Mapping customer experience is not only necessary, it is incredibly useful for customer experience professionals and marketers alike to visualize the kind of experiences they are providing to their customers. But what are you really mapping – the customer journey or the customer experience? And how do you start with customer journey maps?
If you have absolutely no idea where to begin improving customer experience, it is often the best idea to use customer experience mapping to map out customer journeys.
CX Mapping Definition: What is Customer Experience Mapping?
Customer Experience Mapping is the process of strategically and visually laying out and mapping all customer interactions and experiences according to their story with your brand. It covers everything from the initial point of contact to the very last interaction.
By gaining an overall picture of all customer interactions, businesses can single out key moments of truth for the customer and focus on making it better.
Definition: What is a Customer Journey?
Every time you interact with any brand, you know buying the product / service is not what defines your purchase experience. It’s about all the interactions combined to form a customer journey. A customer journey is the relationship between a customer and the company, and what he goes through when interacting with a company.
Definition: What is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer journey mapping is the act of creating a customer journey map, or mapping out customer journeys. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the entire customer journey, i.e. the actions and engagements of users, across all touch points. Customer journey maps help reveal critical gaps in customer experience, between various departments, and between various channels.
Advantages / Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
Creating a customer journey map is beneficial to businesses because it:
- Provides a bird’s eye view of the entire customer journey
- Allows a business to zoom in on a single customer journey in a specific channel.
- Reveals the gaps between various channels and departments
- Allows businesses to prioritize actions in their customer experience strategy
Difference Between Customer Experience Mapping and Customer Journey Map
A customer journey map is a type of customer experience map that includes customer information such as accountability, behavioural analytics, demographic insights, calls to action, and other types of information. This is the best type of map to create if you know your customer really well and have the data to support it. Also, if you want to focus on specific customers journeys, use a customer journey map to zero in on that one problematic journey that has always been a bother.
A customer experience map binds all this information to other data such as reviews, social connections, responses, and payment-related infomation. If you don’t know much about your customer or their problems, it is probably a good idea to stick to a customer experience map.
Today, we’re focusing on how to create a customer journey map. Let’s dive right in.
How to Create a Customer Journey Map
User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX) professionals often struggle with creating customer journey maps. Customer journey maps don’t have to be too complicated. They can be simple and to-the-point, however, it is ideal to have a well-designed customer journey map to share with the entire organization. Let’s get started with creating your first customer journey map:
- Create Customer Personas: User personas are often the starting point for creating customer journey maps. Focus on what drives your customers to take action, and the critical moments of truth for the customer across channels.
- Outline Moments of Truth in the Customer Experience Journey: Once you have your user personas, create a model for all the stages of the customer journey. Make a sketch with all the touchpoints a customer is likely to interact with.
- Customer Actions: Once you have a basic skeleton of a customer journey map, outline customer actions at each of these different stages.
- The Driving Force Behind Customer Motivation: Find out what drives your customer to interact with your brand and buy from you.
- Obstructions: Once you know what motivates your customers, find out what’s stopping them along their customer journey. Ask yourself some customer journey mapping questions to ponder about what really matters to the customer in the customer journey.
Customer Journey Mapping Questions
Here’s what you should be asking yourself while creating your customer journey map:
- How are your customers finding you?
- What is the customer problem you are trying to solve?
- How are you trying to solve the customer’s problem?
- Are your prospects engaged well enough? If not, learn more about creating a customer engagement model.
- How are you trying to improve customer engagement across channels?
- Is it easy for the customer to pay for your product / service?
- How easy is it for customers to gain access to customer service for support?
Customer Journey Mapping Examples
Here are some of the best customer journey mapping examples from all over the internet:
- NNGroup Customer Journey Map: NNGroup probably has one of the best examples of the basic structure and outline of a customer journey map.
- ElevatedThird.com Customer Journey Map: This is a very simplistic customer journey map for the real estate industry. The complete process is outlined on their website.
- TamdemSeven Customer Journey Map: This map is just a beauty with the ideal customer persona depicted systematically along with the entire customer journey.
- Dapper Apps Customer Journey Map: The australian-based mobile application development company Dapper Apps have a colorful map of their customer journey and the various stages a customer goes through when interaction with their organization.
Conclusion: The Future for Customer Journey Maps
As I’ve already mentioned before, customer journey maps don’t have to be complex. Just take a look at some of the examples above and motivate yourself to create a customer journey map for your CX strategy. Hopefully, we’ve done a good-enough job to help you get started!
If you have a customer experience platform, visualizing the customer journey becomes a breeze. Learn more about Ameyo Fusion CX and transform you customer experience managment
