As you explore what consumers do online, you'll realize that this includes... well, basically everything. Most importantly, your company will understand where exactly it should focus its efforts in order to influence decision-making and create a positive customer experience at all stages of communication with you. In other words, you will get a complete understanding of every moment of truth. In addition, you will learn about the special factors, people, technologies, communities and sources that influence your consumer. The result is clarity on the direction of marketing, sales, services and customer loyalty strategies. But this is not the end.
Inspired by McKinsey's work and my own research, I set out to transform the traditional concept of a sales funnel into a concept of a continuous, generic, and frequently repeating customer journey.
This circle is not only continuous: every experience gained and every new point of contact within it influences the decisions of those who fall within its confines.
Experience is the most important thing today. If you fail to clearly define and shape your customer's experience, other companies begin to shape the ultimate moment of truth for your brand.
At first glance, the stages of a dynamic customer journey (DCJ) are similar to a sales funnel, but the DCJ model fully reflects the journey of interconnected consumers. The funnel assumes that the consumer's movement follows a linear pattern - from attention to the company to interest in it, and then from decision to action. At the same time, brand loyalty and public support are considered as a by-product of these stages. Research has proven that the initially neutral attitude of interconnected consumers can subsequently tilt either in a positive or negative direction.
Each stage of this journey is unique and determines how the consumer discovers the product, analyzes information, makes decisions and shares experiences. Now think about the moments of truth and what people are looking for, talking about, sharing and experiencing, as well as the factors that influence each stage of the dynamic customer journey:
- Awareness
- Reflection
- Grade
- Purchase
- Loyalty
- Public support
Traditional search engines and social networks, surveys within established social groups, simply reading reviews and sharing experiences - good or bad - all influence every step an interconnected customer makes. The truth is that before a customer commits to your brand or publicly endorses it, they must go through the process one more time to verify that they made the right decision. And if his experience differs in some way from the original one, the client may think about looking for alternatives. In any case, the new path is just as informatively and socially interconnected. The ultimate moment of truth will define the journey of any consumer who decides to embark on the dynamic customer journey.
It is not just a circle, but within it lies a loop of influence dependent on the Ultimate Moment of Truth. The exchange of experiences firmly weaves the loop of influence and remains an integral part of it, which can be called upon at any moment of truth.
The importance of the influence loop cannot be overstated. It impacts every stage of the consumer journey, every moment of truth.
At each stage of DCJ, consumers can share experiences that gradually evolve into a shared repository of information that will influence everyone who embarks on a similar path. Without content and communications that reflect a positive experience with your company at every stage of DCJ, there is no way the customer will express their preference or make a decision in your favor. And without a positive consumer experience, there is not the slightest chance of customer loyalty or public support for your brand. The dynamic customer journey should be researched as one of the main subjects. My work at Altemeter Group has only further confirmed this and highlighted how important this research plays in the process of digital transformation and the development of targeted, meaningful strategies for the company.
Together with Charlene Lee, Alan Weber, Rebecca Layeb, Susan Etlinger, and Jeremy Ouyang, we studied what the dynamic customer journey looks like for financial institutions, government agencies, biopharmaceuticals, insurance companies, automakers, fashion brands, and everything in between. In my previous book, I also looked at the versatility of DCJ as it applies to small businesses. While customer touchpoints and sources of influence may vary by industry, the dynamic customer journey remains consistent throughout. And, no less important, it constantly develops and reveals itself from a new side every time.
When it comes to how you see cash flow for your company, the dynamic path provides the answer time and time again. It helps prioritize investments in technology systems and platforms for each moment of truth. It reflects what customer experiences your customers share and when those experiences fall apart. It literally tells you who influences whom, where it happens, and what happens next. It opens the door to the world of relevant networks at every stage of the decision-making process.
Inside the circle: taking the dynamic customer journey
To define the dynamic customer journey and figure out how to shape it in a way that will most benefit your company and your customers, you must tap into your head, heart, and imagination. If you follow your customer's digital footprint, you'll discover a whole new range of possibilities for emotional engagement and a whole new reality for your business. You accept your connected consumers and in doing so you help them accept you. By taking this path, you will at least receive in return participation, a sense of significance and, finally, new consumer relationships, which ultimately turn into traditional, measurable business indicators.
It's time to figure out at what point a product begins to define a particular consumer experience and what technologies help you achieve this. You are the new CEO... the leader of the customer experience.
Based on a simple and visual model of the dynamic customer journey, built on the example of the American Eagle clothing store, it is possible to identify and segment the experiences consumers share at any given moment of truth on various social networks.
- Listen to how people communicate with each other, paying attention to various stimuli, messages and new information resources, to learn what exactly causes them to move from simply receiving information to thinking and evaluating (Zero Moment of Truth).
- Understand the dynamic customer journey using information received through feedback channels. Who do clients consider an expert? In what social environment do they communicate? Who influences them? What are they looking for and finding out? What technologies and services do they use? What is the result?
- Emotionally engage customers in every moment of truth based on their expectations and opportunities that unlock new value and connection resources.
- Tailor investment flows to processes, strategies and technologies to improve performance in steps one through three.
As you'll soon see, a dynamic customer journey represents moments of truth that either bring a customer closer to you or further away from you. It’s up to you to determine every moment of this journey, which takes place with the help of popular social networks, various technological resources, opinions of authoritative and simply different people.
