Customer Journey Mapping: Everything You Need to Know in 2024
Nishrath A.
Researcher
Blog Writer
Copy Strategist
Ahrefs
Google Docs
Grammarly
As a marketer, you naturally want to engage customers for a long time. But attempting to retain customers without a plan is like walking into the unknown without a destination in mind. Or, to put it simply, random acts of support result in random business success.
To ensure your support efforts are engaging customers in a meaningful way, you need a customer journey map.
In this blog, we'll explore what a customer journey map is, its benefits, and how to get started so that it can improve your customer experience.
Let's get started!
What is a Customer Journey Map?
Customer journey maps (CJMs) are graphical charts that help your business visualise all the experiences a customer will go through when they interact with your brand and reinforce an understanding of their actual needs.
These maps typically include five key phases: customers becoming aware of a product, comparing it with different products and offerings, deciding to acquire it, and then staying loyal and promoting the brand.
CJMs can be in various structures. However, the most common ones are in chronological order—the beginning of the journey on the left, the end on the right, with all the steps in between. This is because, since customer experiences happen in real time, they add a time dimension to the chart and reflect a natural sequence of human behaviour.
Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
1. Greater Empathy Towards Customer Needs
Seeing things from the customer's perspective during a sale is important for the success of your business. Customer journey maps can facilitate this process by outlining the feelings and emotions of your customers.
Every user story you create during the mapping process sheds light on a real-world human situation. You will get a closer look into their working processes, their likes and dislikes, and the underlying motivations that drive their behaviours.
In doing this, you not only leave customers satisfied but also drive brand loyalty, advocacy, and long-term sustainable growth.
2. Build Better Omni-Channel Experiences
Customers are in every channel these days. By building a customer journey map, you can align customers channel preferences with your business processes. For instance, you can visualise the channel your customer will use and when you should be present on that channel to provide the best value.
Plus, by mapping the whole story, you can develop a consistent customer experience that is relevant across all channels. You can design customer interactions that are the same across platforms, thus keeping the content flow and structure seamless as possible.
3. Boost Communication Among Team Members
Poor communication can be a big problem, especially when strategies are being implemented. A customer journey map can act as a communication tool during team meetings to develop a shared understanding of customer needs across the entire organisation.
It can provide your business with a high-quality, aggregated overview of the customer experience and explain the steps a customer will take over time. This can help your team see the global picture and collaborate on solving problematic areas to build a better experience.
How to Create a Customer Journey Map
There’s no “one size fits all” rule when it comes to creating a customer journey map. It depends on your product or service, the customer demographics, and what you discover during research. However, here a few steps that are usually part of the mapping process:
Step 1: Define Your Objectives
Generally, a good rule of thumb is to start any strategy by identifying the purpose of your project.This same principle applies to customer journey maps as well.
Start by explicitly defining the aim of creating your customer journey map. Determine its scope, context, and how you intend to use it so that everyone knows what the map will include.
Consider questions like:
What outcomes are we aiming for, both in this map and the overall project?
What is the budget available?
Who needs to be involved?
What tools and resources do we have?
What are the key milestones and deadlines?
Pro-tip: The bigger the scope, the more steps and phases it will take to create a journey map.
Step 2: Conduct Research and Build Customer Personas
Who are your customers? Often, we marketers assume that building personas is about setting up fictional characters with made-up names. However, personas go beyond creative writing.
It involves gathering customer data through surveys, interviews, and task reports, and then developing characters based on the documented information to make customer-centric products.
Your process may consist of the following steps:
Start by identifying five-six common attributes of your customer base. This can include basic demographic information, behaviours, interests, goals, and pain points.
Determine the number of personas you want for each of the attributes to make it a substantial group representation.
Collect customer data that supports and describes those attributes. Of course, your investigation may reveal new information along the way, so incorporate those if you might find it valuable.
With the data you gathered, segment and finalise the personas. Make sure to document each persona on a single page to keep the strategising process clean and comprehensive.
Make the personas accessible to the team. You can hang them up in brainstorming sessions and include them in project documents.
