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Essential Components of Effective Customer Journey Maps

By Robert M. Keay

Essential Components of Effective Customer Journey Maps

Commonly known as compact visualization of an end-to-end customer experience, customer journey maps empower businesses to make value-driven decisions. They help stakeholders deepen their understanding of customer’s behaviors, feelings, and thoughts throughout their journey.

However, building customer journey maps is hard. There are essential components you have to consider for results that meet your goals. Take a close look at the following attributes:

Build Customer Journey Maps from your Customer’s Point of View
A customer journey map that is designed on an internal business point of view will use business processes, systems, and other people as the foundation of visualizing the journey. Typically, they will layer the customer into a foundational perspective. Instead of thinking about the stages of the journey from a business process perspective, you should focus on everything that your customers do. This also involves how they feel and what they think.

Capture Customer’s Perceptions of their Experiences
In creating journey maps, you should have a purpose that’s actionable. Not only do they identify positive and negative emotions, but they also help you put them in the context of customer behaviors and expectations. Most businesses take advantage of their data to determine opportunity areas and evaluate the impact of current and future investments.
For instance, key pain points can be assessed by evaluating the cost. Also, investment in positive movements in the customer journey can be evaluated to ascertain its optimal level.

Illustrate Customer’s Journey across Different Touchpoints
Most enterprises are organized in silos. Each optimizes channels, touchpoints, and other aspects of customer experience. It is not common for every group to measure customer experiences independently. However, clients think of their interactions with a provider as connected. Not only does it impact customer experiences, but it also drives the need to orchestrate the experience across different touchpoints.

Integrate Performance Indicators
Another critical function of customer journey maps is to determine opportunity areas. This is based on an understanding of your client’s perceptions towards their experience. Performance indicators offer an evaluative framework for making the maps effective.
Most customer journey maps get the most out of qualitative insights. Visual indicators that meet and exceed expectations are used. You can take advantage of this approach to ascertain and assess other opportunity areas.

Visualize Customer Journey
For you to optimize stakeholder’s understanding and engagement, it’s necessary to visualize your customer’s journey. Customer journey maps become powerful when they can incorporate other information into the map with other elements. They are also effective when they inform and engage your targeted market. Moreover, you can use different versions to go beyond the needs of your audience.

Result-oriented customer journey maps are considered science and art. Make sure to optimize your investment by combining all the above mentioned necessary components. Also, collaborate within your company to gain the best strategy, design, qualitative and quantitative CX insights. Plus, work with visual designers to acquire engaging journey maps in the future.