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What is Customer Journey and Customer Journey Map?

What is Customer Journey and Customer Journey Map?

Anton Nordström
Sep 2021
Anton Nordström
A compass that symbolises the customer journey


A customer journey is a model that aims to simplify the description of customer decision-making. To make the abstract clearer to understand. Customer journeys always consist of gross simplifications (not in itself a bad thing!) And differ between, for example, B2B and B2C, different industries or customer groups.

Why customer journey?

Consumer demands and expectations are growing rapidly as we become better at understanding, evaluating and consuming services and products. Interactions between consumers and suppliers are increasingly digital. On average, we use ten different channels every day to interact with different businesses. It is therefore increasingly important for suppliers to understand and develop the interaction with their customers. The customer's various interactions across all these touch points are commonly referred to as the customer journey. The sheer volume and increasing number of interaction channels makes it difficult to map the customer journey, which makes it difficult to ensure a good customer experience, even though it is something we absolutely must not miss. According to a recent study by Salesforce, a good customer experience is more important than ever.

80%

For 80% of all consumers, the interaction with the business is at least as important as the products themselves.

 

69%

For 69% of consumers, being able to communicate with the business, where and when they need it, is important.


 

60%

60% of UK consumers expect a consistent customer experience across channels.


It is clear to us that consumers have higher demands and expectations of companies now than in the past. How can companies meet these high expectations? Companies need to start working on customer journey mapping to meet their customers where they are in their customer journey, and then respond to their needs. 

 

What is a Customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of your customers' journey from first interaction to a completed purchase and beyond. Your customer journey map then helps you get to know your customers by seeing which channels they are in, how they interact with your brand, where in the customer journey there is most churn, etc. 

Knowing the current situation and understanding what is driving the customer's buying decision or decision not to buy from you will help you to improve your offer and ensure that you retain more existing customers and attract new ones.

customer journey steps in detail

With the help of a customer journey map, you can identify where in the customer journey you have the most churn. With this insight, you can then test, optimise and re-analyse the customer experience and aim to reduce your churn rate.

As all businesses benefit from getting to know their customers better, Customer Journey Mapping is for all types of businesses, regardless of size or industry. It gives you as a business a chance to sort out what issues arise where and what potential pain and gain points your customers encounter. As consumer behaviour and channel choices are constantly changing, it requires you as a provider to follow their behaviour and be present where and when they need you.

According to research from Salesforce, 84% of consumers are more willing to buy from companies where they have experienced a human and personal touch. This puts a demand on you as a business to make sure you personalise your customers' experiences as much as possible. By personalise we don't mean just adding the person's first name to an email, we mean that the content sent or displayed to your customers should be tailored to where they are in their buying journey. In this way, you stay relevant and personalised.

 

Benefits of Customer journey mapping:

  • Help you understand the customer and adapt communications to make them relevant and personalised
  • You can optimise the buying journey to reduce churn, for example
  • You are where your customers are and are more accessible
  • You get to know your target group
  • You can satisfy their needs, increase the number of gain points and reduce the number of pain points
Customer journey mapping

Implementation of a customer journey mapping

Breaking ground can sometimes be the most difficult part of a project. It is not always clear where to start "digging" and perhaps not even how to "dig". 

Here are 5 tips from custellence to get you started:

  • Start in an area where the customer experience has an impact on key KPIs
  • Start where results can be achieved that reach the customer and make an impact on internal KPIs
  • Start with an area you have a mandate to influence
  • Start small and limited rather than the most important, urgent or comprehensive
  • Start at some end and show results rather than argue for a long time before you even get started

Implementation:

  1. Map all your touchpoints. This includes, for example, social media, the website, email, phone calls and ads.
  2. Map your touchpoints along the customer journey based on your different personas. Different personas exist on different platforms. For example, the 16-25 age group is on Snapchat while the 26-35 age group is the most frequent Facebook user (source).
  3. Map your persona's behavioural patterns. How do your customers behave, what questions do they have, what pain and gain points do they encounter? 
  4. Develop a plan on how you will interact with your customers at each stage to respond to their needs at that particular stage.

Good luck creating your customer journey map. As always, if you have any questions, just get in touch.

Phases of the customer journey

There are many variants and names for the different phases of the customer journey, which are usually divided into the following stages.  

Awareness - Consideration - Decision - (Delivery) - Advocacy 

Phases of the customer journey

Awareness

This is where the potential customer comes to the realization that they have a need or a problem that needs to be solved (pain points). Consequently, they begin a process of clarifying this need or problem until it is perceived as clear. This is done through exploratory discussions within the company, among contacts and by searching for information online.

In B2B, it can be useful to document the needs in a needs analysis to ensure consensus and that all needs have been captured as related to the needs insight. 

Communication

To communicate with people at this stage, traditional sales pitches work poorly. Inspirational materials and simple introductions to solutions, sharing examples and problem insights can be more effective. 