To understand how the dynamic customer journey works as it applies to your business, let's take a closer look at each stage of the journey.
Formulation (Stimulus)
In the absence of information regarding the existence of options, there can be no thought about choosing between them. Every customer interaction is open to potential disruption, both directly and indirectly. The effectiveness of your marketing strategy is the trigger that propels the connected consumer onto a dynamic path of movement. Today, only the channels and techniques with which you reach people differ, as well as the time it takes for your information to reach them.
Pre-purchase (zero moment of truth)
Purchases, as research shows, are always driven by social influence or impulse. Your company must do its part in the process of learning, sharing and discovering product information to get the consumer to make an impactful move.
Think about it, the incentive pushes a person to get, in one way or another, a more complete understanding of the brand or the products it produces. The Zero Moment of Truth is about checking how visible and accessible your brand is to the customer. A stimulus launched into the market by you or your competitors reveals information about products and services. The strength of your brand; the quality of results obtained in response to customer queries about you in various search engines; the words people use when answering questions and sharing personal experiences; even the number of responses in each network - all this determines the next step of your client and the fate of your organization in a vicious circle of decision making.
What people say and hear at the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) requires first comprehension and then definition. The feedback received from the consumer at this moment should not be left to chance. The consumer journey is much more complex than a funnel might make it seem.
You see, unlike a traditional funnel, where the number of brands is gradually reduced as the consumer explores them, the consumer's level of reflection constantly increases as they become familiar with the brand and use its product. Your brand's customer visibility is determined by nothing more than the information people ask for, share, and receive in return. Any company focused on the perception of social opinion can open up new opportunities to attract customers in real time.
What you say, when you say it, and how you say it shapes the impression of your company and, more importantly, the outlook for what happens. These are the questions you need to answer here, and then at each subsequent step.
What kind of experience do you want your clients to share? How do you want them to follow up?
At this stage, the opinions of experts and other consumers are reflected in the impression that the client has of you. This determines what his next step will be. Find these people. Learn from them. Get them on your side.
Role Model: GIANTNERD
Giantnerd is a company that has built its social platform, Powered by Love, around consumers, their opinions, wants and needs. The company's clients receive special incentive prizes for being active online and helping other customers make decisions. Bonuses can be used when making further purchases.
Randall Weidberg, the CEO of Giantnerd, is convinced that customer emotional engagement helps the company not only in Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT), but also in the Ultimate Moment of Truth (UMOT). And most importantly, the interaction of a social group increases the overall level of consumer experience, brand loyalty and, as a result, its public support. “We want shared wisdom to help customers shop more meaningfully.”
Purchase (first moment of truth)
As buyers gather information from trusted sources, they enter the second stage of the Zero Moment of Truth and also experience the First Moment of Truth. They are likely doing the final research and asking the final questions before moving on to purchase the product. This is where your product should appear in all its glory to dispel the buyer’s final doubts. And again, remember that the client’s next step is influenced by the results of his search, coming through communication with people and even through technology.
In retail sales, this is when the customer can take out their mobile device to compare product prices, scan a barcode, look at a geolocation app, read reviews, take photos and send them to social networks for more detailed information. The consumer will look for the best advice and strive for the best deal - and will refuse to buy if you don't interest them at the right time.
Your customers always pay attention to the packaging of the product, as well as the opinions of experts and other buyers. The first moment of truth always prevails. This is reminiscent of the so-called Amazon effect, when buyers compare prices and experiences via mobile devices. Like many retailers, Best Buy and Target constantly experience this effect as customers naturally seek to find out how in-store prices compare to online prices. For a long time now, it is not only technology that needs to be transformed. Outdated company policies and outdated business processes are in dire need of updating. When a customer asks whether the price in a store can be reduced to the price online, the answer is usually no. It may be time to reconsider this and many other company approaches and technology capabilities to ensure that the customer is engaged in the buying process in real time.
The more balanced and gentle you handle the matter, the easier it is to ensure that the client continues his dynamic path - until the Second Moment of Truth. It's not even a matter of reducing friction between information and commercial channels. It's about meeting the subtle needs and expectations of your interconnected customers within the networks and communication lines they choose to rely on. Without a doubt, we are increasingly becoming a multi-tasking, multi-screen digital society.
That's why it's time for you to start investing in omnichannel strategies that align with common interests and behaviors. And take into account: without conducting the necessary research, this will result in an empty appeal to new technologies - just because they are fashionable.
The chart below shows how different age groups use technology to make purchases. By simply acknowledging the existence of people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services, you can develop a focused mobile commerce strategy while continuing to invest in traditional and desktop/laptop-centric versions. Investing in technology and marketing strategies based on customer interests and behavioral patterns requires businesses to shift their focus from demographics to a level of psychological differentiation and targeting.
As you can see, the number of millennials using mobile phones to shop has already reached an astonishing 50 percent, while 79 percent continue to shop using tablets and 89 percent simply prefer online shopping. This is nothing new. The reality is that the number of people who prefer smaller and smaller screens, which require a special approach, is increasing.
