What is Customer Journey Mapping

The technological innovations today have brought to light the most important element which businesses depend on. Yes, those of you who have got it right, it’s the customer whom I’m talking about. No matter what kind of cutting edge technology you introduce into your business, it all boils down to how you serve the customer.

So businesses have started to use technological tools to analyze how they can bring about customer satisfaction which in turn leads to better sales and productivity. This is what businesses aim at in the first place. Customer journey mapping is one such tool that describes the interaction of the customer with the organization right from the engagement to the buying and feedback, and later on updating the product or service or choosing another competitor, which gives birth to yet another journey.

Visualization for Better Service

Mapping of customer journey involves all the interactions or touch points of the customer with the business in a form of blue print, but with a greater stress on certain aspects. This is a more simplified version, which eliminates the redundant data and focuses on the pertinent details only. This mapping tool is considered perfect for identifying customer interaction, thought processes, and their reaction towards you. All these factors are, I’d say, ideal for revealing the business opportunities you have to boost customer experience improvement and innovation. Accordingly improved management decisions can be arrived at and better services will be provided, which makes all the interaction with the customer a better process.

Weeding out the Inconsistencies

It is not sufficient if your organization has a great communication system and an exemplary customer support staff. In my opinion, if the administrative processes don’t work optimally and your infrastructure is not conducive, the relationship you want with the customers or the public in general can be debilitated beyond repair. The mapping of customer journey aims at removing all such inconsistencies that exist in your organization and managing the customer behavior in a consistent and reliable manner possible.

When you map the customer journey you can:

Serve customers in more effective manner

Retain them

Increase efficiency in all interactions with customers

Reduce damaging customer experiences and enable a consistent and reliable service irrespective of circumstances

Strategic Business Processes

According to statistics released by Fortune magazine, 85% of customers dissatisfied with the service tell about it to 10 people, while the satisfied one tells 5 and the customers who are delighted reveal to 8 people. The scope of mapping customer journey depends on the information you want to generate that can be used in various levels of the business process including communication and marketing aspects. For instance, I’d recommend using it for assessing the wide scale behavior of the customers and for enhancing communication, or for focusing on a particular interaction made by a specific customer segment.

Increasing Positive Customer Response

To enhance customer experience and improve the reach, sales, and productivity of your business the journey should include steps like:

Represent the interactions as experienced by customer not only directly with you, but also via web search or social media.

Represent the different individual segments, which vary in the customer experience they record.

Include the customer objectives you have set at every stage of the entire process

Target the emotions and touch points including the points where you are not in control

Prioritize the critical moments of interactions which matter more than the rest.

Measure your company’s implementation of the promises assured, while marketing the brand. The journey map shows precisely how the customer feels about your meeting the brand objectives.

Time is an important and relevant factor that should be part of the map. The length of experience is very crucial. How much time the customer spends on deciding to buy your product, shows the effectiveness of your marketing, customer service, and the product quality.

Customer journey maps mostly use Power Point presentation, which is mostly restricted to bullet format of presentation. Instead I’d suggest using desktop publishing apps to convey the depth of experience more powerfully.

While the technological tools used in researching customer data make it easy for you, I’d recommend not including too much data, which can make the entire thing complex. Customer journey mapping is just a tool to understand the customer and his or her needs, which is what you should focus on to make it profitable for both you and your customers. You can contact Tata BSS to know more about this and the ways to implement it.

About Tata BSS:

Tata Business Support Services (Tata BSS) is a leading customer lifecycle management service provider. We provide customer acquisition, retention and administration services to 46 organizations so that they can grow their customer base, protect their brand and drive efficiency. Founded in 2004, Tata BSS is headquartered in Hyderabad, India and has 11,000 associates of whom 85% provide Sales and Customer Administration services to our clients. We serve industry leading clients in North America, Europe and India across major industry verticals. Tata BSS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, the holding company of the 146 years old Tata Group – India’s most reputed brand. Visit us at www.tata-bss.com.

Kwds:

Customer Journey Mapping, Customer lifecycle management, Customer retention management, Customer lifecycle management Company

Customer journey mapping is a tool that describes the interaction of the customer with the organization right from the engagement to the buying and feedback, and later on updating the product or service or choosing another competitor, which gives birth to yet another journey.