Edit Introduction: The customer journey map is an important part of the strategic framework of customer experience, and companies need it to provide and prioritize effective and innovative customer experiences. This article can be used as a guide to preparing, creating and leveraging customer journey maps, let’s take a look together.
1. Analyze
Customer journey map is an important part of the customer experience strategic framework, and enterprises need it to provide and prioritize effective and innovative customer experiences. Customer experience leaders have long understood its value, and Gartner's research has found that businesses that use journey maps effectively in experience programs can meet or exceed their customers' expectations.
However, our survey also found that nearly one-third of businesses still face difficulties in integrating them into customer experience efforts.
Why is this? There are many reasons, from the fact that stakeholders don’t understand their roles, to using incomplete or incorrect data sources, or not solving the entire customer journey. A lack of a management and supervision journey map can even undermine the ability to improve actions.
The research in this article serves as a guide to preparing, creating and leveraging customer journey maps that will build the foundation for your customer experience success.
2. Research focus
journey map has two goals:
identify specific customer experience problems and opportunities, and formulate corresponding solutions. Achieve consensus and consensus. Journey planning can help people across the organization understand the needs of customers, the journey customers want, and agree on the next steps the brand must take at this point.
1. Putting basic customer experience elements first
lays the foundation for journey planning helps the project go smoothly. The production of the journey map is no exception. Leaders responsible for creating and managing journey maps should obtain the necessary support from colleagues, determine the availability and needs of data, and fully understand who they build the journey for. Before you begin your journey drawing, complete the following necessary steps:
determines leadership and key stakeholder support. customer journey maps require data and support from other departments in the organization, and they are not necessarily within your influence or control. Determining responsibilities will make it easier for you to get data, resources, and other help you need from colleagues who are not directly responsible for the journey map project.
creates a cross-functional team consisting of representatives from various departments that support the customer experience. A cross-departmental team can build a wide range of assistance, breaking silos and helping you acquire different perspectives and data. This support is also necessary when action is needed, as the journey map will contain touch points managed by other departments.
evaluates data sources and requirements. viable journey map is based on insight and knowledge of the customer, not opinions or guesswork. Evaluate the data your company already has before seeking customer insights from third-party sources (which may not reflect your actual customer base). Consider resources such as CRM systems, contact call centers, and VoC platforms, as well as existing customer/user research. Analyze the results and findings of marketing projects such as search, email, and social media. Identify where there may be gaps in your data and create plans to get the missing data.
knows who you are drawing a journey for. 's most effective journey map is created for specific, unique characters and is a typical representative of your most important clients. A journey map that attempts to reflect all customer needs will result in a dilution of the customer experience and fail to provide the expected value or results. Create a role-oriented journey that captures the most important touch points for customers who are most valuable to you. This also ensures that you accurately allocate resources and energy to provide the experience they need or expect at these moments.
2. Creating a viable and accurate customer journey map
Identify and build a successful customer journey requires clear communication between teams and an understanding of the entire journey they want from the customer’s perspective.
Adjust team goals and expectations.'s top priority is to make sure every team member understands the role they play, how they fit into the entire project, and what the expected outcomes of the journey map are. You also need to understand what they expect from you so you know how to make team members feel listened and valued and stay engaged in the process.
creates a journey from the perspective of a customer. uses your own customer research and data to be the basis for creating a viable and accurate journey map. If organizations rely solely on an inside-out perspective to portray the customer journey they think or want, they will eventually get flawed, invalid and inoperable data.
This will only strengthen internal behavior, procedures and opinions, and strengthen the status quo. Journey maps need to start from the customer’s perspective and reflect their views, thoughts, feelings and actions. By understanding and building the “raw” journey that customers and their data show, you will be able to deliver, restructure and create the experiences that customers need to deepen their relationships.
first draws the entire customer journey. transforms potential customers into loyal customers and advocates, and needs to understand their entire process. If you focus only on part of the journey, it is possible to ignore critical moments or connections that exist at other stages that have the potential to take your prospects a step further or deepen their relationship with your brand.
uses the Buy/Owner/Winning model, which provides a framework for all organizations, regardless of industry or vertical, to determine a true end-to-end customer journey. Once you understand the entire journey and identify the challenges or opportunities within it, you can set out to create these specific stages of micro journeys.
Verify your journey map with customers. verify that the data you capture accurately describes the customer’s experience, feelings, thoughts and actions during the journey, which is an important step. If your journey map is formed using customer insights and data, verification is not that important, but it is still helpful to do so.
If your journey drawing process starts with “assumptions” or “assumptions” and outlines your thoughts of their experience journey, then verification is critical at this point so that you can ensure that you get the customer’s perspective. Verifying the journey map helps determine if there are additional or missing touch points, confirm the touch points that resonate with the customer the most, and demonstrate that you have a chance to improve.
Through this work, it can also highlight the differences between the needs, experiences, or preferences of the company and its customers. Verification can be used online or offline methods, or a combination of both, but you should always have your target customers verify.
3. Get value from journey map
Once the design phase is over, many organizations have problems with their customer journey maps. Some businesses lack the necessary support, processes and procedures to translate results from the journey map into business work plans and prioritize them. There are also organizations that have failed their journey maps due to the lack of proper management and supervision.
To get the most value from the journey map, it is necessary:
converts the insights of the journey map into actions and experiences. So far, the customer journey maps you have created are based on customer data and insights. You have defined the journey and know where there are opportunities or needs improvement. To achieve these goals, you have to return to an internally-centric perspective to decide the processes, people, and data needed to perform these experiences.
Consult with your team and leadership to create a work plan that translates the ideal experience into specific, cross-departmental functions of responsibilities and tasks. Prioritize deliverables by taking customer goals and needs as determinants, rather than internal metrics and value as determinants. Balance between rapid results and longer-term plans.
maintains the timeliness of the journey map. promotes your journey map, stay up to date, and builds a system to manage them, helping to get them recognized as a vital asset. Develop a continuous monitoring cycle to ensure the relevance of the journey map with updated, accurate data.Customer Experience leaders who can keep the journey map relevant and manage their maps, their maps are more efficiently utilized throughout the organization.
Develop a communication plan to promote the journey of achieving customers' expectations. develops communication plans for influential stakeholders and colleagues, showing them how the insights gained from the journey map can help them achieve their goals. Emphasize and share fast success. Provides convenient access to data and converts it into systems such as general, available assets such as presentation slides and charts.
Translator: Pelican; Official Account: Pelican Comprehensive Customer Experience Management
Original address: https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/research/cx-journey-maps-free-research-2018
This article is translated and published by @Pelican.com. Everyone is a product manager. Reproduction is prohibited without the author's permission.
question picture comes from Unsplash, based on CC0 protocol
