Conquering customer experience requires a dedicated understanding of their behavior and desires. In this journey, the client journey map (customer journey map) is the key to shaping and optimizing every communication, from discovery to transaction completion. Let’s learn about how this tool helps us to connect strongly with customers.

What is Customer Journey Map?

Customer Journey Map (CJM), also known as client journey map. This is a visual tool that helps businesses understand the journey customers go through when interacting with a brand.
CJM represents the stages of the journey, the touch points between the customer and the brand at each stage, the customer’s feelings and thoughts, as well as their expectations and goals. By building and analyzing CJM, businesses can:

• Optimize marketing strategy: Focus on important touch points, improving customer experience at different stages.
• Improve operational efficiency: Identify weaknesses in the customer journey and improve them to increase sales and profits.
• Brand building: Bringing a positive experience to customers, helping to attract and retain customers effectively.

Why do businesses need to create a Customer Journey Map?

There are many reasons why businesses need to create a Customer Journey Map (CJM), including:

• Understand customers better: CJM helps businesses understand customer behavior, needs and desires throughout the experience journey. From there, businesses can make more informed decisions about products, services, marketing strategies and customer service.
• Improve customer experience: CJM helps businesses identify weaknesses in the customer experience journey and offer improvement solutions. By enhancing customer experience, businesses can better attract and retain customers.
• Increase revenue: When customers are satisfied with their experience, they are more likely to purchase and recommend the product/service to others. CJM helps businesses increase revenue by improving conversion rates and increasing customer lifetime value.
• Improve operational efficiency: CJM helps identify operational weaknesses. From there, solutions are proposed to improve operational efficiency.
• Brand building: CJM helps businesses build strong brands by bringing positive experiences to customers.
• Developing effective strategies: CJM helps businesses develop marketing, sales and customer service strategies that suit the needs and desires of customers. By developing an effective strategy, businesses can achieve their business goals more effectively.

Stages in the customer experience journey

The customer experience journey is often divided into five main stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and promotion.

Awareness

This is the first stage, where customers begin to become aware of the existence of the brand, product or service. They can access information about the brand through advertising channels, word of mouth, social networks, websites, etc. The goal of a business is to attract customers’ attention and create a good first impression.

Consider

After becoming aware of the brand, customers begin to learn more about the product or service. They compare different options, evaluate price, quality, features, etc. The goal of a business is to provide all the necessary information to help customers make purchasing decisions.

Purchase

This is the stage where customers decide to buy a product or service from a business. The purchasing process needs to be smooth and convenient to create a positive experience for customers. The goal of a business is to motivate customers to make purchases and generate revenue.

Retention

After making a purchase, businesses need to make efforts to retain customers and encourage them to make purchases. This can be done through promotions, good customer service, etc. The goal of a business is to build long-term relationships with customers and increase customer lifetime value.

Encourage

In the final stage, customers who are satisfied with the product or service can become advocates for the brand. They can share their positive experiences with friends, family and colleagues. The goal of the business is to turn customers into positive word of mouth for the brand.

Steps to build a Customer journey map

To build an effective Customer Journey Map (CJM), businesses need to take the following steps:

• Identify goals: Clearly define what the goal of building CJM is to focus on important aspects. The goal could be to improve customer experience, increase revenue, develop new products/services or better understand customer behavior.
• Outline customer portraits (Persona): Identify key target customer groups and create detailed descriptions of each customer group, including demographic information, needs, wants, behaviors, etc.
• Identify stages in the customer journey: Break down the customer journey into key stages such as awareness, information search, purchase, product use, and response.
• List touchpoints: Identify all the points where customers interact with the brand. This includes websites, social networks, stores, customer care services, etc.
• Analyze customer behavior and emotions: Evaluate customer emotions and thoughts at every touch point. Identify weaknesses and strengths in the customer journey.
• Visualize CJM: Use charts, diagrams, or images to illustrate the customer journey visually. CJM needs to be easy to understand and share with stakeholders.
• Iterate and improve: CJM is a tool that is constantly being updated and improved. Businesses need to regularly collect feedback and new data to update CJM accordingly.

Some things to note:

• The process of building a CJM can vary depending on the goals and characteristics of the business.
• Enterprises should consult with stakeholders during the process of building CJM.

Principles to help optimize the customer experience journey

To optimize the customer experience journey, businesses need to adhere to the following principles:

• Customer-centric: All business activities should aim to meet the needs and desires of customers. Businesses need to put themselves in customers’ shoes to understand their emotions, thoughts and behaviors.
• Create uniformity: Customer experience needs to be consistent across all interaction channels, from website, social network, store to customer service. Businesses need to ensure consistent information and uniform service quality across all channels.
• Personalization: Businesses also need to personalize customer experiences by using data to understand each person’s preferences and needs. Provide recommended products, services and information tailored to each customer.
• Simplify: Simplify processes and procedures so that customers can easily perform transactions. At the same time, eliminate barriers and minimize complexity in the customer journey.
• Continuous improvement: Continuously collect customer feedback and improve processes, products and services to deliver the best customer experience. In addition, it is necessary to monitor market trends and apply new technologies to improve customer experience.

Customer Journey Map or customer journey map is not only a tool, but also a guideline that leads businesses to success in the customer-centric era. By understanding the customer journey, businesses can create unique and memorable experiences that attract, retain and nurture customer loyalty. Start your journey to conquer customer experience with CJM today!