Customer Journey Map
Customer Journey Map
Use this framework to assess the performance of marketing processes
In 1987 Jan Carlzon, the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines wrote a book called Moments Of Truth. It told the story of how Carlzon turned around the ailing airline SAS. He did this by focusing on all the small interventions (and big ones) that affected customers' views of the airline and addressing these to make sure that the moments of truth never let the company down. Over the next 10 years, various marketers picked up the concept of moments of truth and linked them into stages of the sales process, so developing the customer journey. Articles using the term "customer journey mapping" began appearing around 2010. Since then there has been an explosion in the use of the tool and it would be very hard to say who the original inventor was.
The concept of the customer journey is simple. Its usefulness is understanding the many touch points or moments of truth (MOT) that are met on each stage of the journey. Each of these touch points has an influence on the customer which could enhance or detract from the relationship. These MOTs are potential pain or pleasure points.
The moments of truth don’t all occur with sales and marketing staff. Receptionists, delivery people, technicians, finance departments and production departments at a supplier could all interact with the customer at some stage on the journey. The customer journey is therefore a reminder of the life cycle of a customer, how they are treated in this life cycle and where there are weak points that need rectifying.
A customer journey map is made up of a spine (the major stages that the customer goes through in the life cycle with the supplier) and all the moments of truth during each of these stages. At the point of developing the spine, there are some questions that should be asked:
What are customers doing at this stage?
What would motivate a customer to move to the next stage?
What are customers’ concerns and uncertainties at this stage? What barriers might prevent them moving to the next stage?
What would alleviate these barriers, concerns and uncertainties?
What effort is required by the customer or potential customer in moving to the next stage?
A moment of truth or touch point is an intervention between the customer or potential customer and the company. This could be a visit to a website, an advert in a journal, and anecdote told by another customer, the way the phone is answered at reception – indeed there could be hundreds of moments of truth that influence customers and potential customers. The skill of customer journey mapping is to identify the most important ones that influence people on the journey.
There is no fixed template for the customer journey map. They can be turned into infographics in poster form (as per the example below) for sharing around the company and alerting everyone as to what makes exceptional customer experiences.
A critical part of customer journey mapping is defining the spine of the customer journey - the columns that in the above map start with Awareness and end with User Experience. There are usually half a dozen or so of these major "chapters" of customer interventions. They nearly always begin with AWARENESS. The final chapter is often RETURN - ie the moments of truth for a lost customer that has returned to your company.
For each stage on the spine of the journey list all the interactions (touchpoints) between the customer and the company. Now go through every touchpoint and mark them according to:
Which are essential
Which are performed really well from the customers’ points of view
Which are pain points for the customer
Which touchpoints customers would be prepared to pay for.
This will prioritize actions that are required to improve your customers' experiences and build your customer base.
A company developing a customer journey map could carry out customer research to identify the stages and the moments of truth. Whilst useful, this isn’t always essential. A cross functional team representing different parts of the company, perhaps weighted towards sales and marketing, could produce an excellent CJM without any customer interviews. In workshop fashion the team would debate and agree on all the points of the journey and where the company is strong and weak. Members of a company know very well their weak points, in fact they tend to overstate them.
Things to think about:
Define the spine of the customer journey. The starting point is nearly always AWARENESS, and the last point could be RETURN.
For each stage on the spine of the journey list all the interactions (touchpoints) between the customer and the company
Go through every touchpoint and mark it according to
Which are essential
Which are performed really well from the customers’ points of view
Which are pain points for the customer
Which touchpoints customers would be prepared to pay for
Once the journey map is validated, turn it into an infographic and consider posting copies around the company to raise awareness of the importance of delivering excellent customer experiences. It is a great device for involving everyone and making your company more customer orientated.
And don't forget to make sure that your offer, your customer value proposition, is compelling - https://www.b2bframeworks.com/frameworks/customer-value-proposition
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