Discovering More With the Customer Journey Map
Do you remember the last time you were buying a product you really wanted? A pair of running shoes, a cabinet for your dining room, a new laptop or anything else. Whether you made this purchase online or offline, there is a high probability that you compared numerous brands in that category, conversed with a sales executive, looked up reviews and only then decided to buy it.
You, as a customer, have your own journey with a brand when you buy their product or service. Some aspects act as a reinforcement to continue engagement with them while others become a deterrent. As a business owner, the roles are reversed. How do you deal with being on the other side of the spectrum?
Enter: Customer Journey Map
What is it all about?
Firstly, let’s define the customer journey. It is inclusive of all the experiences a customer goes through when he or she engages with a brand with a specific goal in mind. This goal can be influenced by the customer’s needs, wants, attitudes, lifestyle etc.
A customer journey map, on the other hand, visualises this very journey and tries to understand the customer’s thought process and pain points at every step to ensure that the customer experience is smooth and fruitful. A company very literally puts themselves in the shoes of a prospective client and figures out how the customer will move forward.
I know my customer well, why do I need to track their journey?
When you say you know your customer well, you’re probably implying that you have a fair idea of their pain points, needs, income levels etc. Yes, that will aid you in making a great product fit for the market, and yes, you can understand the right people to target. But will it guarantee that a potential customer will buy from you? Let’s explain this with an example.
Imagine a young lady looking to buy a new dress. She goes online, spots one that she likes and guess what? It’s from your brand! Great, first step done well. She visits your website to buy it and finds two options- to have it delivered at her house or collect it from the store, try it on and purchase it only if it fits well. She chooses the latter and drops by on the day communicated to her. But all she finds is chaos and long lines in front of the trial room.
You got it right until she had to make that purchase. Because her experience is spoiled, she refuses to buy the dress, and you lose a potential customer. Had you mapped her journey, you would have probably predicted the waiting time and trial room lines and addressed it beforehand.
How should I go about mapping the journey?
Of course, the easy way out is to imagine yourself as a customer and think of the journey you would undertake from the time you realise you have to buy a particular product or service to the time you complete the purchase and become a loyal customer.
The major drawback, in this case, is that your assumptions and biases may influence your perception of the customer journey. For you, your offerings are attractive enough and should sell themselves. In reality, that value is not always communicated to the customer. You are still competing with many others for the attention of your customers.
The best way to map the journey is to interact with customers and gather information about their experience from the beginning to the end. It can be a combination of feedback surveys after purchase and direct conversations with customers.
You will be able to divide the entire journey into 5-7 steps and understand how the customer interacts with you at each of them (the touchpoints). Further, jot down the thought process of the customer, including the simplest of questions they might have and how you plan on addressing each of them. Think of how they will progress to the next stage and whether that is intuitive or requires incentives. You will end up with a detailed plan with your customers’ actions and thoughts on one side and your actions on the other.
Never be overconfident that you know your customers’ behaviour and have all the right things in place to help them along their journey. Keep asking them and take plenty of feedback no matter what stage your startup is in. You may think that giving a new user discount is enough to push them to make that purchase when all they needed was a virtual product demo. See how you could complicate something so easy if you didn’t ask your customers what they needed?
What are the benefits of mapping the customer journey?
You must have realised some benefits of mapping the customer journey by now, but let’s state them more clearly:
Aligning expectations with resources: By having a journey map in place, you will be able to understand your customers’ expectations in greater depth and see if you have the resources in place to fulfil them. Your goal should be not only to meet these expectations but also exceed them where possible.
Making the customer a priority: Customers are at the very heart of any business, you simply cannot function without them. By mapping the customer journey, you are ensuring that your startup remains customer-focused and treats them well. It gives the customers assurance that you are making efforts for them and can become your biggest advocates.
Better return on marketing efforts: The customer journey map helps in giving a direction to your sales and marketing efforts. Such efforts are costly for any business because they require both money and time. If they do not produce the desired results, the company bears the burden. By understanding the stages that a customer goes through and their thought-process, marketing efforts can give much better returns.
Opportunities to upsell and cross-sell: While you are identifying the steps in the journey, you might be able to locate times when you may be able to sell a more valuable product (upsell) or a complementary product (cross-sell) which boosts your sales.
Refining the target market: Although you may have a great idea of your target audience, you can get more clarity on their behaviour, needs and wants as your chalk out their journey with your brand. This will help you refine your audience and target those that have a higher chance of buying your product. Don’t rule out the possibility of realising that you were targeting a different segment than you should have been all this while!
Bottomline
Customer journey maps are more effective than many entrepreneurs believe them to be. In fact, as a customer, you would have found post-purchase surveys asking about your buying experience rather than the journey from start to finish.
Gather data from your customers at each step of the journey, see how many move on to the next one and if there’s a particular stage that many of your customers drop out on. These insights will help you build a business that can scale and retain a majority of its customers. What’s better than that?