If you compare the above numbers to the overall behavioral trend of Generation C, you will realize that your marketing strategy is missing out on a huge opportunity with smartphones and tablets. It's about more than creating an app for your company. We are talking about a distributed and at the same time integrated consumer experience, where communication and information exchange become the engine of commerce.
Post-purchase, or the Second Moment of Truth, is important because it reinforces the customer's impression of you and brings the customer to the Ultimate Moment of Truth - the experience that some customers share with others in the influence loop.
If you think customer experience is outside your responsibility, think again.
In the post-commerce era, where everyone is connected through the sharing of customer experiences as part of a dynamic customer journey, your product and services are as much a part of your marketing strategy as anything else. The experience you create for customers in the Second Moment of Truth is key. If you don't define what you want your clients to feel, think, absorb, and act on, someone else will do it for you.
Striving to improve the customer experience requires you to understand how to improve your product. Even the almighty Apple monitors customer feedback and experiences to improve its products and services. This, as they have long realized, allows them to not only elevate the customer's emotions to the next level, but also give the customer experience the highest rank.
Post-purchase (ultimate moment of truth)
The most interesting aspects of the dynamic customer journey - either the most beneficial or the most detrimental to your business - lie in the Ultimate Moment of Truth. The consumer experience extends to other people through the same communication channels that initially influenced the purchase decision. Therefore, we are dealing with part of the influence loop that turns into the Final Moment of Truth.
Consumers share their experiences with a product - good or bad - throughout its history. Such exchanges will influence future decision making (ZMOT) of other buyers.
The experience a person gains after purchasing a product, or post-purchase experience, leaves its mark on building customer relationships. High quality products and services lead to expressions of brand loyalty. Loyalty and commitment lead, in turn, to public support. Underestimating the opinions of consumers is evidence of your real attitude towards them. You reap what you sow. Sharing experiences - good or bad - is something you have earned or deserved. Every day, an increasing number of interconnected customers turn to social networks to seek support or to express their emotions about using a particular product or communicating with a particular company. Some consumers try to find answers to their questions from similar consumers, others leave comments to vent. A small portion of customers hope to receive a response directly from the company.
The reality is that social media is the new normal of today. A host of social networks, whether you use them or not, form part of the digital lifestyle today, with Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and YouTube, among others, becoming platforms where customers can connect, communicate and share experiences. Not only are they attached to these social networks, they may actually live on them. Only one question remains open: what are you going to do about it?
By entering the Ultimate Moment of Truth, consumers determine the next steps, or Zero Moment of Truth, for other customers - simply by contributing to the influence loop. The importance of defining customer experience is just the beginning of a long journey. It is an initial investment in proactively maintaining the ecosystem of desired customer experiences. Experiences that not only influence, but reinforce the emotions that you want people to experience and then share.
Companies will learn to participate in new networks in two ways. They will either recognize the opportunity to create personal value for the customer in a moment of insight, or they will ooh and ahh about the impact of the crisis on business, brands and consumer influence when the negative experience reaches destructive force.
The above graphic is a word cloud compiled from tweets from various customers sharing their experiences regarding @United (United Airlines). I removed the figurative language, since our book is not about this airline, but about how experiences are exchanged between customers and how it influences the opinions and decisions of other people. It's also a clear example of the need to examine how companies shape and respond to consumer experiences in the midst of the digital revolution.
Words highlighted against the general background and reflecting an important area that should receive special attention in the next few years - customer service. If you look more closely, you'll see two other words right next to customer service. These two words reflect what is most important to the consumer today - reaction and change.
In a study published by Maritz Research and evolve24 in 2011, approximately 1,300 consumers responded to a question about the relationship between Twitter and customer service. As the age of respondents increased, so did the percentage of expectations that companies would be aware of and respond to their messages.
Let's say you're an interconnected consumer using Twitter to file a complaint and expect a response that might solve the problem and keep you as a customer, only to be disappointed when the response never comes. This is exactly what survey participants encountered most often. More than 70 percent of respondents say they never received a company response to their tweet. And this creates a real problem if the company is actually on Twitter. That is, customers are shown: their opinion is not important for the company, the company is present on the social network only for the sake of marketing and sales - not at all to provide support to consumers. By not responding to your customers' problems, you are actually saying how much you value them.
But providing a solution to the problem is only part of the task. Engagement is defined as the interaction between a company and a consumer, but what matters is how it is measured.
Customer service plays an important role. However, consumer experience is replacing it. You see, if you don't invest in creating a positive customer experience, people will constantly make inquiries about things you didn't consider.
Let's turn to clothing retail for a moment. Conversocial researched how customer service at ten of America's largest fashion brands responded to complaints posted on Twitter. It turned out that 50 percent of those who complained never received a response from the companies. And this despite the fact that 48 percent of all complaints were direct appeals to the company, and only 9 percent were negative comments that did not need a response. We're already missing out on opportunities to fix, improve, and create extraordinary customer experiences.
However, it's not just about online engagement. Brand loyalty and ultimately public support is determined by what customers experience in the Second Moment of Truth and how those emotions and experiences are expressed in the Ultimate Moment of Truth. With interconnected customers, traditional loyalty and rewards programs no longer work. These strategies must be fundamentally rethought to ensure that the individual has an ongoing positive experience and the belief that the company values them as a customer. A lot of interconnected consumers—wait, a lot of consumers in general—feel that their importance to a company ends the moment they pay for a product. Research into the dynamic customer journey has shown that no one admires your product or service just because they bought it. Customers will once again go through their dynamic journey to test, experience and evaluate what you offer.
