Companies need to walk in their customer’s shoes and map out every interaction at every touch-point along the customer journey for each different type of customer. This process is referred to as Customer Journey Mapping.
At The CX Academy, we define two parts of the customer journey map. The first is the ‘As Is’ and the second is the ‘To Be’.
The “as is” part of the Customer Journey Map details what the journey currently looks like. The “to be” part of the Customer Journey Map details how the journey can be improved.
Why is Customer Journey Mapping important?
If you don’t know what your customers are doing, how they’re doing it and what their experience is like you won’t get the full picture of how your business is operating. You won’t be able to make the right changes to make things better for both customers and staff.
Walking in your customer’s shoes is fundamental to delivering CX Excellence and Customer Journey Mapping allows you to do this.
The CX Academy has identified six key benefits of doing Customer Journey Mapping:
- A Customer Journey Map will give you a clear and simple picture of how customers interact with your company
- Understanding the needs and emotions for different customers
- Seeing the overall flow of the Customer Journey from start to finish
- Focusing on individual elements of a journey rather than the whole journey
- Identifying key issues and pain points and removing them
- Providing a roadmap for you to deliver your CX initiatives
The outcome of all of these is an improvement in the Customer Experience which will drive growth through greater retention, increased sales, reduced costs to serve and better acquisition from advocacy and recommendations.
There will also be an improvement in staff experience as departments work closely together to create seamless customer journeys and issues and problems are solved.
