Customer journey maps are indispensable tools for shaping and enhancing your customer’s experience with your brand. They help teams visualise the customer’s path. Often starting from the first point of contact through the entire lifecycle of their interaction with the brand. In this article, we explore the types of customer journey maps and how they serve as essential tools to any successful businesses.
What Are Customer Journey Maps?
A customer journey map is a visual tool that outlines the sequence of interactions and touchpoints a customer has with a brand. From the initial contact to ongoing engagements, this map provides a detailed illustration of a customer’s experience. It serves as a guide, helping businesses to comprehend and refine each stage of the customer journey.
Types Of Customer Journey Maps
There are various types of customer journey maps, each serving distinct purposes and offering unique perspectives. The type you choose to create depends on the goals you aim to achieve.
Customer Journey Maps: High-level vs Detailed
High-level Maps
- High-level maps act like panoramic photographs of the customer’s journey, offering a wide-angle view of end-to-end experiences. These maps encapsulate the broader phases of a customer’s interaction with a brand and help businesses gain a macro perspective.
- For instance, a high-level map for an online retail business might cover stages such as customer awareness (through advertisements or word of mouth), consideration (such as visiting the website to browse products), making a purchase, and providing post-purchase feedback.
- Such maps are effective for quickly discerning major areas for strategic improvement.
Detailed Maps
- Contrastingly, detailed maps serve as zoomed-in snapshots, focusing on individual steps within a high-level journey. They offer a meticulous breakdown, illustrating the intricate micro-interactions that customers experience at each specific stage.
- For example, within the ‘purchase’ stage, a detailed map might break down the steps of selecting an item, adding it to the cart, choosing a payment method, and receiving a confirmation email. These maps are particularly useful for a more thorough analysis, allowing businesses to improve specific aspects of the customer experience.
By toggling between high-level and detailed maps, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the customer journey. This enables them to take a more strategic approach to customer experience optimisation.
Customer Journey Maps: Current-state vs Future-state
Current-state Maps
- Current-state maps act as a reality check, capturing the existing landscape of customer interactions. These maps are particularly effective in assessing the effectiveness of current strategies and identifying existing bottlenecks.
- For example, in a restaurant setting, a current-state map would chart experiences across actual customer touchpoints like making a reservation, interacting with the staff, and leaving a review. These insights help pinpoint areas that require immediate attention.
Future-state Maps
- On the other hand, future-state maps outline a vision for an improved customer journey. Think of them as blueprints for what could be, encompassing planned innovations and new strategies.
- Continuing with the restaurant example, a future-state map could depict an optimised reservation system, enhanced staff training, and a revamped menu. This outlines the restaurant’s aspirations for elevating its customer experience.
By comparing current-state to future-state maps, businesses can find out what changes they need to make to get to their desired state.
Why Use Customer Journey Maps?
Identify Customer Needs And Touchpoints
A customer journey map allows businesses to visualise the various stages a customer goes through when interacting with a product or service. By adding customer feedback to this map, the company gains real-time insights into customer needs and expectations at each touchpoint. This information is crucial for service optimisation and offers a factual basis for making improvements.
Essentially, the map serves as a diagnostic tool, highlighting where a business excels and where it needs to focus its attention.
Find Gaps And Identify Fixes In The Current Customer Experience
One of the most significant advantages of customer journey maps is that they help in identifying gaps or inconsistencies in the customer experience. With this detailed overview, teams can delve into the specifics of what’s going wrong, as opposed to relying on generalised feedback.
Moreover, this road map serves as a guide for potential fixes. The information can be leveraged to fine-tune not just products and services, but also internal processes that affect the customer experience. Thus, it becomes easier to implement actionable solutions that improve customer satisfaction.
Promote Alignment Across Teams
An often-overlooked benefit of customer journey maps is their ability to promote organisational alignment. Since the map is a visual representation of the customer’s experience with a product or service, it becomes a focal point for discussion among different departments. Whether it’s the marketing team interested in lead conversion or the support team focused on customer satisfaction, all can align their strategies towards common customer-centric goals.
This facilitates not only improved communication but also better collaboration among teams, ensuring a unified approach to enhancing the customer experience.
In Summary…
Customer journey maps are essential tools for businesses, helping to improve customer experiences by providing valuable insights and guidance for making necessary improvements and innovations.
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