Customer Service Glossary
Table of Contents

    What Is Customer Journey Mapping?

    Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a physical diagram or digital rendering of the buyer’s journey. The data visualization method centers around the wants, needs, tasks, memories, and perceptions each consumer experiences throughout the customer journey. 

    Customer journey mapping enables leadership, managers, marketing teams, and customer service departments to understand the steps customers take each time they interact with a brand through its website, social media channels, or storefronts. Customer experience maps also allow companies to analyze and improve vital performance factors, including:

    • Consumer purchasing and behavior insights
    • How customer service impacts the customer experience for a company’s target market
    • The expectations and opinions that customers express to representatives and colleagues
    • The roadblocks, problems, planning, feelings, frustrations, and optimization opportunities that customers encounter
    • How innovation could provide organizations with a competitive advantage

    Most importantly, the diagram provides businesses with a better understanding of their customer base and how customers interact with their brand, website, and customer support agents. When paired with a comprehensive user experience strategy and omnichannel customer relationship management plan, journey mapping can empower businesses to identify pivotal moments throughout each purchasing phase and deliver a positive interaction at every stage.

    How Does Customer Journey Mapping Impact Customer Service?

    Customer journey mapping may seem like a marketing or sales tool. However, the technique directly impacts and enhances customer service departments in several ways, including: 

    1. A Better Understanding of the Customer Base

    Customer journey map development is a strategic attempt to learn more about each customer, their expectations, opinions, and pain points, and what incentives can be used to drive them through the purchasing funnel. Companies can apply information obtained during the process to every area of business, ranging from website content creation to marketing efforts to product development, customer support, and more.

    Customer experience analysis directly impacts customer service departments by providing insight into a brand’s customer base. Customer service agents can customize their assistance, offer real-time, relevant assistance, and streamline customer service offerings with personalized recommendations and interactive experiences. As a result, customers are nearly 50% more likely to make an impulse purchase. 

    2. An Enhanced Customer Experience

    Customer journey mapping defines and conceptualizes the customer experience, including the tasks, emotional stages, and touchpoints that customers navigate while making a purchasing decision. When customer support departments completely understand the customer experience, they are better equipped to provide helpful solutions, resolve concerns more quickly, and increase satisfaction ratings by as much as 20%. Further, your company’s representation teams show more empathy and feeling when interacting with customers.

    3. Intentionally Placed Touchpoints

    Finally, creating a visual customer journey map allows businesses to incorporate more touchpoints into the purchasing journey. Typically, touchpoints already exist throughout about 60% of the customer experience. After creating a customer journey map, customer care departments can identify more pivotal moments to engage with shoppers and guide them to the next phase of their journey. 

    How To Develop A Customer Journey Map

    The customer experience mapping process involves three broad steps, as follows. 

    1. Choosing A Journey to Map

    Before a business begins developing user personas or visualizing the customer process, it must first determine a goal – or journey – to map. Some companies prefer to focus on the most profitable pathways. Others may opt to focus on the lead generation journey via social media and other digital communication channels. Regardless, the outcome influences the journey. 

    2. Developing User Personas

    Next, brands should create customer personas, or archetypes, that represent their target audience. Personas should contain a substantial amount of details, including: 

    • Name
    • Age
    • Location
    • Income
    • Marital status
    • Occupation
    • Goals

    The characters will then navigate the customer journey and make decisions based on their wants and needs. 

    3. Conceptualizing the Mapping Process

    Finally, teams can begin conceptualizing the customer journey. Also known as a behavior line, the mapping process incorporates the users involved in the purchasing journey, the tasks or processes that occur during each phase, the emotional state of the users, and the pivotal moments that each user will encounter. 

    Customer Journey Mapping for Support Departments

    Customer journey mapping can transform marketing, sales, and assistance efforts by identifying areas to enhance the customer experience. In addition, the details obtained from a customer journey map empower agents as they provide real-time assistance and personalized care to both new leads and loyal consumers. 


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