Before we get into the tips for mapping the customer journey, I should clarify for those of you that aren’t familiar with Journey Maps what they are and how they can boost your revenue.
Increase Sales and Customer Loyalty by Mapping the Customer Journey!
A customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience your customers have with you. It helps to tell the story of their experience with your brand. From the original engagement through to a long-term relationship (fingers crossed!).
By following your customers journey, you can pinpoint any pain points, gaps or frustrations the customer may have. You can then create a plan to improve these.
If customers are diverting from the original goal or abandoning the journey altogether, you can make the necessary changes to steer them in the right direction. This is where the customer journey map becomes a tool you can use to increase revenue.
Here is my blog on how to create your own customer journey map if you’d like to explore mapping the customer journey in more detail.
5 Top Tips for Mapping the Customer Journey
Embrace that the journey is rational, emotional, and psychological.
Look for the hidden aspects of a customer journey.
Create a frictionless experience for your customers
Create wow customer moments
Nudge customer decision-making.
1. Embrace that the Journey is Rational, Emotional and Psychological
How is the customer feeling entering the experience? You need to understand how the customer is feeling so you can make it better.
Emotion plays an integral part in any customer journey with customers going through a range of positive and negative emotional reactions. To offer a good customer experience you need to ensure the positive emotions outweigh the negative.
While most people believe the choices they make result from rational analysis of available alternatives. In reality, emotions are the main drivers in the entire decision-making process.
2. Look for the Hidden Aspects of the Customer Journey
Here is where you begin to plot out what is happening in your Customer Experience. You should include where the experience starts, recognising it often happens way before the customer ever interacts with your business and often carries on after they’ve finished the experience.
Make sure you capture every aspect of the customer journey. What you may think is the end to end journey is often different to what the customer thinks the journey is.
For example, imagine going on holiday and staying in a lovely resort hotel. From the moment you arrive with your welcome cocktail to your last meal before you leave. What is your customer experience journey, how is the hotel making this a good customer experience?
Did the hotel think about the shuttle bus that picked you up from the airport as part of the experience? After all, first and last impressions matter!
Or was the experience measured from the moment you arrived and received a welcome drink?
3. Create a Frictionless Experience for Your Customers
Customers will abandon the buying process if they’re met with a complicated purchasing experience. You should minimise the number of clicks your customer has to perform to buy your product or find more information on your product.
A great example of a frictionless success story is Domino’s. The popular pizza company realised that people wanted to buy online, but they were turned off by a long checkout process. They decided to revamp their website to reduce the number of steps from over 25 to only a few steps, and their conversion rates skyrocketed.
4. Create Wow Customer Moments
There is a clear correlation between memorable moments and customer loyalty. Your customers don’t choose you based on the experience you provide, they choose you because of the experience they remember you provide.
Therefore, building a positive memory of your experience is essential to your customer loyalty growth.
There are two main points that drive lasting memories, the beginning and the end of the customer journey. So you need to maximise the experience at both of these points to leave positive lasting memories.
Here are a few examples of how you can wow the customer:
An unexpected welcome gift for new customers
A we missed you gift to welcome customers back
A personalised thank you note
5. Nudge Customer Decision-Making.
Help your customers to make a decision!
There will be moments in your experience that present an opportunity to encourage desired-behaviour by appealing to the psychology of the individual.
Understanding how people make decisions, and the psychological concepts that explain them will help you design your situations to make it easy for customers to make the decision that you want.
For example, some standard psychological principles that can apply to any product offering are:
Social Proof: Using messages like “bestseller” and “most popular”.
Scarcity: For products that are low in stock, exclusive offers, or limited editions.
Authority: Let your customer know these products are recommended by the designers, product managers.
Innovation: Products using new technology can be promoted with tags like “Innovative Tech” or “Cutting Edge Design.”
In Summary
Mapping the customer journey isn’t a perfect science that will solve all our problems but it is a great tool to help improve the customer experience and one I personally use a lot.
It helps you to focus the customer experience and moves you away from internal processes and tools.
After all, It’s the customer experience that really sets your company apart from your competitors. Customers are more likely to buy from you the first time if you turn up in their moment of need and give them a simple and pleasant buying experience and they’re also more likely to come back to you a second time.
Now is the time to act and take your customer experience to new levels, or you may see yourself left behind. If you’d like help improving your customer experience or need an outside perspective then get in touch today. I’d be happy to help.
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