Having an end-to-end view on the entire customer journey is becoming increasingly important in a world where interactions between customers and companies often span several channels. The demand for qualitative interactions sends the traditional solutions to the history books.
Organizations build and maintain relationships with prospects and customers and come up with solutions which seem to be tailor-made every single time. And this is where customer journey mapping comes in.
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Define what you want to achieve with the insights which will be generated by the customer journey exercise. Do you want to map reality or clarify your vision for the future? Do you want to look for improvements or do you want to inspire?
Collect customer data to help you shape your customer journey. Share these insights with your cross-functional experts so that they can enrich the research.
Gather people around the drawing table and start with the first steps of your customer journey. Map your steps based on the research and expertise and iterate to perfection.
The most solid customer journeys are based on solid research and data. Take the time to fully understand the customer’s reality and share these findings with your colleagues.
Decide which point of view you will take on the customer journey. Often people choose to stand in the shoes of a specific target group (or persona). Make your mind up about the time scale you’ll use (are you talking about a 1-hour journey or a 10 year journey?) and the level of detail (do you want to stay high-level or are you going for very specific details?).
Determine the steps your customer, target group or persona takes based on the available data. It often helps to start with a crucial step and then to see which steps come right before and right after it.
Refine your journey by going back and forth between your research and your customer journey. Apart from involving your colleagues and subject matter experts you can also consider involving customers in the process.
Add layers that visualize certain aspects of the customer experience and do that based on why you are mapping the journey. Define which layers make sense to you, like channels, touchpoints, data points, and so on. Keep in mind that a customer journey is not an end-state but a living document. Keep improving it.
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