A customer journey map is the multi-directional tool that helps you understand the individuals’ experience when visiting your pages and see what they’re trying to achieve.

In this post you’ll discover how online users (fictitious characters) will interact with your online business. Which will help you, and/or your team identify unseen opportunities to enhance their experience.

There’s several mapping examples – we will show you how well the user (UX) experience, customer service is working together within your content structure (sales funnel). This can emphasise and/or differentiate the overall business’s online experience.

Let’s get started…

Mapping your user’s journey correctly can help you

This is ultra important as you get to see where you stand. You can add the steps to you CRM and analytics to show you:

• when a user moves from one device to another (touch-points)
• show you where the user stopped or left and why
• show the channel’s interactivity/ usability

It will also support and encourage individuals across the organization to work their magic. Pushing them to see and walk in the user’s shoes.

Example: how they think and feel and what their questions and needs are.

A good customer mapping will depend on the following:

• The content creators, product designers, SEO, internal stakeholders and who ever is involved in creating content for end-users.
• Identifying and describing all relationships on the map by answering the questions: What’s the main goal/focus? What do we offer them? How do we present it? Who does what? This map must show you the nearest picture of what you are dealing with.
• Have a Persona ready – you’ll need a rich customer profile or persona. Describing his/her personal and business situation, likes and dislikes, needs in the present and the future (ambitions).
• Discussing and elaborating how these characters influence the quality of your content work and how a customer benefits (needs) from it.

Why do you need a customer journey mapping?

Drawing a customer journey is an ideal way to view and describe the path an individual takes before becoming a customer of the business. It all starts with a search, a channel and there is a user decision involved to purchase a product or service and become a loyal customer.

The customer mapping may take several forms and tends to focus on the experiential side of the user experience.

Which leads us to ask: What do they wish to achieve soon as they land on-page, what are they looking to solve and what are their expectations?

Why we need to create a customer journey?

One of the obvious reasons, is the more you find out about the individual’s experience the better. There is a decision path somewhere down the middle of each person’s journey.

So learning more about their positive and/or negative experiences will save time, money and will give you a better perspective to create epic content.

Workout the touchpoints: note down every action they take, why, when and (where), itemise channels along with the touchpoints they will face next. This will (literally) let you walk in the customer’s shoes (gives better perception).

Discover the moments of truth: you can or should be able to easily identify the moments the customer encounters blocks or barriers throughout the content you offer. This is super valuable, when you start by identifying those moments to write or present the obvious content.

How to map a customer journey?

We need to think it as a roadmap with trails and stops or touchpoints.
We may draft or list all the actions (as close as possible) the customer takes to achieve his or her goal.

The best way to go about it is to print one or two of your personas out, so you get a visual picture to help you start. To enhance a customer journey map even further you need to evaluate data from your analytics which is another good starting point. if you can collect data from surveys, emails these are beneficial too.

Helps you getting to know the users who already visited your pages.

This will also helps the discussion further on how to improve the quality of your work and how the customer benefits instead suffering from it.

The Personas

We need a rich customer profile or persona. Describe his/her personal and business situation now (present situation) and in the future (ambitions).

What outcomes to expect: A complete description of his/ her desired outcome – what is he/she trying to achieve or solve?

The more information you include the more you can use to design an ideal user/prospect journey. Doing so, will allow you to draw the best possible user profile – achieving a particular goal as quickly and easily as possible.

We need then to think how this translates into your customer experience roadmap phases to transform your business. I mean by this – “Which steps and touchpoints will they take first” as mentioned above. We may list all the actions (as close as possible) the customer takes to achieve his or her goal.

Build the customer journey

Many call it “Customer Service Design Thinking” (trendy name) – I’d rather call it “mapping customer presence“ which is, a step-by-step user path describing the way he or she interacts (to reach their goal) when browsing a website, app, etc.

To do so, you can either create a flow diagram or document it in a Excel, Word.

Hint: Visual information will help you and your team design/improve the ideal user journey much quicker.

Use A/B test pages to test and see reactions or what path decisions they make about their goal.

The overall experience should combine the users and business goals. As such you need to consider:

• The individuals who previously bought or use your services.

• Having your team to identify and trace what people will do online in a particular scenario. (This can be extracted/documented in personas).

• Map out the obvious steps the user/visitor could complete his intended task.

Example: discovering, reading reviews, deciding which to go for, buying the product, delivery time; cancelling it, etc.

• Highlight (use post-it) whether the visitor had or could be facing any problems completing a particular task.

• Anticipate the unknown: write down solutions to his/her problem (What & how to improve it?) in order to make the user/customer journey easier, simple, quicker and successful.

• Align it with your business goals: these need to be realistic and aligned with the user’s goals.

One realstic/possible scenario:
This millennium, normal individuals often start online research on a smartphone, we may or may not move on to desktop to print/download the map or scan a QR code to complete the purchase.

The next possible step is that they eventually share their own experience in Instagram after purchasing the item.

See the steps used. That is the right way to discover, formulate and visualise individual behavioural patterns.

Tip: Create or add your an extra layer by adding a empathy map. ( include: direct interests, feelings, needs…)

From experience you and your team mates should see the business from the customer’s lens – meaning, start well before the moment he/she decided to use your product or services.

We could also call this a “omnichannel experience”.

Read about Omnichannel steps on my Quora post.

Great answer by @Paul_CTH on @Quora https://t.co/yxF65COTGJ pic.twitter.com/CRWMORVajp

— Quora for Business (@QuoraBusiness) February 21, 2019

Customer journey mapping tools

Cxomni is a fantastic all-in-one SaaS customer journey cloud based mapping tool. It offers you a superb overview and perspective compared to many other out there.

Cxomni allows small-medium to big organizations to discover new data, manage buyer personas, customer journey maps, and above all connect and drive the customer experience touchpoints.

Best Features:

• Collect and prioritise pain points,
• Capture insights for innovation
• Customer voices across all departments
• CX management platform to analyse CX/UX insights
• Monitor sentiments, pain points, emotional journeys, performance gaps, and more
• Connect to real-time market and feedback data

Cost: Best part of all, its forever FREE as long you use up to 100 touchpoints and allows up to five users to login.

 

Canvanizer

Canvanizer is a very effective customer journey mapping tool that enables you and your team to quickly brainstorm many stages in one central place. This tool allows you to run all aspects of the customer journey stages, from early pre-design service to post-service.

Key Features

• Brainstorming product/service processes and better generate ideas
• Design design thinking or reajust them as you go along
• List early pre-services period including: social media, word-of-mouth, past experiences, and expectations
• Service journey stage and user experience
• Includes customer relationship management, social media, and satisfaction/dissatisfaction.

Try mapping your journey with their online demo free of charge

Conclusion

Remember that before setting up your sales page or publishing valuable content on your site, you’re better off drawing or checking out your client’s /customer mapping experience.

Before you start, try to be sensitive to, aware and/or experiencing the feelings and experiences of another individual. Start here, and you’ll see how to improve the three stages of your customer journey planning.

The user or client journey maps are essentially focused on each but unique stages that the visitor will experience on your site, app, etc.

Your customer’s journey must capture all the experiences, he or she has with your brand. It goes through his or her’s point-of-view, while connecting your services with the back stage or supporting customer experience processes.

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