What Is a Customer Journey Map? & How to Create One for Your Business?

Speaking of understanding and engaging with customers, today’s business faces a multitude of challenges. One of them is the lack of a clear understanding of the customer journey. When that happens, businesses risk missing out on opportunities to improve customer experience, failing to grasp the evolving customer expectations, and what's worse, losing customers. However, if you create a customer journey map, your business will thrive and succeed thanks to a profound knowledge of your customer’s pain points and behaviors. In this blog, you’ll learn everything about a customer journey map. 

Table of Contents

What Is a Customer Journey Map?

Why Is a Customer Journey Map Important?

When to Use a Customer Journey Map?

5 Elements to Remember When Making a Journey Map

How to Make a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every interaction a customer has with a brand, service, or product. It inserts your enterprise directly into the mind of your customers, so you can understand the customer experience, identify pain points, and make improvements to the customer journey.

A customer journey sounds simple but it is far more complicated than you think. This journey starts when customers are aware of a problem or a product, then they will learn about it, consider and compare it, and finally, make the decision. Along the way, many other factors will influence customers too, such as competitor ads, reviews, communication with your service team, content, product info, etc. 

If you can map out this journey, you’ll have a deep understanding of your customers’ experiences. This is because a customer journey map will help your business identify pain points so you can come up with better marketing strategies, tailor your content, and improve customer experience. As a result, your business will increase customer satisfaction and retention to achieve more conversions and sales.

You can create a customer journey map at various stages in a business’s growth. But remember, your customer journey map is made for a goal. If your map doesn’t align with your goals, your effort will end nowhere. Usually, a customer journey map is created when your business is launching a new product or service, updating an existing product or service, or trying to improve the overall customer experience. It is also useful when trying to understand how different customer segments interact with a business.

Before we go into the steps to create a customer journey map, it is necessary to know what key elements it includes. 

Customer Persona 

A customer persona is a fictional character that is used to represent a particular type of customer. It is the first thing you should consider when creating a customer journey map because it helps you define your goals. Usually, it includes consumer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and objectives.

The Buying Process

The buying process helps you map out the timeline of your customer journey map. The process can be very detailed but in a concise version, it starts with awareness, then progresses to research, consideration, and purchase, and ends with support. 

Touchpoints

A touchpoint is any interaction that might change the way your customers perceive your product, business, or service. A channel is where an interaction happens. It could be an email, a post on social media, a product review, or a billboard on the road. 

Customer Thoughts, Actions, and Emotions

This point is when your business wants to get into the mind of your customers. What are they thinking? What steps will they take? How do they feel? Except for brainstorming those questions, you’re better off making a survey to gather valuable information directly from your customers. 

Pain Points 

Pain points are the challenges your customers have during their experience. Your business can turn them into opportunities if you use a customer journey map to find solutions to eliminate those frictions. 

After you’ve learned enough about a customer journey map, it’s time to create one for your business. To do that, your business can use MioCreate, an online whiteboard for real-time collaboration. Your team can brainstorm, prototype, and design on a shared online whiteboard, which is the best tool to create a customer journey map. 

Step 1: Download, install, and register on MioCreate.

Step 2: Set a goal for your customer journey map. 

Different businesses have different goals. You can adjust yours according to the needs of your business. It might be an aim that brings teammates together to understand the customer experience, improves customer retention, or reveals the gap between various channels and departments. 

Step 3: Specify your customers’ buying phases. 

As mentioned earlier in the key elements, your customers’ buying phases include awareness, research, consideration, purchase, and support. You should list them in your customer journey map and brainstorm as many questions as possible regarding each phase. 

Step 4: Work out your touchpoints. 

Following your customers’ buying phases, you can brainstorm the possible interaction in each phase. Then you can adjust your business plans. 

Step 5: Don’t forget your customers’ thoughts, actions, and emotions 

You and your team can analyze the customers’ thoughts, actions, and emotions according to the touchpoints you’ve found in each buying phase. Ask and survey as much as you can. 

Step 6: Identify pain points and turn them into your opportunities. 

With all the consideration about the buying phases, touchpoints, and customer thoughts, actions, and emotions, your business will be easy to find out the pain points of your customers. Now you should think about what your business can do to solve their problems or provide a better experience. 

Conclusion

A customer journey map is a powerful tool that can help businesses better understand their customers and improve the overall customer experience. By identifying pain points in the customer journey, businesses can make improvements that lead to increased customer satisfaction, retention, and growth. With the help of MiroCreate, businesses can easily create a customer journey map and start improving their customer experience today.