A Customer Journey Map Touchpoints
A touchpoint is any place where a customer or potential customer comes in contact with your company. These are places like the website, an app store page for your product, social media accounts and more. A journey map gently sketches the journey of each individual user through these touchpoints to show you what they experience at every step along their way.
Through BTNG's partnership with TheyDo.io, we are able to deliver powerful dynamic Journey Map Management. An excellent way of managing any customer journey and customer experience.
Our customer journey map templates include all our findings from our user research such as Touchpoints, Quotes, Observations and emotions during the customer experience. An entire customer journey is filled with rich insights into customer needs and the customer's experience.
The stages of Customer Journey Maps
Depending on the type of Customer Journey Map you're designing, the stages or phases can vary. If your customer journey is about onboarding, you might consider something like:
- Awareness (pre-sale)
- Consideration (pre-sale)
- Purchase (post-sale)
- Retention
- Advocacy
Before landing on a final customer journey map (if there even is such a thing), make sure to include the user research you've applied into every touchpoint. Over the course of time, be sure to revisit and update the customer journey map if needed.
Need help researching and designing your Customer Journeys?
In order to have a better overview of the experience of your stakeholders, customer journey mapping is an essential tool. With it, you can identify and prioritize pain points for targeted improvements in the future. We specialize in Design Thinking and Digital Innovation and we use customer journey maps as part of our process because they are so vital to understanding how people interact with products or services.
To learn more about this technique contact us today for a free phone consultation where one of our experts will walk you through what these maps look like and how they work best at each stage of the product development cycle!
Did you know that a Customer journey and customer experience are two entirely different concepts?
A customer journey relates to information about what customers do during all the stages of a customer lifecycle, while customer experience relates to their feelings during the customer lifecycle. Almost 86% of customers are eager to purchase more stuff for excellent customer experience, and 69% of consumers wish to speak with organizations in real-time.
It is essential to map the customer journey to ensure that your customers get a good experience. This can be done by categorizing it in 3 stages:
- Depicting the customer journey lifespan.
- Finding customer and company touchpoints.
- Examining the spaces between current strategies and expectations.
A business owner should understand that the customer's journey should be from the customer's point of view. For this, it is incredibly necessary for a company to think like their customers. This is only possible if you engage in customer feedback, which requires interacting with the customers.
Asking them a set of questions and knowing their intentions behind the purchases they make is a valuable source of information. Quite surprisingly, just one out of five businesses gather feedback to enhance the customer journey.
The business benefits of the customer journey
The customer journey creates several benefits for the organization. Companies that can anticipate what the customer's next move will be are better off. In fact, the customer journey continues to be the top investment priority for almost 69% of companies this year. For some, it stands as a top priority for the next 2 years.
An Aberdeen Group study reported that businesses with a comprehensive customer journey plan can experience significant growth over the years, such as:
- 56 percent higher up-sell and cross-sell revenues.
- 54 percent increase in return of marketing investment (ROMI).
- 10 times more development in customer service expenses.
- 18 times quicker sales cycle on average.
- 5 times higher revenue from customer recommendations.
Another good news is that Aberdeen Group founded only 36% of businesses with a program for mapping the customer journey, which can be a tremendous competitive advantage for companies.
The six must-have parts of a customer journey map
- Find, categorize, and prepare an outline of all the current touchpoints.
Identify the various options that a customer has for interacting with your brand. A comprehensive list of options such as social media, applications, websites, phone numbers, etc., will result in a complete customer journey map.
- Select a persona for your target market.
Narrow down the characteristics in determining who your brand is for. Classify traits such as demographics, buyer behavior, etc. to serve as a framework for your target market. This also acts as a point of reference during the entire customer journey mapping procedure.
- Understand the customer's objectives.
Understanding your customers' goals and objectives is an integral part of making your customers proceed to the purchase process. Companies should understand what their customers hope to achieve every time they interact with a brand. Recheck all the available touchpoint options and analyze the probable reasons why customers would like to form networks with your brand.
