In our earlier blog, we have discussed the importance of CJM and "Why the B2B World Can't Thrive without Customer Journey Maps". We will now move further in this blog and delineate the necessary steps to design an CJM - that works every time!

Before moving ahead, let us give you an overview of the previous blog. We had discussed in that blog about why a need for CJM is there, what do you need to consider for CJM, what do we mean by 'analyzing touchpoints', the need to refine the CX - to act on the findings for initiating targeting & personalization, along with the indispensable need for customer journey maps.

So, where does one start with Customer Journey Mapping?

Here, we enlist the 5 necessary steps to design an effective CJM:

1. Set a goal

Determining the goal is the first step in the process of CJM designing. The goal of our customer journey map should be clear, concise and consistent with our strategic objectives. We need to ensure that our robust goals meet the typical following attributes:

• Specific : Our goal should be clearly defined
• Measurable : It must be measurable to track the progress & results
• Achievable : You must certainly be ambitious, but you need to be realistic
• Related : Must be compatible with the company's business objectives
• Timely : The deadline for completion will help us maintain our focus
  
  

e.g Improve the number of leads generated by 10% over the next 6 months or retain more of our existing clients by 5% during the next fiscal year etc. Understanding you audience needs is as important as you defining your goals..

2. Define target audience (Persona)

Its important to be clear who you are targeting or servicing, to make sure you are spending the energy with the right audience.

"You don't really want to end up selling snow to Eskimos"!!

If you don't know, then you need to step back and do some research which takes the form of internal analysis of your existing customer (types) and external sources like market trends, competitor analysis etc. While designing a customer journey map, the most important aspect is to have an in-depth understanding of your customers by defining your customer personas. Creating your buyer personas requires detailed research, as we have outlined above with both quantitative and qualitative data.

A persona is a generalized and highly relatable character that helps you create your journey map and target them accordingly. It helps you to have deeper customer insights by identifying the needs of your customers, the way they interact with your business, their motivations, their pain points and how they move across different touch points. Buyer personas helps you decide about whose journey you are going to map by understanding the experience of your personas across different touch points during the entire journey with your brand.

Persona covers everything you want to know about your customers - their needs, expectations, challenges. It typically covers a target group of your customers or potential customers.

Areas to collect can cover:

Demographics including characteristics such as age, sex, occupation, business roles/responsibilities, interests etc. Customers' objectives - what they do and how your solutions and services help them and just as importantly when and where they are likely to use your services.

Some of the key questions to consider with respect to your buyer personas include:

• What is the persona’s ultimate goal? What is the persona trying to achieve?
• What tasks do they perform? What questions do they need answered?
• What is going behind the scenes?
• What channels (Comm) do they prefer? What devices do they use?
• What really matters to them - Access, Experience, Price, Product or Service?
  
  

3. Customer Journey Map Stages

The focus here is to map the journey of your customer interacting with your business, at the various stages of engagement. E.g. It could be when they are looking to buy a solution/product/service or when they have a problem and need for help.

Typically, this map can get large and complicated and tends to cover many parts of your business from sales to delivery to support etc. So, why not take small steps by focusing attention to key business area or department. Build a map that covers all the engagements in the area of focus (touchpoints/channels).

There is a need to understand the processes and potential technologies involved.

• Awareness : When a customer wants to know more about a product/service/solution – how can you make sure that you are presenting/promoting yourselves whilst they are getting to know more about their needs
• Consideration : Customers are typically looking at various options in the market and you need to ensure why should they think of you above competition
• Acquisition : Make the experience of buying as easy and pleasant as possible
• Service : Aftersales services is a key area to build loyalty, retention, upsell, thereby, having a well-designed customer centric approach to services will drive the right behaviors for maintaining and increasing business
• Advocacy : By continuing to excel in the services, continuous improvement and better ways to attract more customers as well as getting referrals through loyal customers
  
  

4. Define Your Touchpoints

Touch points are places where your customers initially interact with you to accomplish their task. Your brand touch point may be your company’s website, your social media channels, your online and offline advertisements, reviews and ratings, your offline locations as well as your customer support team.

Thus, while designing your customer journey map these touch points assume importance and needs to be identified and rightfully managed in order to provide a seamless experience to your customers across their journey with you. Brands need to create a holistic and complete customer journey map that caters to customer’s expectation for an improvised experience at all the touch points from initial enquiries to final purchase and post purchase support.

5. Customer Journey Analytics

Once the journey has been mapped and touchpoints identified, then a key element of improving the experience is the ability to “measure” how well the engagements on these touchpoints are faring. The need is to "listen" to these channels, collect data and analyze the results. Make those incremental changes to processes, technologies, channels, timings and content in line with context. In this way, you will be able to measure the change for improvements.

Important also, is to benchmark this information, not only to your competitors but also to industry standards to aspire to be the best. This is an iterative processes and as you build confidence and maturity you continue to refine the experience and seek to expand the CJM process wider into the business.

Do you want to see how a real Customer Journey Map looks like? Do you need to design Customer Journey Mapping tool to help streamline your customer experience initiatives and track all your customer touchpoints? Are you struggling to enhance your conversion rates due to your inability to identify key footprints and decision points?

You can reach us to better understand and develop the fundamental metrics to identify customer touchpoints across all device and create right avenues to engage your customers for better business value and higher ROI. Get a more in-depth look at our investigation process and how it helped our customers to define the course of their products.

Get in touch with us at - marketing@espire.com