Where is Your Customer Experience Going?: Enhancing Customer Engagement through Journey Mapping

Sometimes, we are too close to something – a process, an idea, a product, or a service – to see it with accurate, objective clarity and perspective. This can be especially (and paradoxically) true when a notion leaps from our brains. We think we know what it looks, smells, and feels like as a customer consuming our products or services. But do we?

Let’s suppose your goods or services are complex or technical. Can you momentarily erase the industry lingo and specifications you know backward and forward to accurately assess the ease with which a layperson approaches and interacts with your business and its offerings?

A customer journey map is one tool that can help you see your business from an outsider’s perspective. Harvard Business Review blog contributor Adam Richardson summarized the value of a journey map by noting:

“A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, a retail experience, a service, or any combination. The more touchpoints you have, the more complicated — but necessary — such a map becomes. Sometimes customer journey maps are ‘cradle to grave,’ looking at the entire arc of engagement… At other times, journey maps are used to look at very specific customer-company interactions.”

Why might your business consider this type of mapping? Maria Boos explains:

“Invest in customer research to identify true needs, actual behaviors, and real hits or misses in usability… When you compare those true customer insights to the journey map of the current customer experience, you suddenly see where it’s a good fit … and where it’s not. This will show the gaps between the business-centric view and the customer-centric approach. This layered view will help you set priorities, validate or refute internal opinions, and mediate conflicting agendas across business units. After all, the customer is always right!”

Has your business mapped your customers’ journey? What revelations came forth?

While I’ve helped leaders map customer journeys more times than I can count, I continue to be amazed at what we learn and improve upon when we understand our customers’ perspectives.

Actionable Takeaways for Effective Customer Journey Mapping

• Shift to Your Customers’ Perspective: Momentarily set aside your expert knowledge and view your business as a consumer. Assess the simplicity and accessibility of your offerings from a customer’s perspective.

• Create Detailed Customer Journey Maps: Develop diagrams that detail each step your customers take when interacting with your business. Include all touchpoints to get a comprehensive view of the customer experience.

• Engage in Customer Research: Conduct thorough research to understand your customers’ needs, behaviors, and pain points. Use this data to inform your journey mapping process.

• Identify Gaps and Opportunities: Compare your current customer experience with the insights gained from your research. Identify areas where your business is falling short and opportunities for improvement.

• Prioritize Improvements: Use the findings from your journey map to set priorities for enhancing the customer experience. Focus on areas that will have the most significant impact on customer engagement.

• Facilitate Cross-Department Collaboration: Use journey maps to mediate conflicting priorities and agendas across different business units. Ensure that all departments are aligned to improve the customer experience.

• Regularly Update Journey Maps: Customer behaviors and expectations change over time. To keep your journey maps relevant and effective, revisit and update them regularly.

• Act on Customer Feedback: Continuously gather and act on customer feedback. Use this feedback to refine your journey maps and make ongoing improvements to your customer experience.

When leaders and teams genuinely understand their customers’ journeys, they create meaningful, lasting improvements that drive repeat business and referrals.

To learn more about successful customer journey mapping, please get in touch with me at josephmichelli.com/contact.