Customer Journey Map: What It Is And Why You Need One
CJM (Customer journey map) shows the client’s perspective of the interaction between the company and the client.
Brief history
The customer journey map was designed in 1998 by OxfordSM when creating the Channel Tunnel company Eurostar, after which the customer journey map has become one of the most popular service design tools.
This map includes:
client’s portrait —
collective image of the client and behavior patterns;
contact points —
where the client interacts with the product: search engine, social networks, mailing lists;
interaction barriers —
problems that arise in the process of interaction and make it difficult to purchase a product;
client’s feelings and fears —
including the interest in the product, comparing prices and analysing reasons or even doubts for not buying it
CJM is designed on the basis of data from web analytics, surveys, questionnaires and personal experience of clients. This map can be done in advance by a company’s employees to foresee a customer’s journey.
Key difference and conclusion
Customer’s journey, the path that a client makes while interacting with a company is described not only by a CJM, but also by a sales funnel. However, these concepts are different.
In the sales funnel, the company describes the path it plans to take the client through; in the journey map, it describes how the client views the path.
In addition, the sales funnel is linear — the client consistently goes through its stages, but human behavior can be chaotic, irrational and unpredictable — the journey map reflects all the fears, doubts, problems on the way to making a decision.
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