Again, direct interaction will be key here. The gap is not only open to your company, it is also open to your competitors who are looking to poach customers. Following the customer's next steps will determine whether the customer leaves your company, becomes an active supporter of your company, or, even worse, tells the world about his negative experience, which will influence the decisions of other consumers in the influence loop.
Role Model: GIFFGAFFChanneling customer engagement and driving business around it, the company launched an "Idea Board" on its website, echoing Dell's "Idea Storm" or "My Starbucks Idea." To date, Giffgaff has not only received more than six thousand ideas and more than fifty thousand comments. On average, every three days the company brings its clients' ideas to life.
Imagine... a positive customer experience turns into a competitive advantage in today's era of unfortunately weak customer engagement and customer service.
One final thought: transformation is never easy or painless, but if it were, positive customer experiences would truly become a commodity. The time has come when the client can work for you, and not against you. And, as the current practice of daily communication on social networks shows, without a thoughtful approach and involvement of the company itself, every tweet, every update, every post, video or interactive communication will work against you. Customer relationships require careful building, not just reacting or managing. That's why your participation in the process matters more today than ever.
CustomerThink blog about how to map the customer journey. In the article, he identified the main components of the map and described them in nine points.
If you've been looking for information on how to create a customer journey map, you've likely found a wealth of information about a huge number of different approaches. After searching, you might have some questions, such as:
- Why are customer journey maps so different from each other?
- Where do I start if I want to create a journey map?
- How do I know which approach will be most effective for my organization?
- Are there map templates that you can use in your work?
In this article, I will identify the nine most common components of user journey maps. I hope this helps you create the most effective map that suits your needs.
1. Focus on the buyer
The first thing you need to decide is whose journey you are going to map. For example, you can map the movements of a specific type of buyer (ideal buyer persona), a potential (target) buyer, or an entire segment of buyers, depending on what your goal is.
In order to determine whose journey you want to map, it is worth identifying the business goal for which you are starting this research. Here are some examples of business goals you can achieve with mapping:
- Define a template path that can be applied to all or almost all customers and can be used across the company, for example, to create a shared understanding among employees of each stage of the buying cycle, buying goals, customer touchpoints, and so on. .
- Correlate the company's individual branches and business units with key problem areas in the customer experience.
- Make the planning process collaborative to experientially drive buyer growth.
- Practically implement a new customer segmentation scheme.
- Optimize the shopping experience for a priority group of clients (high value clients).
- Understand how the user experience of a certain customer segment or a certain buyer persona differs from the experience of another customer segment.
- Expand your business by starting to work with new customers or those you haven’t fully engaged in attracting.
When it comes to B2B customer acquisition, the customer journey map typically includes different types of buying company employees who perform different roles in the B2B buying process. In this case, it will be useful to include several types of buyers in the map and show how and when a particular type is involved in the main buying process.
Typically, buyer roles are defined using imagery. A buyer persona is a buying archetype that helps your organization understand customer needs, expectations, and behavior patterns. Personas are a very useful tool for providing your customers with a positive and memorable shopping experience.
A buyer persona is a purchasing archetype that helps your organization understand customer needs, expectations, and behavior patterns.
Linking your buyer journey map to your customer persona definition can help establish and maintain a shared understanding of your ideal customer personas and their likely journey across the company. If you don't have personas defined, you might want to consider incorporating persona type development into your customer journey mapping process.
2. Creating a customer journey map with specific stages from the buyer’s perspective
Customer journey maps are made up of stages in the buying process (sometimes called phases). Each stage represents a meaningful goal that your buyer is trying to achieve as they progress through the journey.
The customer journey map must be built in accordance with the stages that will represent the path of the client purposefully moving towards achieving his goals. The map should not be focused on the stages of your internal processes.
Why can’t we establish correspondence between the stages of the customer journey and the stages of internal processes? It's a common misconception that this way you'll instantly turn your customer journey map into a graph of internal processes - this approach is usually called internal to external. As we'll learn later, you can map your internal customer journeys after you've built a customer-centric model of the stages of the buying process.
Stages can reflect general processes, such as a stage in the relationship between a customer and your brand. Or, on the contrary, more narrow ones - such as, for example, the “test flight” stage, which simulates the experience of the buyer’s first flight with the airline. How broad or narrow the stages are depends on which path you decide to map.
Each stage represents a meaningful goal that your buyer is trying to achieve as they progress through the journey.
This stage format is linear because one stage follows another. However, you can use visual design in your maps to show cyclical patterns of buyer behavior.
3. Identify your customers' goals
Your customer interacts with your brand to achieve their goals, also called wants, needs, or expectations.
Here are some examples of buyer goals:
- I want to know what my options are.
- I want to make sure the price is fair.
- I want to feel respected.
- I want to be productive while traveling.
By clearly defining the buyer's goals at each stage of the journey, you can evaluate how the shopping experience you provide is (or is not) helping the buyer achieve their goals.
And the value of your map as an auxiliary tool for making business decisions depends precisely on how correctly you define your goals. So try to clearly understand the buyer's goals.
