Do you really know the pain points for your customers? Being a successful customer-led business means having a framework for understanding the customer journey i.e. how people experience your business end-to-end. Here's what you need to know.
A customer journey map is a framework that maps out the stages in your customer's life cycle, telling your customers' story from start to finish.
From the initial contact, it follows through the process of engagement into a long-term relationship. Primarily, it identifies the key interactions a customer has with your business.
It can touch upon the feelings, motivations and questions your customers have at each touch point, and give a sense of what your customers want and what they expect from your business.
Example: A lead may begin their relationship with your business by viewing a physical advertisement, which prompts them to visit the website.
They then download an ebook and enter a nurturing funnel, occasionally visiting and digesting regular blog articles.
Eventually, they convert to a customer following a sales call, completing their journey—or, rather, sending them back to the beginning of the map.
Many businesses operate solely on a touch-point basis, instead of delivering a holistic, end-to-end experience for their customers. Journey stages include onboarding, problem resolution and renewal through functions (or business units) such as product, marketing, retail and customer care.
Research from McKinsey shows that customer touch points do matter—however full journeys matter more. Companies that focus on delivering an end-to-end customer journey are 30 per cent more strongly correlated with positive business outcome.
In their research, businesses that focused on journeys had 36 per cent higher customer satisfaction levels, willingness to recommend was 28 per cent higher, the likelihood to cancel went down by 33 per cent and likelihood to renew grew by up by 19 per cent.
Basically, if your business focuses on delivering a full end-to-end experience, you have a higher chance of being successful.
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We’ve talked about how vital a customer journey map is to a business and why it is crucial that you have one. But where to start? A good starting point is to really immerse yourself in the customer experience. We’ve listed the five things we’ve found work the best in the thought process.
To answer these questions, do as much research as possible, both qualitative and quantitative.
Flesh out the key findings. Ask yourself these questions: What will make the biggest difference to how your business operates today, where can you make the most impactful changes? And what will be really useful for your senior leadership team?
Free resource: Map your customer journey with our downloadable template.
Want to learn more? Download our free guide Powerful Leadership Strategies to Drive Business Growth through Customer Experience.