CX pros everywhere are using customer journey mapping to develop better understanding of their customers. Ready to begin your own mapping project? Watch the video below to learn how to get started.
Meet Marie, VP of marketing, and Carl, director of consumer affairs. Like the majority of customer experience professionals today, these two were told by their executive team they need to position the company as a CX leader in their industry. No big deal, right? To accomplish this ambitious goal, Marie and Carl plan to use customer journey maps to visually illustrate customer processes, needs, and perceptions.
Come along with Marie and Carl as they navigate seven steps to creating effective customer journey maps:
Step 1: Assemble
Carl and Marie put together a core group of stakeholders (not only from their teams, but from others in the company like IT, front-line employees, and subject matter experts). They choose stakeholders they know will be invested in the project and willing to take responsibility.
Step 2: Share the vision
Now that Marie and Carl have assembled their stakeholder group, they need to communicate their vision for the journey mapping project: a one-day workshop that will result in a set of customer journey hypotheses, which will be tested, refined, and examined for areas of improvement, and serve as living documents that will guide everyday interactions going forward.
Step 3: Plan
In preparation for the mapping workshop, Carl develops a plan for the scope and scale of the customer journeys to be mapped. Marie updates their customer personas.
Step 4: Map
The day of the mapping workshop arrives. Carl and Marie use their plan to set expectations with their stakeholders. During the session, they use the updated personas and Customer Empathy Worksheets to establish a stronger connection with customers. In each customer journey map, they include the target customer, a description of all the touchpoints, and what the customer is thinking, feeling, and doing along the way.
Step 5: Validate
After a productive workshop day, Marie and Carl have a set of customer journey maps -- but these are really hypotheses, assumptions that need to be tested and validated; not only with real live customers, but with internal teams as well.
Step 6: Improve
Seeing that there are several parts of their customer journeys that need improvement, the two prioritize where they should focus first. They choose to start with some quick wins that will improve the customer experience while reinforcing the value of journey mapping within the company.
Step 7: Aim high
Once the organization sees tangible improvements in key customer metrics, Marie and Carl continue to push towards integrating the mapping process into the everyday. They work together to digitize the maps, using them as dashboards for ongoing CX projects. By assigning an owner to each map, they ensure that the customer journeys will continue to improve. With each passing day, Carl and Marie are closing in on their goal of becoming an industry leader in customer experience.
Want to know more about how Emplifi (previously Astute) can help create seamless customer journeys? Request a demo today to speak with an Emplifi expert.
Source: Forrester, "Mapping the Customer Journey"
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on astutesolutions.com. Any statistics or statements included in this article were current at the time of original publication.
