See Your Business Through Your Customer’s Eyes: A Guide to Journey Mapping
What if you could see your business from your customer's perspective? A customer journey map is a powerful design tool that does just that. It's a visual representation of a customer's entire service experience with you.
All successful businesses map their customer's journey because it's critical for winning new customers and creating a service that people love. Unless you truly understand your customers' needs, wants, fears, and aspirations, you can't serve them properly. This tool helps you move beyond buzzwords and build a truly human-focused business.
Why Is a Customer Journey Map So Important?
In a world where we can get a meal, a car, or a new outfit by simply tapping our phones, customers are hungry for services that are seamless, simple, and fast. To create this kind of experience, you need to be able to step into your customer’s shoes and empathize with their situation.
Often, no one wakes up excited to hire a professional; it usually means they have a big problem to solve. Their anxiety is high, and they want to make the issue go away. When you take the time to step into their shoes and understand their journey, you can provide solutions that have real value, which builds trust and enhances your client relationships.
When you map the journey, you often have an "a-ha" moment when you realize the customer's experience is much broader than you see from your expert perspective. Their journey with you doesn't just begin when they first make contact.
The Essentials of a Customer Journey Map
When you create a journey map, you combine all your customer's experiences on a timeline. The service becomes a process with different phases, events, and touchpoints, all seen from the customer's point of view.
It is essential to look at the entire service experience, which can be simplified into three main phases:
Before: What happens leading up to the actual service delivery?
During: What happens while you are actively providing the service?
After: What happens once the service is complete?
You can then identify your typical touchpoints with the customer, a call, a meeting, a document draft, and explore how to improve them.
How to Create Your Map: The Mindset
Don't Assume
This is the biggest potential pitfall. Do not try to think like your customer, because you are not them. The only way to truly understand your customer is to ask them questions and then listen to their answers. Forget about being an expert with all the answers and get to know them without guessing.
Tap into Ideas
As you map the journey, you will discover opportunities for improvement. Physically write these ideas on the map to help move your insights into concrete actions.
Listen More Than You Speak
You have two ears and one mouth, so you should use them in that proportion. Some of the greatest inspiration comes from being present in the moment and listening, not anticipating what you will say next. This requires you to be curious and willing to learn from others. For experts in any field, this can be a new way of thinking, as it requires you to focus on what you don't know instead of what you do.
Every customer has a different journey, but over time you will see patterns emerge. This map will open up an entirely new world for you and your business. The possibilities are endless.
Let’s work on your customer journey together. Book a discovery call to see how I can help you.