Understanding who your customers are and what they want is an essential part of any business. Without knowing, you simply won’t be able to craft effective campaigns that target the right people! By creating a customer journey map, you can create a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your business to help you make better-informed decisions. Let’s take a closer look at exactly how you can craft a customer journey map.

What are customer journey maps?

Essentially, a customer journey map helps you tell the story of your customer’s experiences with your brand across all touchpoints. A customer journey will help to provide you with an understanding of the needs and concerns of potential customers which directly motivate or inhibit their actions. This information then allows your business to boost customer experience, leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer retention.

Did you know that nearly 70% of online shoppers abandoned their cart in 2021? This goes to show that, it’s more important now than ever to make sure your customers are converting by crafting a planned and tailored journey.

Types of customer journey maps

When it comes to planning a customer journey map, there are four types to choose from depending on what it is you’re trying to achieve. 

Current State

Current state customer journey maps are often the most popular option. These maps help to visualise everything from actions and thoughts right up to emotions. Current state maps are best suited for continually improving your customer journey.

Day in the Life

Day in the life customer maps are similar to current state maps in terms of visualising actions, thoughts and emotions your customers currently experience. But, day in the life maps look more closely at the activities in which customers partake in on a daily basis, whether that includes your business or not. This type of journey map helps to give a wider view of your customer’s lifestyle and also pain points. Day in the life maps are perfect for identifying and addressing unmet customer needs before customers even know they exist. 

Future State

Future state customer journey maps, just like current state and day in the life maps also help visualize what actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers will experience. The only exception being that future state maps look at what your customers will experience during future interactions with your company. Based on what their current experience is, you’ll have a clear picture of where your business fits in. Future state maps are best suited to illustrating your vision and setting clear, strategic goals for the future of your business.

Service Blueprint

Last but not least, service blueprint maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including people, policies, technologies, and processes. They are best used for identifying the root causes of current customer journeys or identifying the steps needed to attain desired future customer journeys.

When to use a customer journey map

It’s important to have a customer journey map in place already, but you may want to create more specific maps if you have a set goal in mind. Take a look at some specific examples of how you can utilise customer journey maps below!

Improving customer retention rate

If you’re looking to improve your customer retention rate, utilising a customer journey map can be incredibly beneficial. Having a complete view of your customer journey will make it easier to pick out areas where you can stand to improve it. Here, you can increase retention by decreasing pain points for customers who are on the path to jumping ship.

Creating a new target customer base

Feel like you’re not reaching the right people? If you don’t fully understand your customer’s journey, you probably don’t really know who it is you’re trying to sell to. Creating a customer journey map to identify the needs and pain points of your customers will help you understand more about who you’re trying to target. Once you know who your demographic is and what they require you can adapt your sales and marketing strategy to fit. Don’t forget, you can even create customer journey maps for specific channels like email marketing or social media!

Develop your customer service strategy

A key player in your customer’s journey with your business is good customer service. If you’ve found that customers aren’t sticking around, it could be worth looking at a tailored customer journey map. Your customer journey map is like a roadmap to your customer’s experience. You’ll be able to identify what works well but also what they’re not loving. Knowing more about your customer’s touchpoints with your business will help you to shape your customer service strategy accordingly.

There truly is nothing more important than getting to know your customers inside out! So, why not take a look at some of our other customer-based blogs? Read How to Use Social Media for Customer Acquisition for tips on bringing in new business! Or how about How to Build Customer Loyalty to discover how you can keep customers coming back!