4. Describe the touchpoints between the buyer and your organization
Touchpoints are the points of interaction between the buyer and the brand, or vice versa - the lack of interaction with the brand. More often than not, the value of customer journey maps comes from a clear understanding of the customer-brand touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
Touchpoints may occur in one or two channels, through tools or resources, but touchpoints and the tools and resources used are not the same thing. For example, if a customer visits a retail store's website to conduct research, the touchpoint is what the customer does to achieve their goal through the web channel. That is, the point of interaction is the intersection of the buyer’s actions with a specific tool or resource.
It's easiest to think of touchpoints as tools, resources, or a channel. And that's okay. But these touchpoints themselves are not part of the user experience and they don't really tell you much information. In order for them to become part of a real shopping experience, they need to be used by a real buyer on the way to their goal.
Touchpoints are points of interaction between the buyer and the brand, or vice versa - the lack of interaction with the brand, while the buyer is looking for a way to satisfy his own needs or achieve goals
Some maps simply summarize all the tools and resources without describing what customers are doing at each touchpoint. This can be useful if there are multiple touchpoints at each stage of the customer journey and you need to understand what tools and resources your customer uses to achieve their goals, and their relative importance.
No matter what terminology you use when talking about touchpoints—or even if you implicitly describe key touchpoints in your map by mapping the actions and behaviors of your customers—be sure to use a customer-centric or front-end approach that describes how your customer uses them to achieve their goals.
5. Using a Journey Map to Visually Convey Emotions
Emotions cause much of human behavior - even if we don't realize it. The most rational-looking B2B purchasing decisions, even those backed by extensive questionnaires and multiple scoring matrices, are powerless in the face of buyer emotions.
Here's what we've learned over the past decade, and what thousands of buyer surveys I've conducted have confirmed: Emotions play a big role in B2B purchasing decisions.
- Tony Zambito in "The Role of Emotions and Goals in Business-to-Business Decision Making"
It's important to capture your customers' emotions (also called feelings) throughout their journey to gain a true understanding of their experience. It's important to understand both how your customer wants to feel at each stage of their journey and how they actually feel at each stage.
Regardless of the nature of the experience your organization provides, you will retain your customers and attract new ones if the service you offer makes people feel good. In other words, you need to give the customer a memorable experience that they want to repeat.
When I'm asked to design a user interface for a website, I immediately ask the question whether I also need to design a user interface for mobile devices and usually get an affirmative answer. The fact is that modern sites and programs, which can be called digital products, are usually part of a larger service. And the further, the more digital products (websites, applications) will be involved in interaction with the user.
Let me give you an example of a fairly popular service - listening to music. I listen to music on a personal computer running OS X, on a smartphone (iOS), and on Apple TV. Apple has gotten pretty good at consuming music: I can buy an album on my iPhone, and then I can listen to that album on my Apple TV, which I have large speakers connected to. However, I can’t start listening to a certain song on the iPhone and then continue listening to it on the Apple TV - to do this, I have to look for the desired album in the Apple TV menu, this procedure cannot be called simple. That is, no one at Apple was concerned about this possibility and did not implement it. At the same time, both the designer of the iPhone and Apple TV did their job well. The functionality that I need is located on the border of two devices and it is not clear who should be responsible for designing such connections.
This example shows that in our time it is not enough to think through in detail the user interface of one digital product in isolation from interaction with other products with which they are located in a single infrastructure. We need a tool that allows us to identify problems at the interfaces, and also allows us to design connections between products. As usual, the need provoked the creation of a wonderful new technique called “Customer Journey Map”.
Customer Journey Map is perhaps the best User Experience tool in the last 10 years (after personas).
What is a service?
What is a service? For those who like strict definitions, I will quote from GOST-9000-2008:
A service is the result of at least one action, necessarily carried out during the interaction between the supplier and the consumer, and, as a rule, is intangible.
Let's remember the word “result” - this is what is most important for any consumer.
As I've previously reported, today's consumers interact with mobile devices, web browsers, people, environments and spaces, and so on. Each act of interaction between a consumer and a service is called a “touch point.”
Contact points can be not only digital, but also analog or offline.
Take, for example, a modern bank. What points of contact can we highlight here?
- bank website;
- web service “client-bank”, where the user can carry out transactions with his account and bank cards;
- mobile application “client-bank”;
- a physical bank branch, which can also be considered a product. Just like with websites, a bank branch has its own navigation system.
Suppose you came to the bank with some purpose and are not yet very familiar with the rules of its work. If the navigation was poorly designed, you may not be clear who exactly to contact to solve your problem. You have to contact the girl at the reception, who may have a separate queue of clients.
With this example, I wanted to illustrate the simple idea that bank branches can and should be designed similarly to websites.
What is a Customer Journey Map?
So, what is a Customer Journey Map (for short, simply CJM)?
CJM is a directed graph on which the path of the consumer of the provided service is mapped using contact points. CJM records details of interaction with the service.
That is, CJM reflects exactly how a consumer interacts with a service — what touchpoints exist, through which channels the interaction takes place (web, mobile app, offline point of presence, etc.), as well as what happens inside each touchpoint.
