Identifying the customer journey

The customer journey is an important aspect to consider for any business. Customer journey is a story about understanding your company’s users including how they behave when they visit your website and how you can improve their time on your webpage. It is a process by which a customer interacts with a company in order to achieve a goal. When identifying the customer journey for your business, you should map out the different behaviours that take place using existing data collected. Customer journey is not a linear process, there are many and varied steps that make up different customer journeys which are important to understand and identify in any business.

Why is identifying the customer journey important?

Identifying the customer journey in your business is important for a variety of reasons. The first is that with today’s constant change in technology and with customers using different buying platforms every day, it is essential to plan and anticipate how a customer will act through every step. This is important as you do not want your customer journey goals to be set using outdated techniques as this may put buyers off in the future. Another reason why identifying the customer journey in your business is important is that it helps your company to stay focused on your customers and makes each step of the buying experience easier. This will contribute to your company gaining more leads and better customer reviews.

How to map out a customer journey

Mapping out the customer journey in your business will help you identify significant milestones in the customer journey for your business. You customer journey map should aim to include:

1. The buying process: This first section of the customer journey map is where you begin drafting the path you wish your customer to take to reach their goal.

2. User actions: This next step is mapping out exactly what each customer does in each stage of the buying process and the different ways they may achieve their goal. For example this may include reading customer reviews or watching a demo video on your website before finally paying by card online.

3. Emotions: Adding the emotions your customers may feel throughout the buying process is the next thing you need to ensure you map out. This helps you to understand not only the positive emotions your customers may feel but also the negative ones allowing you to mitigate these for a better customer experience.

4. Pain points: Where there is a negative emotion there is a pain point, so recognising and adding these pain points to your customer journey map is essential to help you work on these and improve your customer journey.

5. Solutions: The final element of your customer journey map should be the solutions where you will find potential ways to improve the customer buying process to improve your business overall.

When creating your customer journey maps there are several things to consider throughout the mapping process. You should set clear objectives for the map and ask yourself why are you making one in the first place. You should also profile your target personas and give them each a goal through reaching out to your current customers and asking for their feedback. Take the customer journey yourself and see what works well and where you need to improve. And finally identify the customer touch points to discover all the different places on your website that your customers can interact with you.