What is a Customer Journey?
A customer journey is a quick path for a sequence of all the possible events that your customer goes through. The best practices for customer journey mapping are ones that take an individual from their first interaction with your company. This journey lasts until the completion of the transaction.
What is Customer Journey Mapping?
The goal of the customer journey map is really to get a holistic view of what the customer is going through, and really what it’s like on a personal level. You don’t know much until you can write it down, and the map is where that happens. This map gives anyone who reads it instant access into what’s going on with a specific type of customer. Moreover, by mapping out this journey, your company is able to identify strengths and weaknesses along the way.
Set clear objectives for your map
Creating the best practices for customer journey mapping starts with knowing why you’re making a customer journey map. Creating and understanding your goals will also help you use this map to generate all sorts of customer journey insights. Your objectives should be clear, and should define what is it that you want the map to accomplish.
- Weak points: Can the map identify weak points, and can you use insights from this customer journey map to identify what’s going wrong?
- Insights: What do you want to learn from this, and where you have guessed wrong about your customers?
- Challenges: Where does your customer most meet resistance, and what are their hang-ups.
How much do you know about your customers?
There is only about 50% of companies that report having a strategy for penetrating their key relationships. So, if you want a competitive advantage, sit down and list all the touch points on your customer journey map. Moreover, you will want to create a thorough customer persona, listed as a “buyer persona”.
There are a few ways for creating the practices in Customer Journey Mapping:
- Read through your analytics and get to know who’s interacting with you.
- Watch what sorts of personas are they appealing to, and do they make it obvious who they are targeting?
Once you have a list of the demographics, needs, income, etc. you’ll be able to construct a much more accurate customer journey map. List out all the touch points.
A customer journey map lays out the various stages for best practices in customer journey mapping, including:
- Awareness and acquisition: How is the customer finding you with your brand?
- Consideration: This is where the customer considers whether to proceed with a purchase.
- Purchase and Service: Does the customer first investigate by engaging your customer service?
- Post-purchase: The best practices for customer journey mapping is feedback to convert the customer into a long-term follower.
You can split these sales touchpoints such as AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) to construct a basic customer journey map.
You should also get detailed about your specific touch points:
- Landing pages
- Social media platforms
- Product pages
- Calls to Action
Take the Customer Journey yourself
Once you have the basic touch points mapped out, it’s time to approach your company with fresh eyes. To create the best practices for customer journey mapping, take the customer journey yourself. Moreover, the best way to measure your customers’ real feedback is by tracking the paths they choose along your path. You will have also answers to questions like your map’s unique customer challenges.
Continually implement necessary changes
You have to make the changes to your customer journey with best practices for journey mapping that will have an impact on future customers. So, remove the unnecessary steps, and add engagement points that they are looking for. The more you use data-driven insights to map your customer’s journey, the more it will also help you become a better business.
