Customer Journey Mapping

The overarching goal of every enterprise is to acquire, retain and grow its customer base, building a valuable strategic and financial asset. 

A successful CRM strategy creates value for owners and shareholders, just as it creates value for customers. CRM can be thought of as a company-wide business strategy to develop a customer-centric organisation and culture that focuses on building relationships with customers based on mutual trust, respect and value. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not a technology solution, but technology is a key enabler. Cloud-based software CRM solutions for small, medium and large enterprises have enabled firms to capture, manage and analyse customer data gaining a deeper insight into customers’ needs and wants. These insights also help firms with the allocation of resources and provide the basis for more personalised and tailored interactions and continuous learning building reciprocal value. 

The culture of a customer-centric organisation is defined by employees who can empathically identify with the customer and can see themselves through the ‘eyes of the customer’ and thus act more authentically and in the interest of the customer.

Customer engagement typically happens at certain touchpoints, such as inquiries, a booking, satisfaction check, or a complaint. Best practice is to engage with customers in a way that relates to their daily lives.  

A customer journey spans a variety of touchpoints by which the customer moves from awareness to engagement and purchase. Customer journey mapping is primarily used as a tool to investigate, analyse and improve customer experiences. 

Great seamless customer experiences can sometimes appear as if they are magic. Successful brands focus on designing a seamless customer experience that ensures each touchpoint interconnects and contributes to the overall customer journey. Think of companies such as Ritz Carlton, Apple and Disney who delight customers’ day in day out. Customer service is no doubt in their DNA, but they also map their customers’ journeys and deliberately craft the ideal customer experience and then align resources to purposely fit that experience. Customer centric businesses have a holistic approach to service design and look at long term gains. They intently listen to their customers, ask for feedback and observe them.

A customer centric business sees itself through the eyes of its customer and recognise that customers will be experiencing its business in a variety of different situations using different technologies, different channels, and different media. They may be in touch direct or indirect using intermediaries (agents) and affiliate partners (e.g. Google, Tripadvisor). Touchpoints are often referred to as moments of truth and are opportunities to bring positive brand experiences to life.

However, often businesses focus on getting the next sale and only optimise customer journeys towards the booking phase of the journey instead of exploring the customers’ entire journey and lifecycle. The different touchpoints in a customer’s journey and at the core the actual travel experience are critical moments and windows of opportunity to create WOW moments that customers want to rave about and experience time and time again. 

By understanding the customer journey and your customers’ needs, expectations, motivations, and feelings you can become strategic about what you want the ideal customer experience to be.

A customer journey map is a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, it shows the whole customer experience across multiple touchpoints. 

There is no single right way to create a customer journey. It is a creative tool and works with visualisations. It is meant to inspire, energise and kick-start good conversations.  And it’s the conversation that matters and the opinions and ideas it brings to the surface.

Journey maps come in all different shapes and forms, but they all have some things in common:

• Capture customers’ motivations, emotions, actions, attitudes, barriers, and pain points
• Help employees put themselves in customers’ shoes
• Focus on customer’s true needs
• Identify critical touchpoints 

A customers’ journey (travel) can be captured as follows:

• Awareness (Dreaming, Inspiration) 
• Consideration (Researching, Comparing Options) 
• Booking (Final Planning, Decision Making Process, Post-Booking) 
• Travel Experience 
• Post Experience (Customer Feedback and Advocacy)  

The more touchpoints you have, the more valuable such a map becomes. Visualise what you would like the ideal customer experience to look like at a multitude of touchpoints. Focus on the touchpoints you can realistically resource and design those experiences.  

It is quite common to deliver great customer experiences at some touchpoints but not others. The varying stages in a customer journey require different content (owned content versus user generated content), interaction and customisation. For example, in the awareness/dreaming phase consumers want to get inspired, entertained and educated. Your customer persona may enjoy seeing amazing images, reading travel stories in magazine and online travel blogs, watches travel documentaries on TV and follows her friends travels on Facebook. In the consideration phase, your persona may look at travel reviews on Tripadvisor, visit your website and southaustralia.com, contact her friends who have travelled to your region and look for social proof. In the booking phase, your persona wants more factual content – content to convert/persuade – including prices and terms and conditions. It is likely that your persona will visit various booking sites (travel agents, OTA’s, airlines) in addition to your own website. 

Once your persona has made a booking, he/she may need reassurance that he/she has made the right decision. Prior to her going on the trip he/she may plan out all finer details to ensure the trip as hassle free as possible. During the actual travel experience, your persona ideally has the best time and want to share some of her travel highlights via her preferred App or social media site. When he/she is back home he/she invites friends and family over to her house to share the best pictures and greatest memories from the trip. This is another opportune time to re-connect with the customer. 

Once you have identified product or service improvements you can look at how you address them individually (touchpoint) and as an overall end-to-end journey. Improving touchpoints and the overall journey, often requires multiple parts of a company and partners to work together – think about what these mean in terms of people/teams, systems and processes. It may not be quick, easy and straight forward, it may indeed take time, but in the end, you will be rewarded by customer enthusiasm, loyalty, greater employee satisfaction and a competitive edge. It is a worthwhile journey!