A Journey to Better Customer Experiences

Negative user experiences can cost businesses greatly so now more than ever is the time that businesses should be focusing on their customers experience at every interaction with their brand.  

One way of understanding customers better is to take on their perspective and create a customer journey map to identify what improvements can be made.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map provides a visual representation of a ‘typical journey’ a customer would go through when engaging with a business. For example, this could be when buying a product through a website or even arranging a service visit for an appliance.

On this journey ‘touchpoints’ are highlighted which represent places where the business and customer are interacting with each other, such as by email, via a call centre or through a contact form online.

The process of creating this map can help businesses to;

• Better identify who their customers are and discover new customer segments
• Separate the journeys of different types of customers and in turn, more effectively personalise the customer journeys and deliver more relevant experiences
• Provide better insight into what the business is currently doing to fulfil brand promises across a customer journey.
• Compare their processes against competing businesses

Read More: How to create a customer journey map

What insights does a journey map provide?

Journey maps help to facilitate a common understanding across the business of how all customers should be treated. They provide insightful information for all departments about where they touch and interact with their customers. From this, they highlight gaps in the customer experience whether that is between channels or departments.

Not only can journey maps help improve and in some cases, innovate the customer experience delivered, they can reduce costs in areas such as customer services and potentially increase sales as a result of improved customer engagement and satisfaction.

Customers should be at the heart of any business strategy so consider this valuable tool for any future developments your business undertakes.