A step-by-step guide for customer journey mapping success

Find out which steps to take when undertaking a customer journey mapping initiative

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Darcy Alexander
01/13/2023

In this step-by-step guide, CX Network outlines the six key steps an organization should take when embarking on a customer journey mapping initiative.

Step 1: Define customer journey mapping

A customer journey map comprises rich data that illustrates the touchpoints customers come into contact with your company. They can be defined as a ‘visual representation of every experience your customers have with you’ and labelled as both an art and a science.

The purpose behind traditional journey mapping, says CX consultant Kerry Bodine, is to get a holistic perspective of what the customer is experiencing from their point of view, on both a personal and human level’. The ultimate goal is to increase customer loyalty by offering well-planned and streamlined customer care and experience from start to finish.

According to Forrester Consulting, however, 87 percent of businesses do not have the ability to orchestrate customer journeys at scale. Customer journey mapping can, therefore, provide the foundation to good CX as it deepens a business’s understanding on its customers' needs, pain points and touchpoints, enabling the application of technologies such as self-service systems.

Read more: What is CX?

Regardless of the approach, name or style of mapping, the end goal remains the same: to develop a true visual representation of how a customer moves and experiences each phase of their CX journey. Once qualitative and quantitative research has been completed, adaptive paths can be implemented within touchpoint inventory.

Step 2: Clarify the importance of customer journey mapping

In his powerful and much acclaimed book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey’s second habit “begin with the end in mind” is the embodiment of customer journey mapping.

The questions to ask are "how do I get my customers to do what I want them to do on my website?" And "how do I help my customers achieve their goals on my website while still achieving mine?"

Spending time on customer journey analytics will increase customer loyalty. When the market grows, an increase of competitors comes with it, meaning companies need to be agile and build well-structured, stable plans of action. It is here they can map to find out why their customers interact with them.

The most critical customer journey moments for building and retaining loyalty are quickly finding answers to basic questions and resolving customer service matters. Resolving non-technical customer service issues was revealed to be the touchpoint in most need of improvement in research from Oracle. Many customers who experience issues at a touchpoint will not bother to contact you, which places the impetus on a brand to identify and fix points of friction.

Organizations need to measure interactions at touchpoints and collect feedback from the customers. If an issue is suspected, feedback facilitates the location of the root cause to eliminate the problem. By removing friction, the customer’s risk of dissatisfaction is reduced.

Step 3: Design your journey map

Designing a customer journey map can seem daunting but working out where to begin and which software to use mark the first steps in the design process.

"There is always some existing data in organizations pointing to some customer pain points and low-hanging fruit," explains Bodine. "I encourage my clients to really go broad and look at quantitative data.

"Customer journey mapping is a qualitative process and it should not be compartmentalized but taking all of that and building on it," she advises. "And start at the beginning with on-boarding and the first experiences customer have."

Pioneers in journey mapping often rely on using data to predict customer experience and shape the direction of the industry by mastering the ability to connect various touch points. By striving to obtain a customer centric focus to decision-making and building empathy for clients, journey maps can be the perfect tool to demonstrate to executives and business stakeholders the impact of the process changes customers have to face.

Most organizations have some form of map for individual processes, often driven by their different routes to market, but Victor Milligan from Forrester counsels the importance of having a single view.

By building a single view of the customer and identifying moments of truth and points of friction in user journey, inefficient processes can be eliminated, while rules and policies that do not coordinate with a company's strategy can be re-evaluated.

Employees should be involved from the very beginning as they will benefit from understanding customer participation and updated business processes.

Relying on software is not a necessity. Gero Niemeyer from Deutsche Telekom says that the telecoms giant did not use any particular software when embarking on customer journey mapping, but what was helpful was the integration of journey maps into product development processes.

It is important to invite a broad mix of stakeholders to the table. If all of members are too senior, they may be completely disconnected from work happening on the ground with customers, which could skew how representative the map is. If the map is due to radically transform how the company works, however, C-level and senior stakeholder buy-in will be crucial.

