Great products usually start with an idea to solve a problem. Products will sell themselves when customers can understand and value their impact.

However, you must understand your customer: their behaviours, why they buy and stay loyal to your business. A customer journey aims to describe this and also get insight into a customers thoughts before and after a purchase. This can be visualised in a customer journey map which shows the possible emotions a customer will have when they interact with your business.

Customer journeys can be daunting at first, however mapping the customer journey can help reduce bad customer experience and create a clear path to a good outcome.

What Problems Can You Solve By Understanding Customer Journey?

A customer journey should be like reading. If this blog post were filled with typos, yuo wuld tinhk its weidr. You would stop and start and get annoyed. The same thing happens with customers. If they don’t enjoy a smooth process or user experience, they’ll get annoyed and simply leave.

One of the biggest benefits to understanding customer journeys is that they force you to lay out and consider your sales process in an analytical way. They reveal opportunities to interact with your customer. As well as, ways in which you can address different emotions, whether they’re overwhelmed by initial research or skeptical of a sales pitch.

How to Prepare for Your Customer Journey Map

The first step is research. Ensure you have a clear idea of who your target audience/customers are. You likely already have basic data on your customers from website traffic and social-media analytics. These include, gender, location, time spent on your site and engagement.

The hard part is knowing how to interpret that data. A long time spent on your site might not be a good thing—it might mean the user is having a hard time finding whatever it is they’re looking for.

Using a social tracker that measures sentiment (positive, negative or neutral) will be helpful if your brand has a big enough social following. If not, a survey is a great way to gain insight into your audience and pinpoint areas you may not have realized needed improvement. It’s easy enough to entice people to take a survey if you offer them something in return, like a coupon or free product. (Plus, you’ll find an extra chance to grow your email newsletter.)

What to Keep in Mind When Mapping Customer Journeys

Always be sure to keep the customer first. This is about them, not you—you’re telling their story. Sometimes, what they think or feel might sound unfair to you, but if that’s what the data shows, that’s what you’ve got to fix.

Map out every possible interaction your business might have with a customer. From various ads (social, TV, radio, print, etc.) to their eventual purchase process, unpackaging, customer service and aftermath. Leave no moment overlooked.

Customer Journeys Never Really End

There are a myriad problems that you can realize, only once you put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Even once you’re done your map, you may not actually be finished. As your product stays with them and technology changes, you’ll want to revisit how well you and your business are keeping up with the times, whether strategies are becoming obsolete or whether customer satisfaction is changing.

Keeping on top of customer journeys is long-game work. However, it is necessary to maximise your business and stay ahead of the curve.

If you need assistance in creating your customer journey map, feel free to get in touch with Savvy Business Gals to see how we can assist you. Book a complementary 30 minute discovery call and find out how we might be able to help. Click here to book your call now!