The customers who purchase and use a company’s products or services are highly influential in the success of a business. This concept transcends all industries because, at the end of the day, without customers, there are no profits. There is a reason that the phrase “the customer is always right” was coined; it remains a testament to how important customers are.
Innovative ideas, methods for evaluating customer satisfaction, and data analytics have transformed the way that businesses understand, interact, and treat their customers. Customer journey mapping provides valuable insight into customer’s needs, which allows them to better serve their customers.
What is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer journey mapping is a process in which a business analyzes each step a customer takes, from the time they consider your business to the time they complete a transaction. In a nutshell, customer journey mapping empowers executives to create customer personas and understand who their customers are, which then lets them visualize how their customers experience their business. All of this contributes to a better understanding of the customer experience at their facility through the customer’s eyes.
1. Identify Your Customers
If a business does not know who its customers are, it is likely not providing the best customer service. Customer journey mapping involves creating customer personas, often derived from data, which can help businesses identify customers and further categorize customers based on demographics, behaviors, and needs. Surveys and analytics are valuable data points that can give business professionals an understanding of who is using their products or services. Once the customers—and types of customers who use the product or service— are identified, the business can look further into understanding the customers and how they can better serve them.
How Data Analytics Helps Identify Customers
Because every individual has come with their own set of biases, using data helps to take away that which could impede identifying the customer base. Doing so through unbiased data will give insight into behaviors and customer desires that might not be readily apparent. Using unbiased data analytics can help give insight that is untainted by feelings, preconceived notions, and beliefs. For example, a business may think its product is catered only to one demographic, but in reality, it is something that everyone uses. Without the unbiased data, they would have been neglecting that customer base. Especially in healthcare settings, understanding the patient’s experience through customer journey mapping can go a long way toward providing better care.
2. Understand Your Customers
Once a business identifies its customers, it can begin to investigate their wants, needs, and preferences more deeply. Customer journey mapping examines customers at every stage of the process and how they act, think, and behave. Knowledge is power, and knowing the customer is the first step in realizing expectations, providing exceptional service, and driving profits. This contributes to learning how to better serve customers. Customer journey mapping is an exercise that forces a business to consider how a customer behaves and gives them the space to compare that to their preconceived notions of the customer, which may provide new insight and valuable details to identify issues and address them. Ultimately, this process helps businesses figure out what’s working and what isn’t for their customers.
How Data Helps
Again, unbiased data is incredibly useful for learning about customers’ habits, desires, and even things they do not like. Data analytics can be used to identify patterns and preferences, which could include anything from the time of day they shop or utilize a service to whether they are tech-savvy. It’s also efficient, providing impactful data in the blink of an eye. By using data analytics to establish customer journey mapping, businesses can track customer interactions across multiple touchpoints to learn what matters to customers, how they operate, and what they like and dislike about a business.
3. Use Customer Journey Mapping to Improve Service
No business, service, or person is perfect, which is why it is important to identify pain points, problems, and business failures so that they can be promptly addressed and improved. Customer journey mapping gives businesses a window into their customer’s minds, allowing them to see the business from the customer’s perspective. This sometimes means identifying less-than-desirable things that a business owner, marketing manager, and sales manager might miss. Identifying failures and problems can lead to improvements if they are addressed properly. For example, business executives might not be aware that there are long hold times to speak with a customer service agent, but with customer journey mapping, this data could be uncovered, which leads to an opportunity for improvement. Data can be used to identify positive and negative trends, leading to better service.
4. Use Customer Journey Mapping to Measure Satisfaction
Another way that customer journey mapping is useful is that businesses can find out where they excel! The data uncovered is not always negative or information that a business doesn’t know. Sometimes, it can be helpful to reaffirm processes or beliefs that something is working. This process, and especially when data analytics are involved, can help uncover and identify strengths that can be applied in multiple areas. Instead of wasting time with boring meetings, the team can analyze real data, allowing them to pivot strategies to better processes and the customer experience.
Get Customer Insight Through Customer Journey Mapping
Getting customer insight through customer journey mapping might seem overwhelming. A business might not have the manpower to conduct it, or it might not be a task that your team knows how to do. While businesses can certainly go about conducting their own customer journey mapping, another option is to leave it to the experts to collect data, analyze it, and impart wisdom. There are opportunities to improve customer experience by outsourcing customer journey mapping and implementing any recommended improvement plans or actions.
Leave CX to the Experts
If you’re ready to gain valuable insight into your customers through data-driven customer journey mapping, contact Credence today to get started!