Step 4: Getting started with customer journey mapping

When starting on a customer journey mapping strategy, begin with an honest appraisal and ask, "What do we really know? What do we think we know? And what do we know that we do not know?"

Customer journey mapping is all about understanding what motivates your customers, so the key is finding out what their needs are, as well as their hesitations and concerns. Simply knowing who a brand is talking to is not enough, however, so it is essential to align with what customers want to accomplish when they visit a brand's website. Ensure the mapping pathway tracks first-to-last interactions.

Oliver Kipp, chief customer officer at MaritzCX, says: “The customer journey map starts by identifying the key moments a customer has with a company before, during and after the purchase of a product or service. The review should include the customer’s desired outcomes, emotional needs and possible pain points.

The most successfully mapped companies dig deep into their data-driven research, giving them an insight on customer retention to reinforce the bottom line. This status does not appear to be the norm, however, with more than 50 percent of global marketers reporting that they have fair, little or no knowledge of the customer demographic, behavioral, psychographic and transactional data. Just six per cent say they have excellent knowledge of the customer, according to MaritzCX.

Organizing all the rich data available will allow brands to take actionable steps to improve how they manage customers’ experiences on websites and in person.

Start the mapping process by defining the behavioral stages a typical customer will go through, then more specifically via each touchpoint. Once that is in place, introduce customer personas to create a ‘lens’ by which to view the journey. Each persona can yield its own map becoming the reference point by which to base the journey.

Step 5: Use customer personas to refine your journey mapping

A persona is a "research based archetypal representative of your customer based on various attributes, attitudes and characteristics", said Tony Zambito circa 2002. “Buyer personas are modelled representations of who buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behavior, how they think, how they buy, where they buy and why they make buying decisions.”

It is noteworthy, however, that not everyone believes that user personas are valuable. When marketers got hold of personas, they can assign frivolous names such as “Social Butterfly Brenda” or “Value Hunter Valerie” which effectively collapses nuanced research into a single concept and ultimately trivializing research.

The power of user personas fade when they fall within the following five categories of mistakes:

Making up data
Using too much irrelevant data
Using only qualitative or only quantitative data
Believing your personas to be perfectly representative of reality or that they never change
Creating too many personas (three to four is generally the recommended amount)

User personas are only as good as the research behind them. Base personas on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data via in-depth exploration and analysis.

Step 6: Keep the process simple

The concept of journey mapping is to make the process of delivering exemplary customer experience better. So, to make life easier, here is a simple journey map for journey mapping from top CX training institute CXL.

1: Define the behavioral stages

Use persona research from initial qualitative and quantitative research. From here the knowledge acquired of the process will inform how customers navigate a website or service.

2: Align customer goals with the stages

Arguably the most crucial step. Understand customer goals and what they want to achieve before making these findings a priority. Incorporate survey answers, user-testing feedback, interview transcripts, customer service emails and support transcripts.

3: Plot out touchpoints

Touchpoints can be found by looking at Google Analytics and will be grouped under the relevant stage in the customer’s journey.

Behavior flow report. This provides a visual path showing how users move from one page or event to the next, helping brands to understand where their users are struggling to get to where they want to go.
Goal flow report. This will help determine if users are unexpectedly leaving the website in the middle of their journey or if there is a place where traffic loops back.

4: Determine if customers are achieving their goals

Look at where roadblocks are appearing and determine whether potential customers are abandoning their purchases on checkout pages in large numbers. Also, check analytics on opt-ins on download pages. The reports generated from Google Analytics will offer precise points where issues crop up. Qualitative research will help with understand the why behind the problems.

5: Recommendations for change

Prioritize which pages and touchpoints to address first. Rank pages by ease and cost effectiveness to implement changes. Then, it will be a matter of determining what to test.

Free customers from pre-defined journeys and enable them to explore your brand on their own terms

Unshackle your customers from rigid journeys. This report sheds light on optimizing the journey experience to boost satisfaction and revenue, while addressing common roadblocks.

This page was originally published on January 11th, 2019, and was updated on January 27th, 2023.

Topics: Customer Experience Technology Financial Services Retail Digital Telecoms Customer Data, Insights & Analytics