You are on a journey: new path, new land, and new experiences. And this is precisely what your customer’s journey with your brand is! So how do you make sure the journey is smooth? Enter Customer Journey Map (CJM) — a mapping tool that visualizes and optimizes this experience.
What Is a Customer Journey Map?
CJM isn’t simply a tool, it’s your look into your client’s world. It’s a visual map of every interaction a customer has with your product or service, from their first interaction with you through to their last purchase — and beyond.
But can you draw a CJM once and be done with it? Not at all! It’s alive, growing, just like your business and the needs of your customers.
Why Is CJM Important?
Imagine this: a buyer is eager to buy, but finds himself in a long registration phase. What happens? Most likely, they’ll leave. CJM acknowledges these “pain points” and resolves them before they become detrimental to the deal.
CJM involves much more than just customer experience improvement; it can also involve streamlining your internal processes. It lets you know where you’re losing customers and how to get them back.
How to Make a Customer Journey Map
Understand Your Customer: Who are they? What are their struggles? What kind of solutions do they want? You have a clear customer persona that outlines their motivations and goals.
Map Touchpoints: Where does the consumer touch your brand? Website, social, ads, or possibly a chat with a sales rep?
Break the Journey Up into Stages: Segment the journey with stage-level attributes and holdups from discovery until post-purchase.
Identify Customer Emotions: What is the emotion driving the customer at each stage? Excitement? Frustration? By understanding these emotions in general, it allows us to empathize better and improve the experience.
Spot Weaknesses: Where does the customer not go the distance or switch to a competitor?
Take Action: There is no value in a CJM hidden in a stack of papers. Tackle the challenges, improve your processes, and scale what’s working.
Why CJM Works
Customer Journey Maps are strategy, with a side of empathy. And you can create experiences that drive your customer to return by knowing the reasons for their selection.
Consider the case of an online store that offers delivery services, for example. Customers feel uncomfortable when they don’t hear about order updates. Just a simple SMS or email update fixes the problem immediately.
Specialized tools for CJM
Smaply is a visualisation platform for client journeys, personas and storyboards.
Features:
- All in one interactive customer journey maps, personas & storyboards.
- Ability to add customer feelings (Emotional curves) to the map.
- Team collaboration in real time.
- Integration with Excel & PowerPoint (Export for presentations).
Price: Free plan with limited features. Paid plans begin at USD 25 / month.
Website: https://www.smaply.com/
UXPressia - CJM with collaboration, analytics & templates.
Features:
- CJM templates, analytics and real data integration.
- Business impact map demonstrating where steps of the customer journey need to be improved.
- Ability to automate the process with customer data.
- Personas & Impact Maps for deep audience development.
Price: Free plan with limited functionality. Paid plans begin at USD 16 per month (per user).
Website: https://uxpressia.com/
Custellence - straightforward and handy CJM boards.
Features:
- Simple interface with minimalistic look.
- Flexible CJM boards with no complex tools required.
- Sharing maps with the team via links.
- Export function to PNG and PDF.
Price: Free plan with basic features. Paid plans begin at' 30 a month.
Website: https://www.custellence.com/
Does Your Business Need CJM?
The simple answer is, YES, if you want happy customers who return. CJM isn’t a buzzword, it’s a tool to better understand and improve your business.
In conclusion
CJM helps you view your business through your customers’ eyes, recognize pitfalls and build a seamless consumer experience. Ready to take the first step? Today, starting to map will change not just your customer relationship, but your whole business.
