What is a Customer Journey Map?

As society becomes increasingly digitally centered, the customer journey only becomes more complex. Gone are the simple days of buying and selling. Instead, business owners find themselves trying to understand customers who find them online, research, compare, seek social influence, click on ads, abandon their carts, come back to them, and then sometimes move to a competitor after all is said and done. With so many ins and outs, how do you keep track of it all?

Outlining a customer journey map will help you take control of your customer experience and take your business operations to the next level. In this article, we’ll explain what a customer journey map is, how to create one, and how to use it to raise your bottom line. 

What is a Customer Journey Map? 

A customer journey map is a visual representation of all the touchpoints your customers go through when engaging with your business. This is crucial because in today’s world the customer journey is the key to differentiating your business and selling more. 

Few local business owners take the time to analyze and understand their customer journey. However, doing so is one of the quickest ways to increase customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and revenue. 

How Can a Customer Journey Map Improve the Customer Experience?

Customer experience describes a customer’s perspective on your business throughout their customer journey. It encompasses how they feel at each of the different touchpoints and stages. A good customer experience leads to repeat business. A poor one leads to angry purchasers, bad reviews, and discouraged employees. 

There are a few obvious ways to gauge how satisfied customers are with your customer experience. If your customer leaves you a glowing review, they probably had a seamless experience with your customer journey. If your customers are increasingly dissatisfied with how difficult it is to get in touch with you, continually abandon transactions, or leave you for a competitor, your customer journey might be broken. 

But providing a stand-out customer experience requires a little more insight. Creating a customer journey map is critical to understanding exactly what your customers expect, how they feel at each touchpoint, and what their pain points are. 

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Now let’s get into the meat—customer journey maps are crucial, but how do you create one? Customer journey maps come in many forms and often define touchpoints, customer stages, steps, duration of those steps, results, etc. However, if this is your first time mapping your customer journey, the best thing to do is focus on the basics. Consider the following customer journey map template.  

→ Step 1: Outline the Buying Process

First, make a list of customer touchpoints. What are the steps a customer takes between the time they discover you and the time they make a purchase? Let’s say you own an auto repair shop. Your touchpoint list might look like the following:

Online discovery → Call you → Schedule appointment → Drive to auto shop → Stand in line → Order → Pay → Wait → Pickup

Pretty simple. But is there a way to make it simpler? The more steps you have, the more frustrated your customers will be. The fewer steps you have, the more satisfied your customers will be. 

As much as possible, find opportunities to eliminate, combine, or speed up steps to make your process more efficient. For example, you might:

• Give customers to option to schedule appointments and check in online.
• Add a key drop-off by your register (to eliminate the need for customers to wait in line).
• Invest in a texting platform that keeps customers updated, lets them know when their cars are ready, and sends a link customers can click to pay. 

Then, the process will look more like this:

Online discovery → Schedule appointment → Drive to auto shop → Drop-off → Pick up and pay

A great question to ask with this step is: How far are my customers from the cash register? As much as you are able, you should remove any opportunity for friction so that a customer can do business with you quickly and conveniently. Regularly evaluate your buying process and remove obstacles and hurdles that are slowing customers down and making them less likely to work with you. 

→ Step 2: Get Clear on Motivations and Emotions

Once you’ve outlined all of your customer touchpoints, it’s time to figure out what motivates your customers at each step of their journey. What inspires your customers to move to each step? How do they feel at each touchpoint? 

When they find you for the first time, what problem are they trying to solve? Are they excited to work with you or are they tired of a specific problem they’ve been dealing with? 

When they reach out to you, is it easy for them to get the help they need? Are they frustrated after waiting days for a response? 

Do they still feel inspired to make a purchase after interacting with one of your employees through a chat feature or text? 

When they reach the payment step, are they feeling frustrated and impatient, or relieved and excited about their purchase? 

Your customer journey should be designed to help your customers feel engaged and connected at every step with you. They should feel like their experience is being personally tailored to them. Even little changes can help with this, like allowing for two-way texting, addressing messages to customers by name, and personalizing the buying process for each consumer by using data based on their history with you. 

→ Step 3: Identify Pain Points 

After outlining your buying processes and what motivates your customer to move through them, it’s time to understand where your customers are getting stuck and why. What obstacles are keeping your customers from moving forward in their journey? 

Consider the journey from their point of view. Maybe setting up an appointment online is unnecessarily difficult. Maybe your customers are frustrated when it comes time to pay because you only accept cash payments (one in four customers will abandon a transaction if their preferred payment methods aren’t offered). Perhaps your customers feel like it is not easy to get a hold of a real employee at your business, so they turn to a competitor who prioritizes communication.  

A large part of identifying pain points is customer data. But raw numbers aren’t everything—perhaps a more important part is listening to your customers. Survey customers to ask where they’re getting stuck. As them to give feedback about their experience with you. Carefully analyze reviews, especially negative ones, for hidden pain points or customer needs that aren’t being met. 

→Step 4: Propose Solutions to Improve the Journey

Collecting feedback and analyzing data means nothing if you don’t follow through. So, once you’ve identified pain points, it’s time to solve them. Ask yourself: How can I alleviate these pain points and improve the existing customer journey? How can I optimize how my customers interact with me? 

While different businesses have unique pain points and obstacles to overcome, there are a few solutions that often mitigate a number of pain points across the board. If you’re already implementing these, great. If not, take a look at how some of them might solve the problems you’re seeing. 

• Use omnichannel communication. Your customers are unique, and so are their preferred communication methods. Make sure customers can chat, text, call, email, video call, social media message, and message you through reviews. To make an omnichannel approach easier on your customer service team, you can employ a messaging platform that brings all customer communications into the same place. 

• Use text. From making a payment to receiving an update, text is the key to improving customer communication and removing friction from the customer journey. Approximately 90% of customers prefer to engage with businesses via text. Need help getting started? Check out: 10 Ways to Use Texting to Level Up Your Customer Journey. 

• Offer multiple ways to pay. If you’re only offering cash or card, you’re missing a third of customers’ preferred methods and downgrading your customer’s experience. To level up your payment experience, check out our Guide to Modern Payments.  

When in doubt, modernizing your communications and processes is a great place to start if you want to improve the customer experience. 

Time to Get Started 

Once you’ve mapped out your customer journey and identified ways to improve your customer experience, it’s time to dive in and do the dirty work. Podium helps local businesses offer seamless, outstanding customer experiences. 

Ready to get started? Start a free 14-day trial to see what Podium can do for you.