Communication by telephone

Consideration

In the consideration phase, insights begin to emerge about the different options available to solve their needs or problems. Now they start to review and compare them according to their own criteria which can be functional, economic (price), environmental aspects, delivery times, availability, contractual conditions, guarantees, etc. In the consideration phase, they thus start to review and compare their options. 

Here too, internal discussions take place, but the use of contact networks and the search for information on the Internet take on a greater importance. The most important source of information is the network of contacts - even information first obtained from, for example, a supplier's website, is often validated by others.

In this phase, it plays a crucial role for the customer to get the right feeling and confidence for different solutions, products or suppliers. If the right feeling does not occur, the need may not be prioritised and the process may be completely stopped or slip in time. Project risks are set against the status quo. 

In B2B, this phase may involve someone, often a key stakeholder or the person who initially identified the need, selling the project and investment internally as roles and responsibilities need to be defined and, ideally, budgeted. 

In B2B, creating requirements and functional specifications can be beneficial in this phase. With this process, many customers start to create a mental list of potential solutions or suppliers taking shape. This list does not have to be explicit but is more often that a few companies are "top of mind" for the potential customer when thinking about their problem/need and its solutions. 

Communication

Here you will often find more detailed information about products, such as product sheets, product specifications, price comparisons, references or tests and comparisons. As a supplier, it is important that good information about the product or service is available and easy to access. Here the website and its structure and content play a major role, opportunities for interaction to ask specific questions, events and webinars can be effective.

Compare two different choices

Decision

The potential customer is approaching their decision and thinks they know what they want, now it's about being first with the right offer so they choose you. 

Here, the potential customer tends to focus on researching the suppliers' previous work, asking for customer references and asking questions such as:

  • Do these people have experience in solving similar needs/problems?
  • Do they have experience in the industry?
  • Does it match (or at least not drastically differ from) our values?

All to verify feelings of security and to support decisions that are often already emotionally made.

Here the client tries to assess the competence of the provider and asks around in his network, contacts previous clients and also asks about the most attractive options. 

Within B2B, proposed decisions will be strongly challenged, the entire need, rationale and preferred solution by those with control functions within the company. Finance, CEO, management, steering groups who will be responsible will all do risk analysis for the company as well as for how the decision may affect their own role. How insightful and informed these control functions are can determine the whole decision and is a strong contributing factor why well-established brands and companies are more often preferred as they are considered to have less risk as many others have made that choice (herd mentality).

Communication

This phase is very much about backing up the decision and confirming the feelings already established. A clear and good problem statement and proposed solution followed by a good offer is a good start. Quotations, contracts and sales material play a major role here. Material and communication in the form of successful customer examples, contacts with customer references, quotes can serve as positive reinforcement of the decision. 

gears with faces

Delivery

In this firm, the product or service is delivered (as a solution or part of a solution to the need or challenge) and often also with the help of the supplier, is further clarified. The customer's experience of the outcome, the treatment and the social chemistry with the supplier culminates in the customer feeling satisfied, dissatisfied or ambivalent.

A common psychological phenomenon is "buyer's remorse", which means that as soon as you have signed a contract, won a bidding war or paid for a product, you start to doubt whether it was the right decision to make. 

Communication

Here it is important to welcome the customer early and clearly and verify that it is a wise and good decision that has been made. Quickly provide information with answers to questions that usually arise early, preferably before the customer has had time to formulate them. This can include clarification on next steps, user manuals, login details, guides, etc. User groups and other ways of inviting people into a community can also be effective in building a solid relationship and trust early on. Personal contact can be crucial throughout the Delivery phase, so in B2B delivery or customer success roles are often used whose job is to "onboard" new customers and ensure that the customer experience is a good one.

Clarity and active, personalised communication is important throughout the delivery phase, whether it's frequent updates on expected delivery dates, next steps or delivered results.    

person receiving multiple messages

Advocacy

The goal is to create satisfied customers where the relationship lives on over time, leading to increased revenues and profits. Unfortunately, the trend is for customers to become less loyal and to switch suppliers and brands more frequently (source: forbes; verint systems). The less satisfied the customer, the more likely they are to go elsewhere.

  1. A customer is 4 times more likely to switch to a competitor if the problem is service-related than price or product-related - Bain & Company.
  2. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 - 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%-Marketing Metrics.
  3. For every customer complaint, there are 26 other dissatisfied customers who have been silent -Lee Resource.
  4. A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. About 13% of dissatisfied customers will tell more than 20 people - White House Office of Consumer Affairs.
  5. Happy customers who get their problem solved tell 4-6 people about their experience - White House Office of Consumer Affairs.

The satisfied client is not only open to doing more business but is more likely to side with the supplier when asked - even if they are not currently in or able to enter into a business relationship with the supplier. This could be sharing the collaboration for a case, or openly talking about their experiences if approached by prospective clients who are themselves researching the supplier's previous projects. Ideally, the relationship is good enough that the supplier is top of mind to the extent that the client themselves speak well of the company without being asked directly.

Communication

Continued personal relationship and communication even after the financial relationship has ended. 

picture of two guys standing at a phone with communications on it

Sources: 

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