Customer Journey Map: What it is and how to create one?

Have you ever thought that the process of your purchase or of any person implies a previous process until you make or carry out the transaction? 

This process can be as short as a few minutes or take months as is the case with business acquisitions such as new software for the company. 

The Customer Journey Map is a powerful tool, and if the most important thing for your business is the customers, it's time to implement it, let's see what it is and how it works. 

Index: 

• What is the Customer Journey Map? 
• Creation of a Customer Journey Map 

What is the Customer Journey Map? 

This Design Thinking tool allows you to visually capture a map of each of the stages, interactions, channels and elements that a customer goes through throughout the Buying Cycle. The Customer Journey Map uses narratives and visuals to illustrate the relationship a customer has with a business over a period. The story is told from the customer's perspective, providing insight into the total customer experience. This way you can better understand and address customer needs and pain points as they experience your product or service. Having built an understanding of the customer journey with your business, you will be able to improve the customer experience and will allow you, among other things: to get a panoramic view of the entire customer journey, create faster and higher conversion rates while minimizing the negative customer experiences, prioritize actions in the customer service strategy, retain more customers by understanding how they transit, among others. 
 

Create a Customer Journey Map 

Customer Journey Maps can take a wide variety of forms. However, the end goal is always the same: find and solve your clients' pain points. 

Step 1. Define your Persona: 

Knowing your customer is the basis of any strategy. If you want to know more about creating a Buyer Persona you can enter here.  

A deep understanding of who your customers are, what they need, and how they interact with your business will allow you to describe each person's experience at various points of contact during their life cycle with your business. 

Both the Customer Journey Map and the Buyer Persona construction can complement each other, for example, the definition of the Customer Journey can help us to better understand our Buyer Personas and get more out of them. How? One of the central elements of the Buyer Persona are the pain points, which can be: frustrations, inefficiencies, needs, problems, motivations, missed opportunities and excessive costs, all these elements will help to update and improve your Buyer Persona. 

Step 2. Define the phases of your client: 

Customer Stages are a way to organize Customer Journey Maps. Each stage shows an important goal that your Buyer Persona is trying to achieve. So, once you've defined your persona, you need to identify the stages of the customer journey. What is the process that is needed to start from the consideration to the purchase of your product or service? According to your Buyer Persona built, define the stages you experience with your company and your team over time. Define how, when and where: they discover your company, research your products or services, choose you over their competitors, buy from you and maintain a relationship with you. 

Step 3. Describe the contact points your customer uses to interact with your company: 

Customer touch points are all those moments in which the customer gets in touch with your brand, for example, where did they find your business? Online or in an ad, did they see ratings and reviews? Did they visit your website? Did they shop at your retail store or contact customer service? Properly building this interaction is an important step in creating an effective Customer Journey Map and making sure your customers are satisfied every step of the way. 

Step 4. Investigation Process: 

Gather people who have characteristics of your Buyer Persona and carry out an investigation. You may need to offer some incentives for participation; however, most people will be happy to help if they are genuinely interested in the experience and will use your feedback to make things better for others. Conduct your study by asking the following questions for each stage of the identified journey: 

• What were their goals, what did they want to achieve? 

• How did you expect the process to be? 
• The steps and contact points they used to complete the scenario. 
• How did you feel emotionally during each point of contact experience and why? 
• Other thoughts they had during the stage. 
• How long did it take to complete? 

Step 5. Determine the friction points: 

Once you have identified the touch points, it is time to study the big picture. Take a general look at your map and try to identify any sticking points within the customer experience. It is important to note that each business is different, and this is where you and your team will show how much you know about customers to determine where they could show discontent or friction in the process. There are some sample questions below to get you started: 

• Where might the friction appear at this point of contact? 
• Are people abandoning shopping for this? 
• Clients are not aware of this solution you have already provided. If so, why not? 

Step 6. Solve: 

Don't build your map just to have it for decoration. The Customer Journey Map should allow you to identify some quick fixes, including opportunities to increase enjoyment and enhance the journey. In this process, many companies find that the process helps them drive broader improvements in the customer experience as their needs are better understood and met. Therefore, treat your Customer Journey Map as a living document and review it periodically with your team, update it as needed, and remember to share it with all stakeholders within your organization. 

The Customer Journey Map as a tool within the business process must have comprehensive solutions that structure, plan and improve the experience of service, attention and communication with the customer. Something that the organization itself also benefits from having more information about user behavior, and thanks to this make better decisions and deepen in a better adaptation of the service with respect to customer needs. 

Each organization seeks to offer the best relational experience to customers and citizens thanks to technology. Build your own Customer Journey Map and attract more customers by adding value to their shopping experience. Here is a template for you to develop.