One of the concepts that was recently used the most within the world of business and the sales of products or services to customers is the Customer Journey Map. And not because it is fashionable, but because it is a very helpful tool for any business. If you are still not sure what it is and how it can help you and your company, keep reading and you will find out. We also recommend you download our free eBook on this subject, which will be absolutely helpful for your business.
What is the Customer Journey Map and what is it for?
Customer Journey Map is a Design Thinking tool that makes it possible to map the customer’s experience during the personal decision-making process of acquiring a product or service. That is, it is a tool that helps to see, check and capture on a visual map, each of the stages, interactions, channels and elements that the customer goes through until the purchase or contracting of a specific product or service is completed.
This tool allows you to get to know better the ideal potential customer for each business. And also to know the different types of regular customers you have. Being able to have a tool that visualizes the usual purchase process of each one of them is of great help for any business for many and different reasons. Here are some of them:
Helps identify critical decision-making moments and customer churn points
This allows us to intervene to show the client the path we want them to travel, creating a strategy focused on not abandoning the purchase process, either by facilitating the process or by knowing their objections and refuting them effectively.
Helps identify the right strategies
Doing this, the effort can be pointed to reinforce them and to apply the same or similar strategies adapted to other products or services in which the purchasing or contracting process is not so easy.
Get to know customers better
Identify valuable information to use today to improve your shopping experience and your satisfaction with the brand and to build loyalty. Or, in the future, to offer you new products and services. Also to know what type of real clients the company has and to be able to create adequate marketing strategies to attract new clients with similar characteristics.
Help to know how to retain customers
Knowing what they like, improving their shopping experience, avoiding negative points, offering solutions to their objections or problems, offering them new products or services of their liking or interest, enhancing their positive emotions and working to cancel out negative ones, helps satisfaction and loyalty of each client.
Information is power and information related to customers for a business is also money earned twice:
– The money that the company saves by avoiding wasteful marketing strategies that also lose hours of work, enthusiasm and time along the way.
– The money that is used in a highly profitable way in totally successful marketing strategies to obtain the highest possible return on the investment made.
How to apply the Customer Journey Map to a business?
The Customer Journey Map is a very easy-to-use tool, which greatly facilitates the process of creating a Journey Map and makes its use much more visual and useful. To begin with, you will have to have the basic elements of a Journey Map or Customer Experience Map:
People
Each customer archetype to be analyzed must be defined. Not all customers are the same, nor do their decision-making follow the same paths. Correctly defining the different types of customers is vital to obtain the data that is of interest for the business. To help define it, you can use data from customer surveys or from the digital consumer registry on the company’s website if you work with it, for example.
Timeline
The time frame with the phases and with the customer’s interactions with our brand before and during the purchase or contracting process of the product or service. But also in the time after it. It is important to define the different stages well.
Experiences and emotions
The emotions that the customer feels with each interaction of the brand, be they positive, negative or even those that can be called “neutral”.
Contact points or touchpoints
The channels through which the customer interacts with the brand, with the product or with the service. They can be visiting the website, making use of the customer service, by App or email, etc …
You can define more phases in Customer Journey Map to obtain more information and of higher quality. These are some of them:
– Objectives
Mainly, to know the paths and actions that the customer takes until closing his purchase or contracting of product or services.
– Stages of the journey
· Stage 1.- First contact. How the customer has found the brand, from where or why has come to it.
· Stage 2.- Orientation. Your evaluation of the product or service.
· Stage 3.- Interaction. Which is your objective, what do you want, what do you expect from the brand.
· Stage 4.- Retention. What can the brand do so that the customer does not abandon the process of buying or contracting the product or service, what to do to make them stay.
· Stage 5.- Expansion. What to do so that the customer speaks positively of the brand with other users and potential future clients.
– Needs and activities
By determining and naming the actions carried out by the customer in each stage of the map, valuable information is obtained about the needs and motivations in each one of them. In this way, customers can be known better in order to improve their shopping experience at each point and pave their way to closing the desired sale or contract.
– Key moments and sensations
It is vital to identify and determine the key and / or critical moments in the purchasing process. And so is knowing the emotional state of the customer at the touch points with the brand. Have they been positive, was he/she excited, happy, anxious? Has he/she shown joy at having found what he/she was looking for, for the price or for the attention paid? Was he/she angry, disappointed, frustrated, impatient because he/she did not find what he/she was looking for, was not satisfied with the product, failed a step to close the purchase process, etc …? Was he/she doubtful, lost, not knowing which way to go? It is very important to know these data because they allow us to make decisions that enhance positive emotions, intervene to avoid negative ones and redirect neutral ones until they become positive.
Many of the interventions that we can do to improve the experience of our customers, to not to lose them in the purchase process and retain them, come from analyzing this data.
Now you know what Customer Journey Map is, how can help your business and how to apply it to achieve your goals. Keep going, don’t waste your valuable time and start working with this powerful tool that will allow you to better understand your customers and the purchasing processes of your products or services to be able to make the decisions that skyrocket your sales and hiring.
Do you have questions about how our software EVOLUTION can help you optimize your Customer Journey? Get in touch with us.
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