With so many products and services available to consumers, and constant brand communication brought on by social media and the internet, customer experience is more important than ever. In fact, according to a Walker study, by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as key brand differentiators. So what are you doing to make sure your customers are always satisfied when engaging with your company?
Customer mapping is a tool marketers can use to see their brand experience from their customer’s perspective. By identifying each touch point, you are able to evaluate your company’s performance and their satisfaction, as well as figure out how to optimize the experience. Sound useful? Lets take a deeper look into the benefits of customer mapping and some top tips to help you get started.
Why You Should Be Mapping Your Customer Journey?
At the most fundamental level, mapping your customer journey helps you to identify various touch points as to when and where your customers are interacting with your company. By giving you this almost-outside perspective to your sales process and the journey, you can use the information for a number of benefits. You can identify whether the process is in a logical order, pinpoint any gaps in service and highlight areas of opportunity. For example, if you have a website, mapping can show you at which points your customer is most likely to leave your site, as well as what assets are encouraging purchases. From here, you are able to focus your efforts and give yourself clear direction for marketing.
Top Tips To Mapping Your Customer Journey
1. Get the info from your customers, not in-house
Remember that this is a customer journey map, not a company journey map, so it should all be from the customer’s perspective. When identifying each phase of the journey, think about what your audience’s goals are for being in that stage of engagement, not what you intended their goal to be. To do this, gather information straight from the source by talking to your customers regularly — you will gather valuable information about their thoughts, opinions and experiences with your brand.
2. Focus on multiple touch points
While you and your marketing team may have a main focus point for improvement this year, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other aspects you should be improving. A customer’s journey is wholistic, with different touch points impacting on the next, creating a fluid process. As such, when mapping out their journey, take the whole journey into consideration when analyzing, rather than just looking at a singular interaction.
3. Manage the information and use insights
The customer journey won’t be an effective tool unless you manage the information properly. Software like a cloud contact center, for instance, can help you analyze your brand’s customer service team, and assess where they are performing well and where they are falling short. Use as many tools as you’d like to collect the right information and keep it organized so you are able to actually utilize the insights and optimize your customer experience.
Providing your customers with the best possible experience should be a main goal for all brands. By providing a superior service, you are not only improving your brand image, but gathering loyal customers that will ensure your long term success. Customer mapping will help you get there so start utilizing it today.
