What is customer journey mapping?
Customer journey mapping is now one of the most favorite tools for businesses to visualize their customer’s experience. Customer journey mapping helps companies view their business from a customer’s point of view. In other terms, customer journey mapping can be defined as an illustration that details all of the touchpoints at the organization that a customer comes into contact with as he/she attempts to achieve a goal and the emotions and experiences that they encounter during that journey. Customer journey mapping is a great way to identify the common customer pain points, ways to improve the customer experience and define what customers, and prospective customers, need in order to complete a purchase.
Tips for customer journey mapping
Identify the right customer touchpoints
One of the most fundamental steps in customer journey mapping is to identify the touchpoints through which the customers interact with the organization. It is vital to identify both the minor as well as the major touch points. Let’s take the example of a car showroom, the minor touchpoints here are the customer walking around the lot prior to being greeted by a salesperson or when the car is delivered to the customer after the sale is complete. Major touchpoints here include taking a test drive or sitting down at the salesperson’s desk to negotiate the final deal. An ideal customer journey map must include every touchpoint from the marketing phase to post-sale follow up surveys.
Distinguish onstage and offstage factors
Onstage refers to those factors that are visible to the customer, whereas offstage refers to the activities that go behind the scene. Customer interactions with the salesperson is an action that occurs onstage, however, the billing procedure can be considered as offstage. The offstage actions often have an impact on the onstage experience of the customers. It is vital to distinguish offstage actions from those that are onstage or customer-facing, this will help separate the customer’s actual experience from the operations that support it.