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How To Create A Customer Journey Map Step-By-Step

Contributed article by Katie Pierce

It didn’t seem so long ago when marketers used a traditional method of understanding a consumer’s buying process through the linear funnel. A narrowing path that starts from a buyer's awareness to the purchase of a product or service, this funnel was an advertising staple – only to be rendered obsolete thanks to the rise of smartphones and social media. Little did marketers know that this would change the advertising landscape forever. 

Old learnings can sometimes die, and for good reason. As the typical online shopping journey became more complex, the linear funnel was no longer sufficient to describe customer journeys. What ensued was the birth of the customer journey map: a powerful marketing tool that focuses on customer intent and ensures boosted customer experience. Helpful in reducing customer churn and increasing customer lifetime value, a customer journey map is exactly what your brand needs. First, let’s first get to know what this framework is all about. 

Customer Journey Map: What Is It?

A customer journey map is exactly what you think it is – a diagram representing the flow of a customer’s engagement with a company. Known as a journey map for short, this visual representation of a consumer’s journey helps companies understand their potential customers on a deeper level – from their needs, to their motivators to buy, to their first encounter with your brand, and even to their final purchase of a product or service. 

A Step-By-Step Guide on How to Create a Customer Journey Map

No customer journey is the same – just like how customer journeys vary between a sustainable clothing store and that new restaurant in town, for instance. Journey mapping is influenced by multiple factors, an important one being the customer persona. If this is your first rodeo into using this important marketing tool, know that it isn’t all that difficult. But, there are a few things you must know before creating one that’s a perfect fit for your business.

Understand Your Customer

You may hear this saying quite often, but it’s only mentioned repeatedly because it’s true – know your customer. By doing your research, you get to have a more accurate profile of your buyers. Fortunately, reaching out to your customers isn’t that difficult. All you need is to conduct surveys and user testing to give you a clearer picture of their personas. 

Only customers who have purchased your products or shown interest in your company must answer this questionnaire for higher accuracy. Ask the important questions. It can be about when they had their first encounter with your brand, or their experience navigating through your website. With questions like these, you’ll have an idea of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Know Your Buyers’ Goals 

There’s one thing you shouldn’t overlook when doing your market research – knowing your buyer’s goals. By understanding what every customer hopes to achieve in each step of the buying process, you get to build a journey map that suits your company. For instance, a buyer might be looking for the best offering in the market at a fair price. While surveys also help, don’t limit yourself to using this tool. Customer service transcripts are a useful source of data as well when you’re looking to know more about their goals. Analyze each phase of the buying process and identify the questions that your customers may have – this is the way to know what they want to achieve in the buying process. 

Identify Touchpoints

After determining the goals of your buyers, it’s important to look into the touchpoints. Crucial to studying your market, customer touchpoints refer to the interactions between buyers and companies throughout the customer journey. This counts interactions through marketing and online and offline media. 

Listing down your customer touchpoints can be overwhelming. After all, you’ll be considering the number of interactions customers have with your company – both good and bad. To help you get started, you have to identify the ways your customers might encounter your brand online. Consider different channels such as social media sites and third-party review sites. 

Map Out Customer Pain Points

While examining your data, you’ll find certain obstacles that prevent your customers from continuing their purchases. For example, your website could be difficult to navigate, dampening your customers’ excitement from exploring your brand. By identifying their pain points, you can prevent these roadblocks from occurring. A clunky website, for instance, won’t hold you back as long as you hire competent web developers and UX/UI designers. 

Check On Your Available Resources

After listing down all the crucial touch and pain points, it’s time to determine the resources that can help you with solving these issues. By taking note of the resources you have, you’ll get an idea of what resources you’ll need to enhance customer journeys. Whether it be the lack of customer support agents to improve or software that can streamline your business processes, it’s good to know the areas you need some work on.  

Conclusion  

Customer journeys have become more complex, so don’t forget to put yourself in your buyers’ shoes to give you ideas on building your customer journey map. And with more companies prioritizing customer experience, your business must use this framework so you don’t get left behind. Journey maps provide a deeper understanding of your customer and as a result, are one of the most important tools that help elevate customer experience.