How well do you know your customer? What emotions do they experience when interacting with your product/service, and why do they choose or not choose you among your competitors?
In this article, we will tell you about one of the marketing tools that will help you get to know your customer better and understand how to improve your service so that every interaction with your company brings them only positive emotions, and you — increased profits and business growth.
Customer Journey Map (CJM) — an approach to describing the customer’s journey from the moment they are unaware of you to the point where they are regularly using your product.
CJM literally translates as “Customer Journey Map”. It can be created in the form of a table, diagram, or infographic.
This tool helps to describe in detail the user’s path to your product and their history of communication with the company as a whole: expectations, emotions, pros and cons of interaction.
In other words, it is a chain of conversions, a customer’s journey through a funnel with multiple touches with the product through various sales channels (website, mobile app, offline store) until they perform the target action.
This journey can take anywhere from a few hours to several months.
How does a Customer Journey Map help businesses?
CJM plays an important role in increasing sales and reducing customer churn. Visualising the customer journey allows you to create a shared vision of this process within your team.
With the customer journey map in front of you, you will be able to:
- see the advantages and disadvantages of your products and service quality;
- find weaknesses in the marketing strategy and develop a plan for its improvement;
- improve your understanding of your target audience;
- identify the channels that deliver the best conversion rates and improve those that perform less well;
- shorten the sales cycle in the funnel;
- eliminate unnecessary points of contact with the customer and optimise the advertising budget.
A Customer Journey Map helps attract investors because it shows who will use your project, how, and why. This is important for start-ups and companies that are just beginning their development.
A Customer Journey Map is also necessary for stable businesses that need to grow. It will help improve service and increase revenue, as customer focus at every stage improves all key performance indicators (KPIs).
What are the pros and cons of creating a CJM?
Like any tool, CJM has its advantages and disadvantages.
The following features can be considered advantages:
+ Focus on the customer — their emotions, needs, and problems when using the product.
+ Source of hypotheses for increasing conversion to the target action.
+ Ability to track product metrics, such as step completion time, which will improve the overall customer journey.
Cons of CJM:
− Not much detail;
− Only one successful scenario, even though there could be a lot more scenarios in the product.
What does CJM contain?
A typical customer journey map usually includes the following points:
- Client / client segment.
- Product usage scenario.
- Steps to achieve the goal (target action).
- Interaction with the product or beyond it.
- Customer needs and concerns.
- The emotions experienced by the customer at each stage of the journey.
- Opportunities for improvement at a specific stage (optional item).
- Responsible for the customer journey step in the team (optional).
Points 7 and 8 can be replaced with metrics for tracking.
Where to find information?
To build a CJM, you will need to collect a sufficient amount of data. We can recommend sources you can use to find the information you need:
Quantitative
- Analytics systems (Google Analytics, My Tracker, etc.).
- User survey.
- CRM.
High quality
- In-depth interviews.
- Reviews in stores (App Store, Google Play, HUAWEI AppGallery).
- Reviews on specialised websites (e.g., iRecommend).
- Contacting technical support.
In extreme cases, when there is no data available, simulate the situation and put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
Are there specific services for building CJM?
Yes, of course) There are many. Here are some of the most popular ones:
- Google Sheets — for the simplest customer map, you can use a regular spreadsheet.
- Figma or Sketch — if you need to depict all the details and visualise the customer journey in detail, then these tools are for you.
- Canvanizer is a free tool for creating CJM templates.
- Miro — here you will find ready-made templates for customer journey maps.
- Canva, Touchpoint Dashboard, UXPressia, and other services.
How to use CJM?
Let’s say you’ve already gathered all the information about the user, built and visualised the map on the service. What to do with it next?
Now you need to analyse the map and draw conclusions that will be aimed at improving interaction with your customer.
1. Identify new ways to convey the value of your product to users.
2. Formulate hypotheses for improving the customer experience.
3. Optimise processes for supporting current customers.
This way, the Customer Journey Map will become a reliable and effective tool for improving your business.