Here are examples of typical CJMs (pay attention only to the outside of the diagram for now):
customerexperienceplanning.com
thebridge.nl
Let's look at a simplified CJM example:
Mel Edwards, 2011
You see three representatives, each representing a different consumer group. In the process of consuming a service (achieving a goal), they have to interact with different products. At each point, an act of service occurs with a certain level of quality:
Mel Edwards, 2011 & Alexey Kopylov, 2013
The overall service experience typically depends on the quality of service across all touchpoints. The principle of the weak link applies - one unsuccessful interaction casts a shadow on the entire service. Therefore, it is very important that every touchpoint is handled with maximum quality.
However, it happens that all interaction points are implemented just perfectly, and problems are hidden at the borders of transition from one point to another. That is, it may turn out that all the company’s employees serve customers well, but some consumers still do not achieve their goal:
Mel Edwards, 2011 & Alexey Kopylov, 2013
Let me illustrate this with a simple example: many online stores require you to go through the registration procedure and, often, there is such a step as confirming the registration using a special link that comes to your mailbox (this is necessary to prove that a real person is registering and not a robot) . In this case, the likelihood increases that the user will not be able to complete this step: perhaps the letter with the link ended up in spam, perhaps the user made a mistake and entered gmail.ru or another non-existent address instead of gmail.com, perhaps he completely forgot that he needed to confirm registration. In the examples known to me, user losses at this step reached 70%!
How could we reduce these barriers? For example, you can control what exactly the user enters as an email and offer to correct obviously erroneous addresses. Next, if the user has not clicked on the link from the email message within several days, then you can resend him an email with the link. But the best thing, of course, is to abandon this step altogether - to use other methods of protection against robots!
In general, you should always implement the system so that any point of contact motivates the consumer to move to the next step (the principle "push"), and the next point pulled the consumer from the previous point of contact (operation "pull"). The push-pull principle promotes a smoother consumer interaction with the service.
Let's remember the example of listening to music. In fact, Apple has a way to transition from listening on iPhone to listening on Apple TV, namely AirPlay technology. However, not all consumers are aware of the magic technology and therefore cannot take advantage of it. There is a rule that functionality that users cannot find does not exist for them. It would be possible to implement the “push-pull” principle this way: as soon as the user finds himself in an area where Apple TV is available, he immediately receives a message (without interrupting listening) that he can turn on the audio system (connected to the Apple TV) and continue listening on her. Conversely, as soon as the user turns on the TV, he sees a message about what song is playing on the iPhone and what needs to be done to redirect the sound to the audio system (by pressing one button).
So, CJM allows you to take control of the process of designing services that are implemented using various interactive products, as well as clearly visualize the process of executing the service itself.
Problems solved by CJM
I will list all the tasks that CJM solves:
- Creating a continuous UX throughout the entire service consumption.
Remember the aforementioned push-pull. - Increased consumer conversion.
By reducing barriers, as well as by reducing losses during the transition from point of contact to point of contact, more consumers reach the target. - Increasing consumer loyalty.
Retention rate — the number of returning consumers increases if we designed and implemented a service without barriers. - Increasing the responsibility of company specialists.
Each touchpoint has its own responsible employees on the company side. After we have mapped all touchpoints, all employees in the company can see who is responsible for what and how they cope with their responsibilities (if we set up KPIs for each point). This in itself increases the level of responsibility. - Accelerate the development of omnichannel services and products and improve the quality of development.
Due to the fact that all parties involved in the development see more fully how the service is implemented, and also see all the potential weak points of the service and can intervene in their development in a timely manner. - Create new and exciting interactions.
It becomes possible to come up with and implement new innovative features (remember the example about continuing to listen to an audio recording when moving from one device to another).
Everything looks great, but how to create CJM?
Creating CJM, step-by-step instructions
Step #1. We identify all points of contact and channels of interaction
We map all the points of interaction of a typical consumer with a service. Let's not forget anything! It may turn out that there are hidden points of interaction that you were not aware of. For example, you may find that consumers solve some problems informally—using social networks (which is often the case). That is, one of the company’s employees contacts the consumer directly within the social network and helps him achieve his goal. Everything must be recorded, including such points of interaction!
To avoid missing anything, use the mystery shopping technique, that is, go through all the steps of a typical service consumer yourself. You can also find an external company that will professionally identify all touchpoints using a large number of respondents.
Remember that one CJM diagram is drawn per target group (or per character if you are using the persona technique)!
Next, it is important to identify all possible channels of interaction for each point. That is, to determine which devices are used to interact, for example, it could be web browsers, mobile applications, phone calls, Skype calls, email, social networks. Don’t forget about offline channels - visiting offices, meetings with couriers, meetings with agents, and so on. Again, unexpected channels may emerge; for example, you may find out that a huge number of consumers access from mobile devices. And it may turn out that your website design does not take this interaction channel into account.
Graphically, CJM can have a different form - the diagram can be linear if the nature of interaction with consumers is also linear:
desonance.wordpress.com Can be branched if consumers have multiple alternative interaction scenarios:
Alexey Kopylov, 2013 May have a temporary form - suitable for displaying interaction with the service during the day:
customerexperienceplanning.com We can make several CJM charts for different consumer groups and for different purposes.
Step #2. We describe the points of contact
Now every touchpoint and every channel needs to be described.
