determine the number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map based on your business. Customers’ experiences with a SaaS company are inherently different from those in a coffee shop. Choose touchpoints that reflect the journey a customer takes with your brand accurately. Your customer journey map can then be constructed after you define your touchpoints.

4. Map the Current State

Use a visual workspace like Miro to organize your data and touchpoints. Identify your as-is state of the customer journey and your current customer experience. Prioritize the right content over aesthetics. Build your customer journey map collaboratively with stakeholders so that it is accurate. You can format a customer journey map in several ways, but include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned ownership of each touchpoint along the journey timeline (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Using images, colors, and shapes allows you to visualize different actions, emotions, and transitions more quickly. By mapping out your current state, you will also identify gaps or red flags in the experience.

5. Map Future States

As a result of visualizing the customer journey, your map will likely reveal gaps in your customer experience, information overlap, poor transitions between stages, and significant pain points. You should present your findings company-wide, including a roadmap for expected change and how their roles will improve the customer journey.

Increase ROI With Better Customer Journey Mapping

While you may have all the information you need for a customer journey map, knowing how to arrange it visually can be challenging. Keep your customers happy without allowing the possibility of a lousy customer journey to keep you awake at night. Know the current state of the customer journey with your business, and adjust accordingly. If you are ready to Go-to-Market, check out my post on building a killer content machine for your company.