A different way to look at your customer journey map
What is a customer journey?
A customer journey refers to the customer’s interactions with your organization, brand, product, or service. It can be defined as a series of steps or even reflect the readiness of the customer to make a purchase. When presented as a visual representation, we get a customer journey map.
Why do businesses create a customer journey map?
A Customer journey map ensures that the interactions between you and your customers are accurately captured. Mapping customer journeys ensures that the avenues a customer reaches you are accounted for. Doing so empowers you to optimize the customer experience and ensure no customer falls through the cracks. The goal is to ensure that every customer’s experience with you is positive.
How are customer journeys typically mapped?
There are two popular ways in which customer journeys can be mapped.
Customer journey by stage
In this approach, the customer journey stages are distinguished by where the customer is when it comes to purchasing the product. The stages are pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.
Pre-purchase
In the pre-purchase stage, the customer is trying to gather more information about products or services that could cater to their needs. The goal here is to generate awareness for your product or service.
Purchase
In the purchase stage, the customer has realized that your product or service is right for them and is in the purchasing process. The goal is to make the experience as simple and easy as possible.
Post-purchase
In the post-purchase stage, the customer’s experience revolves around using and maintaining the product to cater to their ever-changing needs. This is where the after-sales support, service and customer success matter most.
In this approach to mapping a customer journey, we loop back to the pre-purchase stage and start over during the expansion of usage or purchase of an upgraded version.
Customer journey, according to Kotler
Kotler called it a customer path and broke it down into 5 As:
Aware
In this stage, the customer is first exposed to your product. The exposure could be via ads, social media posts, billboards, and even word of mouth. The goal here is to firmly plant yourself in the customer’s mind. The goal here is not to sell but to get the customer interested.
Appeal
Here, your brand or product’s message has resonated with the customer. They will research your company and what other customers say about you. It’s vital to shore up on reviews and testimonials to get this stage right.
Ask
If your pull efforts have paid off, you can expect your customers to reach out with questions about what you have to offer. As you may have noticed, the stakes get higher and higher with each subsequent step.
Act
This is when the penny drops. If everything works well, the customer takes the plunge and signs up with you.
Advocate
The stakes got even higher because this stage is all about making the customer your advocate. Customers who are happy with your product or service are not only more likely to make a repeat purchase, but they’re also more likely to refer you to their networks.
A different way to look at the customer journey
If you noticed, both approaches to the customer journey discussed above suggest that each stage’s customer experience must be positive. This is where we discovered another aspect to the customer journey that we’ve overlooked.
Julian De Freitas is an Assistant Professor in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School, and according to him and his colleagues, with whom he conducted the research, customer journeys can be viewed as mental patterns customers experience over time. Some patterns may be more satisfying and desirable, while others may not.
According to their research, a desirable customer journey has the following characteristics:
Avoid yo-yos
De Freitas suggests that the experience should be smooth and void of too many fluctuations at the customer’s end.
Ramp things up as you go along
The suggestion is to arrange your offerings to improve the experience over time. Examples of this can be seen in cruise ships, where the entertainment shows improve as the cruise progresses.
End on a high note
The end of your customer’s journey needs to be memorable. The quality of the experience entirely governs referrals and repeat purchases. For instance, the staff at a popular resort ensures that the team sees guests off en masse when they check out.
Have one memorable spike
Whether it’s ringing a bell to tell the restaurant employees you had a great experience and the staff bursting into a cheer or Disneyland’s end-of-day fireworks display, have one experience that leaves a lasting impression.
What this means for existing customer journey maps
Having a map is still important. It allows you to still look at the individual stages and make improvements that contribute to the overall customer experience. However, the holistic approach unlocks an essential aspect of how CX managers should invest their resources while trying to improve their customer journey. Whether to throw money at each step of the journey map or collect more data, create a higher-resolution picture, and invest selectively.
References:
https://hbr.org/2023/03/what-is-the-optimal-pattern-of-a-customer-journey
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/summarizing-the-mental-customer-journey-julian-de-freitas