Customer Journey Mapping at the Heart of Digital
Given the ease with which we access large amounts of data, we expect that, by now, companies have a good understanding of customers’ motivations and influences. Unfortunately, brands are still struggling to predict customer behavior and, therefore, fail to map the customer journey.
The customer journey map is an illustrated representation of the customer’s expectations and experiences as it unfolds over time across multiple stages and touchpoints. In fact, several institutions worldwide identified customer journey maps as the most important prerequisite for digital transformation, which is associated with providing a superior customer experience.
According to Adobe, companies with a focused customer-centric approach are 60% more likely to rise above competitors than their peers. This advantage increases when you consider how customer journey maps can guide the company’s digital transformation or the ways in which businesses can leverage technology to boost performance and profits.
How to Map a Customer Journey?
The first step is to define a product or service that the company wants to sell or improve. Afterward, identify the customer type to the product, so that the user experience team can create a “persona” based on their demographics, socioeconomic backgrounds, attitudes, lifestyles, and opinions, among others.
With all this data, you can now build a customer journey map that consists of the customers’ expectations, experiences, and feedback. It is crucial that these maps remain dynamic as customers may have very different journeys at different times or with different products.
Converting these journeys into actionable insights requires senior members across functions to brainstorm together as their commitment is essential. Successful customer journey mapping takes time and close collaboration. And, the more managers engage in map creation, the longer you can project it in the future.
Customize your Customer Journey
We already know that customer journey mapping is essential, but you can take it further with customization. The more data it has regarding your buyers’ personas, the more effective and straightforward it will be to implement your sales and customer experience strategy. The effectiveness of a customer journey map is directly related to the level of detail you have on your customers and will allow you to be more specific when offering products and services.
With the right data, you can fully understand your customers’ expectations and adjust your customer experience strategy accordingly. You can easily add value to your customer journey mapping analysis with three different types of deliverables:
1. AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
According to Capgemini, 75% of companies consider themselves to be customer-centric, but only 30% of customers agree. This gap exists as companies engage with customers on a superficial level and view them as replaceable.
Having reliable data regarding your audience can not only help you define your “persona” but also identify the first steps on your customer journey. Let’s suppose you are the marketing manager of a car company and you need to improve your customer experience. An in-depth analysis of your audience would look something like this:
Car Buyers: Audience Analysis
2. BUZZ MONITORING
In addition to analyzing your audience behavior, the Buzz Monitoring Report is another great source of data that can give you a clear picture of your brand’s health and clients’ satisfaction. This report is based on tracking online conversations about your brand, products, and competitors.
This digital analysis allows you to have clear insights on your brand reputation and where your consumers are in the customer journey. Additionally, you can have competitive insights, know your promoters and detractors, and foster innovation.
Following the previous example and bearing in mind car buyers as your audience, this report can also identify ROI throughout the customer journey process through purchase intent, which means having a report with all the brand’s mentions segmented by potential buyers and their customer journey stages.
For example, all mentions that include “I just discovered the new model of Brand X” belong to the AWARENESS phase.“I’m thinking of buying a Brand X car” belong to the CONSIDERATION phase, and all mentions “I’m buying a Brand X car” belong to the DECISION phase, and so on. These insights can represent your brand’s new prospects or new net sales.
3. APP STORE ANALYTICS
Finally, customize all this data with the importance of mobile in mind. App analytics enable you to gain insights into customer data to serve customers better across all lifecycle stages. These deep insights into customers can be easily converted into the upper stages in a customer’s lifecycle that has fallen out of the funnel.
You can also learn about customers who do not return to your app after a single use. The data you gain can help figure out how to win these customers back using priority targeting and focused strategies. With an in-app customer behavior and profile data analysis, offering a customer-centric approach will garner better results than all-for-one messaging.
Has the brand listened to app reviewers and engaged with them? What is the overall sentiment? App store analytics can answer all these questions.
All companies deeply care about customer experience, and the best customer journey map highlights the “who,” “what,” and “why” aspects. Furthermore, regularly updating the customer journey map will indicate where to go next and can guide the company to be more aligned with its customers. Undoubtedly, the customer journey map is invaluable in the era of digital transformation and disruption.
If you seek assistance regarding customer journey, see how we can help here.