As your business grows, keep your personas updated.
Step 3: Outline the Stages and all the Touchpoints
Once you’ve established the personas and the scope of the journey, it's time to introduce your personas to the different stages of the map.
As mentioned in the beginning, a customer journey map typically has five stages. Alongside these stages, make sure to note down touchpoints that have the strongest opportunities to turn a one-time customer into a repeat customer.
Following are the five customer journey map stages :
Awareness Stage
Typically, during this stage, customers start to become aware of their problem and look for industry best practices to resolve their issue.
Given that the customer perspective at this stage is somewhat vague, potential touchpoints at this stage could be channels that drive brand awareness, such as:
TV commercials
Websites
Rating and reviews
Blogs
Social media channels
For instance, a customer sees a TV ad for the latest car model brand featuring advanced technologies. This has led them to become aware of their existing car, which frequently breaks down and requires extensive repair, thus causing them to learn more about the latest model. In this phase, you can jot down TV commercials as potential touchpoints.
Consideration Stage
In this stage, the customer has started evaluating different products or services to resolve their issue. They connect every product feature directly to their goal and look out for more information about your businesses through offline and online reputation.
This is a stage where you can heavily influence their decision-making process with straight and on-point marketing.
Areas where you can potentially engage customers in this phase include:
Product demos
Sales team
FAQs
Reviews
Catalogue
Webinars
Phone system
Drawing from the example in the awareness phase, the customer may look into car manufacturers' and dealerships' websites to find more detailed information, reviews, and comparisons. They may also ask in community forums for opinions.
Decision Stage
At this stage, feeling encouraged by your product reviews, the customer has made a decision and is ready to convert.
However, your customer may need some final information about the product before making the final call, such as the financing option, etc. Thus, make sure to address any lingering objections and make the purchase process seamless.
The touchpoints in this phase could be:
Physical checkout counters
Store or office
Billing, and payment systems
Home delivery tracking updates.
Retention Stage
In this stage, the customer has already purchased and used your service. And, depending on the satisfaction with your service, they decided whether they wanted to continue with your business or seek a different provider.
Potential touchpoints in this phase can include:
Phone calls
Website
Emails
Social media mentions
Follow-ups
Thank you cards
Online help centre
Advocacy Stage
Brand advocacy happens when your customers are satisfied with your services and will go out of their way to tell the world just how great you and your company are.
At this point in your sale, you can leverage social media channels and endorse your loyal customers as enthusiastic advocates of your brand. They can share unsolicited testimonials through video content, referrals to peers, and extensions of your marketing campaigns.
Remember, a positive word-of-mouth holds more authenticity and authority than any other marketing effort.
Following are the most common post-purchase touchpoints:
Testimonials
Word-of-mouth marketing
Case studies
Ratings and reviews
Community involvement
Step 4 : Try the Customer Journey Map yourself
Not only visualise the experience, live the experiences on the map yourself. Figure out what would you do, say and
remember after each phase and jot down the new information as they emerge.
By role playing yourself as a customer, you can get a first hand experience of customer pain points and develop maps that will specifically address their needs.
Step 5: Keep the Map Up-to-Date
A customer journey map is a kind of ongoing process. If you’ve improved your services and fixed some pain points based on the previous version of the map, you’ve essentially changed the customer experience, which causes new pain points to arise. Therefore, it's important to constantly update your maps.
A good rule of thumb is to update it every 6–12 months.You can start by making sure all the data sources on the maps are accurate, reliable, and up-to-date, and that they cover all the relevant attributes of your current customers' journey.
Also, if you have built new product features or there is a new communication channel on the market, make sure your touch points are updated on the map.
Final Thoughts
Customer journey maps are a powerful tool in your customer support toolbox. It’s a versatile technique that can effectively change your customer engagement.
However, be careful when building customer journey maps. Create them based on real customer data, business resources, and employee skills. Remember, an effective customer journey map is as much about workforce capability as it is about the whole experience a customer has with your product or service.