Here is the typical information we need to capture:
- Interaction channel
Points can have several channels; we list all channels. - Target action, scenario, success criteria
We describe what the consumer wants to achieve in this interaction. We also describe how the ideal interaction scenario occurs, as well as what needs to be done if the consumer has problems. We describe specific criteria for the success of passing the scenario - we need this to collect statistics on the quality of passing each point of contact. - Point/channel criticality
Helps you concentrate on the most critical points. - Barriers
We list all the problems that consumers may encounter within this touchpoint. - Ways to reduce barriers
For each barrier, we define countermeasures that we must implement when optimizing the service. For example, as in my registration confirmation example, we can control which emails the consumer enters and offer to correct errors in the spelling of the address. - Conversion and ROI optimization
We count the number of consumers who came to a given point to the number of those who successfully reached the next interaction point. Ideally, if all consumers have reached the next point (coefficient = 1.0). This is the main KPI of the point of interaction and the company employee who implements this interaction. Conversion will allow you to calculate the economic effect of reducing a particular barrier. For example, you can calculate that lowering the barrier within a certain touchpoint will increase conversions by 20%. By tracing this 20% further down the CJM chain and reaching the point where the consumer brings in money, you can fairly accurately determine how much money optimization of this point will bring. If at the same time you also estimate the costs of reducing the barrier, then you have a value for the ROI (return on investment) coefficient. Having the ROI value, it will be quite easy for you to prove to top managers the benefits of such optimization. - Other KPIs(for example retention rate, time per contact, etc.)
We can come up with a large number of KPIs that more fully characterize the quality of service at a given point. - Psycho-emotional state, degree of frustration and stress
We can obtain this data by looking at consumer complaints or using qualitative research methods (interviews, field observations). As well as the degree of criticality of the point of contact, this information helps to concentrate on the most important points of service delivery.
Important tip
When describing touchpoints, use consumer language, not your professional language.
Below are examples of descriptions of interaction points. I mapped a loyalty program for an oil company.
Alexey Kopylov, 2013 
Step #3. We find out who is responsible for what within the company
For each point and channel, we add the name of a specialist or group of specialists, on whose actions the success of interaction with the consumer depends.
Depending on the level of development of the company, this task can be very simple, or, on the contrary, very difficult. The more opaque a company is, the more difficult it is to collect such data.
The situation gets worse when employees find out that you are going to record KPIs for the quality of their work. Some employees may begin to sabotage the KPI collection process; they simply will not give you the necessary data. First, you need to convince all employees that fixing KPIs will help improve the quality of service, which, in turn, will contribute to career advancement. But typically, there will always be a couple of bad apples who will stand in the way of increased transparency — and to overcome that resistance, you'll need support from senior management.
Attention, ethical question!
Not everyone works strictly according to work instructions. Some employees may bypass them to improve efficiency. In this case, anonymize the sources of your information as much as possible.
Step #4. We optimize the most critical points/channels
We take the most critical interaction points and lower the barriers within these points.
Let’s take the example of an oil company — barrier #2 of step #3:
This barrier can be reduced by properly presenting information in the form of a sequence of actions (using graphics similar to comics). Just remember that any optimization must be tested after implementation — does the new version of the contact point really work better than the previous one?
Also consider whether you were able to implement the push-pull principle to motivate consumers when promoting CJM?
A more radical way to optimize is to remove unnecessary touchpoints. The figure below shows the CJM diagram before and after optimization. In the right diagram, unnecessary levels of hierarchy were removed and the chain of interaction as a whole became shorter.
Alexey Kopylov, 2013 Step #5. Taking control of the optimization process
We set the optimization process to be regular. After fixing the most critical touchpoints, we begin to progressively optimize the less critical touchpoints. At the same time, we organize regular collection of KPIs (including conversion). We constantly check all changes in the UX of services and products against KPIs.
In this way, we consistently improve the quality of our service and earn credibility within the company. It is important to start with the most critical ones, in this case it will be easier for you to get approval and budget for other service improvements. Taking on everything at once is expensive and time consuming and risks concentrating on unimportant problems.
Tools for creating CJM
Post-It notes
Use Post-It notes to start working on CJM, for brainstorming, to build hypotheses and record preliminary results. Leaves encourage group work and are probably the cheapest tool and fastest way to secure CJM.
Beautiful schemes
At an advanced stage, you can draw a sexual diagram in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, in which all points of contact are presented as deliciously as possible. Such schemes are suitable for presentation to various top managers to obtain additional funding. However, these diagrams are static and inconvenient for development, and they lack most of the descriptive information. Do not abuse such schemes!
Excel + diagrams
I currently work using two tools: Flying Logic to draw the diagram and Excel (or Google Docs) to enter information for each touchpoint. Flying Logic is quite well suited for such diagrams, as it was originally made for constructing theory of constraints diagrams, which interfaces quite well with CJM. The disadvantage of this method is that you have to constantly synchronize the chart and table in order for the information to be up-to-date.
Alexey Kopylov, 2013 Web service Touchpoint Dashboard
This is the only web service I know of that is specifically designed to work with CJM. You can not only record CJM, but also create cross-tabs like importance/ease of implementation/effect or time to fix/cost of fix/effect. Such cross-tabs will help you decide on the procedure for optimizing the service.
touchpointdashboard.com It all looks very nice, however, the cost of the service looks like this (per month):
touchpointdashboard.com - $175 per user
- $625 for 5
- $950 for 10
In my opinion, this is still too expensive for most teams — we’re waiting for a competitor to appear, I’m sure after that the cost will drop.
