UX Diary #2 — Customer Journey Map
Hello again! I’m diving deeper into the UX methods and here are the results about Customer Journey Map.
I posted my notes about Service Blueprint on previous post via UX Diary. You can click here to read that post if you didn’t.
What is the Customer Journey Map?
Customer Journey Map (CJM) is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, a service or any combination.
CJM is a very helpful tool that represents the whole interaction with a product or service in a transparent manner. It clearly points out the strenghts and weaknesses of each stage of the interaction — particularly those that affect the user experience. CJM also show the possibilities for improvement.
It’s too complex, is it? I scared when I saw this image first. But we shouldn’t scare anymore. It will be clear when we learn the basics.
Let’s dive deep and look into basic principles of CJM and create a basic CJM together.
Touchpoints and Channels
Touchpoints and channels are crucial elements of any customer journey, but they tend to get mixed up when it comes to actual mapping. We will describe these two definitions and find the difference between them and settle this issue once and for all.
Touchpoints
Touchpoint is a moment in time when an interaction happens between a customer and a product, a service or business in general.
This includes situations that happen on the website, through marketing, personal interactions or a phone call.
If customers find out something about the product, sign up for a newsletter, buy something or give feedback, thay do this by touching the business.
A few examples of touchpoints:
- Product Demo
- Help&Support
- Checkout Form
- Booking
- Giving Feedback
- Collecting Information about a Service
- Signing Up at an Online Service
Channels
Unlike touchpoints, channels are a medium of communication between a company and its customers. It is the environment where touchpoints occur.
A few examples of channels:
- Social Media Ads
- Mobile App/Website
- Forums
- Call Center
- Talking to Friends
The Difference betweenTouchpoints and Channels
A touchpoint happens when a customer has a certain need, e.g., register on a website, find a product, make a payment etc. And they are looking ways to satisfy this need where as a channel is means provided by company to meet this customer need.
Elements
For each of touchpoints the customer will complete several actions and activities, which will be different for each industry and business but could be summarised into the classic types.
Stages — X Axis of CJM
Awareness
Awareness is where your potential customer is aware that they have a need or a problem and they are now researching information and actively seeking out answers to try and solve their problem or need. Think of the awareness stage of the customer journey as your first impression.
81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.(2017)
Consideration
The prospects have done their initial research and are aware of some of the options they can choose from. However, the research phase isn’t over yet. They have narrowed down their options but they are still going to search for more information.
This is the stage where they are comparing your product or service to other solutions on the market. This is where they are doing price comparisons, reading customer reviews, checking out competitors, and learning more about the details of your product or service to see if it could be, in fact, what they have been looking for.
65% of consumers spend 16+ minutes comparison shopping before making a purchase.
Purchase
The purchase stage is where the prospective customer is ready to select from their options and making a purchase. By now the potential buyer has done all the research they need to be well informed on which services will best fit their needs and which companies they believe will be the best fit.
It’s at this stage of the customer journey when customer reviews are crucial. 97% say Customer Reviews influence their purchase decision.
Use
This stage is arguably the most important stage in the overall customer journey. It’s hard to build enough trust with a prospect to turn them into a first time buyer, so once the brand have gain their trust and their business, the brand should be working hard to maintain it. During this stage the brand should be following up with the customer to get their feedback on the product or service that they purchased.
Bond
This is the stage of the customer journey is when the customer becomes an active advocate for thebrand. They say great things about the company, they refer their friends and family to the brand, they generate the most powerful kind of marketing the company can ever have which is word-of-mouth.
Activities — Y Axis of CJM
Actions
What is the customer doing each stage? What actions are they taking to move themselves on to the next stage?
Motivations
Why is the customer motivated to keep going to the next stage? What emotions are they feeling? Why do they care?
Questions
What are the uncertainties, jargon or other issues preventing the customer from moving to the next stage?
Why is the customer motivated to keep going to the next stage? What emotions are they feeling? Why do they care?
Barriers
What structural, process, cost, implementation or other barriers stand in the way of moving to the next stage?
Creating a CJM
1- Gathering all information you already have about users and the way they use the product or service.
2- Identifying information gaps and filling them by running additional studies with real users.
3- Creating user personas based on gathered information. (I will examine the persona method as an another blog post)
4- Drawing your Customer Journey Map with using all this knowledge.
Let’s practice!
I created a basic CJM for one of my clients — which I’m consulting digital marketing — that a women shoes e-commerce brand FYSLShoes.com. I used UXPressia.com for creating this CJM and it was a good experience.
While I’m writing the details of Motivations Segment of Purchase Stage, UXPressia.com send me a message as a pop up. “You created the %60 of CJM. Behave yourself nice and go take yourself a coffee or a tequila!” or something like that. I think that’s a great example of UX writing!
The next part of UX Diary will be about Personas. Click here to follow me and join my journey!
Sources:(articles attached as links) uxdesign.cc, powerdigitalmarketing.com, hbr.org, usabilitygeek.com, smartinsights.com, uxpressia.com