- Envision and work out the customer's course of communication.
Even though the ultimate objective is to buy, a customer's journey can exceed the simple purchase process and move towards forming a long-term relationship based on brand loyalty. This step is the building process of something far more important; hence this is the point where adjustments can be made, and all the pieces start to accumulate.
- Give priority to the brand touchpoints.
Assess critical points such as: where customers prefer spending most of their time, their significant contact points during the purchase process, and where business teams can make a substantial impact in areas of content development and strategy.
A customer journey map's chief purpose is to enhance the flow amongst brand touchpoints. Do a thorough analysis of the journey map and investigate customer interactions individually for continuous improvement.
- Go back, proofread, and revise the customer journey map as required.
Making alterations and enhancements to the brand touchpoints results in variations in customer communication. Do a regular assessment of your journey map to ensure that your brand will outperform others. In this changing competitive market, try to be market competitive and stay at the top of the game. Hence, it is vital to know how your customers interact with your brand.
The 7 phases of the customer journey
1. Out-of-market phase
In the out-of-market phase, the customer is looking to improve their business. They want their company, department or team to be more productive and more efficient. At this phase, they may not know how to achieve these goals, but they are open to inspiration.
2. Trigger phase
The trigger phase begins once the customer uncovers the opportunity to grow their business. It could be that sales are going down or that customer complaints are growing, but these indicators act as a trigger to changing the way they work.
3. Initial brand consideration phase
Once the customer identifies a solution to their problem, they will begin their initial search. A project group, involving all stakeholders will be formed to identify the top brands in their market, to scope the project and to review key functionality and technical requirements – leading to a “long list” of potential solutions.
4. Active evaluation
The long list becomes a short list once the initial brand review is complete. The customer will then contact each vendor and invites them to a meeting or demo. After the demo, the customer will review solutions based on trust, expertise and scalability.
5. Purchase decision phase
The customer chooses a vendor, agrees on a solution and signs the contract. The implementation process begins and an internal “roll out” team is formed. With support from the solution provider, the customer outlines success criteria, KPIs and launch timeline.
6. Experience phase
The customer wants to get the solution up and running quickly and for the launch to be as smooth as possible. This involves making sure all users are fully trained and have access to a consultant or account manager for support (when they need it).
7. Loyalty phase
After the initial roll out, the customer is happy to see fast results. The provider continues to follow up, implements the solution company-wide and and continues to help the customer reach their goals.
Aligning your strategy with the customer journey
Once the touchpoints and customer journey have been understood from a customer's point of view, it is time to outline the touchpoints to reach out to customers based on current business strategies. This enables the firm to understand the gaps it needs to cover.
After the current touchpoints have been outlined, they can be layered atop customer touchpoints. This summarizes how a business operates in the present compared to what it should do to reach customers.
This short exercise will land a firm on two key indicators:
- Either the company is spending excessive time on activities that have no direct impact on the customer journey.
- Or the company is not spending enough time on activities that actually have an impact on the customer journey.
Whichever is the case, companies should set their priorities straight based on what is essential – pursue activities that side with the customer journey against pursuing activities that do not side with the customer journey.
The easiest way is to halt all the current activities that have zero impact on the customer journey and prioritize the ones that impact. Of course, there is a higher possibility of a customer doing business if companies are involved during all the different customer journey life stages.
Conclusion
The power is not in the hands of the brand and the company. It now belongs to the consumers. In this fast-paced world, the customer journey, a relatively novel term, will soon become the most critical factor for business strategies. Prioritizing your customers around your organization's center is presently the most basic requirement to succeed in 2020.
2/3 firms do not have a strategy for mapping the customer journey, which gives your firm a splendid chance to gain a competitive advantage over others. Organizations with a proper system planned out for the customer journey have successfully reduced costs, improved sales performance, and generated more profits.
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