Helping your customers begins with taking their point of view. As more and more brands adopt a customer-centric attitude, many are also discovering the value of creating customer journey maps. By analyzing data as well as feedback from both customers and employees, your company may develop maps that reflect customers’ experiences, feelings, and motivations as they interact with your brand. As pain points are determined, your company may then design ideal customer experiences. Here are five questions to ask yourself when creating customer journey maps.
When creating customer journey maps, every channel must be considered as well as the experience of transferring from one to another. For example, what happens when a customer needs to move from social media to live chat? Are agents able to make that transition without asking for repeat information? Do customers waste time during that transition? Understanding every minute detail of the experience across all channels is crucial to improving the customer journey.
The main goal behind creating such a map is to eliminate possible customer pain points. This needs to be done at every possible touchpoint and should take into consideration both the sales and the service processes. For example, your map should identify what happens when a customer makes a purchase via your website, the phone, or an app. For service, you should consider how effective each channel is—live chat or messaging apps, for example, might prove to be more easily accessible to customers than the phone.
The technology your company uses in customer interactions must always create seamless experiences. For this reason, it’s absolutely essential to consider the impact of every tool or software solution used. For example, IVR menus need to route customers properly, CRM databases must be up to date and easy for agents to use, and chatbots should only be used to help customers with concrete tasks. If your technology is not making your employees’ and customers’ lives easier, rethink your strategy and offer employees additional training to optimize their performance.
Not all customers will interact with your brand in the same manner. For example, older generations may be more likely to contact you on the voice channel, whereas younger generations may have a preference for social media or messaging apps. Consider the possible behaviors of your different demographics, and then determine the pain points that may occur specifically for these individuals.
While your KPIs will tell you a lot about your agents’ performance, the feedback of both agents and customers can provide greater insight about areas where things might go wrong. For example, customer service agents might report problems with certain channels or cite frequent customer concerns. Your customers will add even more detail by offering their comments, explaining exactly how your customer journey really works and what should be improved. Customer journey maps are highly effective for visualizing how customers are actually interacting with your company. By identifying obstacles and revising these maps periodically to reflect any changes to your company’s strategies, you can give your customers the seamless experiences they want.
