A short introduction to customer journey maps
*being a non-native English speaker, this article may have language mistakes.
When we discussed what empathy means, we said that is the ability to put in someone else’s shoes. It is not easy for everyone to have the possibility to have a deep understanding of some reasons, but with the help of a few tools, the team involved in developing a product can achieve this. The most know tools in this direction, are empathy maps and customer/user journey maps. These tools are created to help you to figure out how the user is interacting and why and how he/she takes actions, choices, and decisions.
What the customer journey map is?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of your customer’s interaction with your product, service or organization. Usually, this tools is based on the empathy map and can be done, also, as an exercise during a design sprint session. During the activity of creating of this map, the team involved needs to answer to the following questions, “how”, “what” and “why”, that are behind the customer actions, choices, and decisions. The team involved in this activity need to have the same mindset — this could be achieved with the help of user-profiles and/or personas and, of course, empathy map(s). The customer journey maps are used to pinpoint customer’s touchpoints that cause pain or delight.
The characteristics of a customer journey map
- the map is connected to a specific product, service or organization;
- it is split into 4 main swim lanes: phases, actions, thoughts, mindsets/emotions;
- it is chronological;
- it reflects the user’s perspective;
- it responds to the following questions: who, what, where, when, and why (the 5 W’s);
- one map per persona or group of users (1:).
The benefits of the customer journey maps
1 A better understanding of your customers. Walking in your customer shoes will help you to know why he/she will take some decisions and have some certain preferences. In this way, you will be able to see how can you improve the experience with your users and you will try to find ways to deliver value to customers.
2 Bridging the gap between departments. Sometimes communication is difficult between the departments involved in the phases of the product. Having an empathy map will help the team to have the same view regarding user needs and decisions.
3 Predicting customer behavior. Through a customer journey map where you identify how the user is behaving, you will be able to anticipate what the customer will behave in certain circumstances.
4 Increase sales. A study conducted by Aberdeen Group revealed that “brands enjoy an average sales cycle that is 18 times faster, with 56% more revenue from upselling and cross-selling efforts. Marketing practices are also rewarded, as these brands experience a 54% greater return on marketing investment. The numbers show that investing in customer journey maps is essential to optimizing both sales and marketing practices.” (vocalcom.com)
5 Emotional connection. Having discussions about the emotions of the customers will help the team to empathize with them and to create an emotional connection with the end-users. This will be reflected through the released product or services, the message and communication, and the way through it the needs of the customers are covered.
6 Gives businesses the direction they need for the future. Predicting what users will need will help the company to be with a step In the future regarding the things that will develop and how they will communicate and answers to the users’ needs.
Thanks a lot for reading this article. What do you think about customer journey maps?
