Customer Journey Mapping And Its Importance

From the surface, the customer journey may appear to be very simple, you sell a product and they buy it, but when you look closely, it is increasingly complex. The fourth Industrial revolution is basically redefining customer expectations every day, with the average customer using 10 channels to communicate with businesses. These are creating increasingly complex customer journeys, making it very difficult to always provide a great customer experience.

According to a Salesforce research report, 80% of customers consider their experience with a company equally important as its products.69% of consumers wants to communicate with the company in real-time. Customer journeys are undergoing a major transformation nowadays, the most important question that arises in the minds of each business is how to create a customer journey map to provide a smooth customer experience every time. The visual representation of the customer journey is a customer journey map. It will tell you the story of your customer experiences with your brand through all touchpoints. It will let you know whether your customers interacted through social media or any other channels. Mapping the user journey will ensure that no customer passes through the cracks. Customer journey mapping is the best way to understand and optimize customer experience and gain insights into basic customer pain points.

First of all the possible customer touch points are mapped out, then user journeys are created through these various touchpoints for each buyer persona. The customer experience at each touch point must be included in a customer journey map. This will help the brand to respond in a proper manner.

Why is customer journey mapping so important?

Customer journey mapping is a very important strategic approach for better understanding customer expectations and optimizing customer experience.

It is important for small and medium businesses as well as for large companies. Customer expectations are nowadays changing for all businesses and they want an Omnichannel approach to sales, marketing, and customer service.

The most important aspect of customer experience is personalisation. Research states that 84% of consumers feel the fact that being treated like a human rather than a number is important to winning their business.

The journey mapping will allow SMEs to create personalized experiences with customers across all touch points.

Mapping the customer journey has many benefits such as:

• 1.) It will help to optimize the customer onboarding process.

• 2.) It will help to benchmark the customer experience desired by your customers against what they receive in real life.

• 3.) To understand the buyer persona as they are moving from prospect to conversion through the buying funnel.

• 4.) Creating a logical order in the buyer journey.

The biggest benefit is that you can understand your customers more. Better understanding will help you to deliver the customer experience to their needs.

How does this enable Omnichannel marketing and customer service?

Nowadays consumers want a highly personalized experience and this includes marketing and customer service efforts. This interconnected approach is Omnichannel customer service and Omnichannel marketing. For marketing, customer journey mapping plays a very important role. Through this marketers can target one prospect through multiple touchpoints. For example, a customer browsing a product on a website can be targeted with a social media ad afterward.

By backing up Omnichannel marketing with Omnichannel customer service you can deliver the best possible customer experience. It helps customers to receive customer support across all channels like Social media, messenger, live chat. Again mapping the customer journey will help the customer service team to better understand the customer experience.

How to create a customer journey map effectively?

A customer journey map is a diagram or various diagrams which depict the several stages customers go through when they interact with a company. From buying products online, accessing customer service on the phone to grievances on social media, they depict everything. You need to create effective visual maps which reflect customers’ journeys through all these channels. Maps should be rooted in data-driven research and should represent the various phases of customer experiences based on a variety of dimensions like customer sentiment, goals, and touchpoints. Companies need to create user journey maps based on a detailed view of how customers are engaging with the company. For example, a customer journey can begin with a customer commenting on Twitter about a company, then using his phone to reach the customer service, and finally, he uses the company website.