Customer journey mapping: a route to success

In a world of exponential data growth, business is increasingly driven by science. From artificial intelligence to data analytics, our ability to profile our clients is expanding rapidly.

When combined with a creative approach to problems, such insights can be a valuable means of creating a personalised service. The danger, however, is that customers become a set of statistics and their unique emotional state disregarded.

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to bridge this gap between theory and practice. The process integrates the company vision with a consumer viewpoint to humanise the relationship between business and customer and ensure that the product really does meet the need.

Journey mapping also allows companies to identify moments of truth; pivotal points of interaction which can make or break a customer’s experience. Pinpointing these crucial moments can ultimately lead to better service delivery for customers, streamlined processes and financial savings.

An effective customer journey map can deliver significant improvements to customer experience. Yet according to a recent study, only half of all journey maps drive successful change.

Take the following steps to create a customer journey map with practical value:

1. Get your bearings

Trying to map every unique customer journey is an impossible and essentially futile exercise. Approach the task with clear goals in mind and a good understanding of what you want the project to achieve. While an overview can be helpful, mapping specific journeys will yield much more useful results.

2. Ask for directions

Customer journey mapping isn’t solely the responsibility of the customer experience team. The process must involve contributions from across all functions of your business in order to create an accurate assessment of the journey. The people on the front line are the ones who can capture friction points and identify opportunities to create memorable moments.

But even then the picture is incomplete. Businesses can spend hours creating a beautifully designed visual representation of their findings without having listened to the voice that matters most. The voice of the customer.

A journey created internally will communicate a blinkered view and undoubtedly fail to create the necessary change. Your customers have the clearest view of key moments in your service delivery. The purpose of journey mapping is to establish how successfully their needs are met.

3. Walk the walk… and keep walking

Customer journey mapping will pinpoint areas for improvement but won’t automatically accomplish change. Findings should be translated into actions. The process may identify the need to remodel an element of service delivery or implement a new training programme around a particular touchpoint. Whatever the verdict, ensure that you take practical steps to shift the business focus to the needs of the customer.

A customer journey map is exactly that; a map. It’s not a destination. Treat it as a work in progress to be continually reassessed alongside the changing needs of your customers.

Do you have customer journey maps for your main interactions? Do they capture opportunities to improve both physical and emotional experience at moments of truth? Have you involved the right stakeholders, including customers, in the mapping process?

If you would like to know how customer journey mapping can benefit your business, get in touch on 01332 840 422 or email us at [email protected]