Results
Finally, I will briefly list the benefits of using CJM when redesigning a service:
- CJM allows you to spread knowledge about the real state of affairs with consumers in your company.
- Helps bring top managers' attention to glaring facts or potential growth opportunities.
- Helps calculate the ROI of CJM optimization.
- Contributes to the development of a development strategy for services and products that include them.
- Improves communications within the company.
- Increases the level of staff training (we go beyond pure UX).
- Improves the organizational culture of your company.
- Most importantly: it improves the quality of service, which contributes to the loyalty of your consumers!
A comprehensive user experience is a real discovery for many companies. After all, if you improve products/processes purely for show, how can you make sure that they will be easy to use for customers? This is a common reason why target customers leave early in the sales funnel.
With the Customer Journey approach, we see what stages a potential consumer goes through when interacting with a company. This technique allows you not only not to lose customers, but also to increase conversion in each next step. Read in this article how to use it for different types of business.
For whom is this relevant?
The Customer Journey technique is suitable for all cases where the purchase decision is delayed in time. These are most often IT and information products. Users, before paying for them, think about it, study it, weigh the pros and cons. SaaS solutions can even be tested - as a rule, they have a free trial period.
Also, understanding the consumer journey will be useful for online stores and B2C products/services that users are looking for on the Internet (purchase of household appliances, installation of suspended ceilings, paid legal advice).
Products and services with “super-hot” demand are not suitable here - car towing, ordering pizza, urgent printing of business cards, etc., since the decision is made instantly.
The essence of the technique
- How does the target audience contact you?
- What stages do users go through before making a purchase?
- What emotions do they feel?
- Where barriers appear;
- How successfully do they move from stage to stage?
The ultimate goal is to find ways to improve user experience in particular and business processes in general.
Ideally, all touchpoints work in concert according to the “pull-pull” principle: any contact point “pushes” the consumer to the next step, and the next one “pulls” from the previous one.
As a result, you get a “road map” that shows how to engage and bring the user to purchase from the moment of the first touch.
Step 1: Creating custom scripts
The IT product consumer chain will look something like this:
For an information product the chain is as follows:
When purchasing B2C goods/services, the user goes through four main stages:
The process of ordering a product from an online store:
Think about how to activate the user at different stages, what to offer him in order to bring him closer to the next stage and, ultimately, to conversion. Free trial period for SaaS products and other types work well.
This is a valuable offer for a nominal cost or free, which will fuel interest in the main products. For example, free cosmetics samples, an e-book or participation in a webinar at half price, cheap related products, etc.
In these diagrams we showed only the most basic stages. You can build more detailed diagrams if you include all the intermediate steps, right down to which button to press. And for email newsletters, plan trigger chains of letters depending on user actions (opened / did not open the letter; followed / did not follow the link from the letter).
Here is an example for an online store from the CarrotQuest service:
Develop a KPI system for each touchpoint to measure the effectiveness of business processes.
Step 2. Analyze and identify barriers
The impression of a product consists of what the user receives at all stages of interaction. When the visitor sees the first desired results, he has the epiphany “this is what I need!” These are the so-called aha moments, which increase the likelihood of conversion to a client.
For example, when a user logs into the YAGLA service, he enters the values of the replaced elements and, using the preview function, sees how they look on his website.
An example for an online store is adding a product to the cart. The user finds something he likes in the assortment and will probably pay for the order soon.
At the same time, if something goes wrong, it can have the opposite effect. Even one “weak link” can ruin the whole picture: a broken link, incorrect contact information on the page, a problem with placing an order, etc.
Barriers are obstacles that prevent the consumer from moving to the next step. To identify them, follow these steps:
- Calculate the conversion rate for each stage to know what percentage of consumers reached the next point;
- Identify barriers at touch points. If 90% of users move from the first step to the second, and 5% from the second to the third, it means that something went wrong in the second case. For example, a user encountered a very confusing ordering process in an online store.
The effect of reducing the barrier can be assessed. For example, as a result, conversion increased by 15%, calculate how much money this 15% brought to the company. Based on the cost of reducing the barrier, the return on investment (ROI) can be calculated.
Step 3. Mapping (Customer Journey Map)
In a visualization, a Customer Journey is a graph or chart (Customer Journey Map, or CJM for short). It displays the contact points and detailed information about each.
The main advantage of a consumer journey map is objectivity, since the creation uses analytics of real events and only proven hypotheses.
Advantages of the approach
- Increased consumer conversion. The fewer barriers to entry, the more consumers reach their goals. And therefore, they bring more profit;
- Increasing consumer loyalty. More visitors become clients;
- Rational use of the budget;
- Timely quality improvement. It is clear how to evaluate contact points, their strengths and weaknesses, and where they need to be improved.
In the Customer Journey concept, the consumer is at the center of attention. The more you know about him and his behavior, the more likely you are to find the right approach to him and create the perfect product.
P.S. The Customer Journey concept is the basis of a digital strategy, which we will discuss in the next article.
High conversions to you!