Customer journey mapping has been rising in popularity in recent years as a topic all over the internet, including our own blog. There are various reasons why companies are starting to use journey mapping when creating their customer experience (CX) program, but the primary reason is that it helps explain important information in a relatable way that helps people better understand the necessity for CX programs. Understanding the customer’s journey and their outlook on your company can provide a great help when trying to update your CX program or create a brand new one. However, the reality with creating a customer journey map is that people are bound to make mistakes that can hinder the success of a CX program. In his recent article, Brian Doyle presents the five biggest mistakes he sees in customer journey mapping.
1) Starting A Customer Journey Map Without An End Goal: When companies are making a journey map just to make one, they’re setting themselves up for failure. Making a journey map isn’t a goal by itself, the journey map should be created to improve areas of your business. Doyle’s article gives examples of end goals such as, “I want to improve customer retention,” and, “I want to increase customer satisfaction.”
2) Process Mapping Instead Of Customer Journey Mapping: Are you processing the actual customer journey points, or are you mapping simply internal workflows and other things the customer never sees? The journey map should be created from the perspective of the customer and how it benefits them, so the points of emphasis should reflect this.
3) Getting Your Employees’ Perspectives, But Not The Customers’: Getting employees’ input on the customer journey can be very helpful for companies in many ways, but it can’t be used in lieu of customer input. The only way to know what a customer is thinking about your company, products, and services before and after their purchases is by asking them. If you want to truly understand the hearts and minds of your customers, you need to do research through surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other in-person and online methods.
4) Only Looking At The Existing Customer Journey – Not What Could Be: When looking at the journey map, Doyle recommends looking at the “white spaces” to see what parts of the journey could be improved. Are there any points in the journey where customers felt unhappy or uncertain? Perhaps that’s a point where changes to the journey could be made. You never know when a small change in the process could lead to a major solution that increases customer satisfaction.
5) Not Systematically Prioritizing Your Improvement Efforts: Doyle says that the best approach for selecting the right area to improve based on the journey map is by determining which improvement would provide the biggest bang for your buck. Basically, look at the data to determine which customer journey touchpoints show the highest level of customer loyalty likelihood and focus your efforts on those points of the process.
This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:
Top 5 Mistakes in Journey Mapping – Brian Doyle
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