One of the many reasons you could fail to attract customers is your lack of knowledge about your target audience. And while it may seem enough to determine their wants, needs, and issues once, you're mistaken. Understanding your customers is a continuous action you must do to strengthen your relationship with them.
As a business owner, you must understand their experiences at every stage of their journey as your customer. From when they discover your brand to the time they consume your products. This way, you can boost customer retention.
Creating a customer journey map can help you visualize how people feel at all brand touchpoints. It allows you to avoid potential problems in advance, learn how to connect with them better, and find critical information to improve your processes and make the wisest decisions. To help you understand its concept better, let's delve deeper into knowing the definition of a customer journey map.
What is a Customer Journey Map?
From the word itself, a customer journey refers to the experiences your clients have with your brand. It includes every action they take as they interact with your company—from the first encounter and purchase to the following transactions.
In addition, a customer journey is not something you can assume or predict based on your internal perspective. It is particular to their actual experiences with your brand. Thus, the best way to know that is by asking for feedback.
In light of this, we can say that customer journey mapping is simply the process of documenting those interactions. The map serves as a visual representation of your customer's experiences with your company. And it gives you insights into their needs and concerns, which influence their actions.
After learning about all of this, how does customer journey mapping help grow your business exactly? Let's get started!
How Customer Journey Mapping Can Help in Growing Your Business
Customer success is one of the keys to growing a business—and having customer journey maps will help you achieve it. Here are some of the things they can do::
Understand Your Customers Better on An Emotional Level.
The customers' emotions and feelings when interacting with your brand are related to their future behaviors. Those behaviors have a direct impact on the growth of your business. And customer journey mapping can help you capture those emotions at every touchpoint. It's like putting yourself in their shoes to experience how your brand treats them from the first interaction and beyond. The map answers the questions about their experience. For instance, for the times they can't get in touch with your customer service when they have issues, what do they feel?
Customer journey mapping is about developing empathy for your consumers and determining their feelings at each stage of their journey as your customer. You'll only truly grasp your consumer's perspective if you extend empathy for them. You can use your customer's viewpoints as a springboard to address any issues they could encounter when working with your business.
Create More Personalized Experiences.
People are overwhelmed with lots of information in this digital world. Therefore, one way to stand out from all of this is by providing a personalized experience. Giving your customers what they want or need when they really want it can bring a big difference.
Nowadays, when people see an ad on any platform, they either skip or close it. Therefore, to get their attention, you have to make sure that it's tailored for them. You can only have an impact on your customers if you remain relevant to them. That's when customer journey mapping comes in.
The information you get from your customer journey map can help you personalize your marketing approach, products, and services. And once you've taken this approach, expect better responses, conversions, and even sales from your existing and potential buyers.
Recognize Opportunities To Improve All Your Strategies.
A well-plotted customer journey map will allow you to take a step back and see things from a different angle—your customer's point of view. It will help you spot crucial opportunities you might have overlooked otherwise. The map can help answer questions such as:
Is my online user interface intuitive and up to par with customers' expectations? Why does the user leave the website so quickly?
How frequently does my consumer contact customer service, and can the team resolve the problems quickly?
How does the customer connect with my brand before deciding to buy? How are they feeling at this stage?
When you have a holistic understanding of your customers, you can better grasp their needs at every touchpoint and adjust your strategies to meet them.
Increase Upselling Opportunities.
As you might already know, another way to boost revenue and grow the business is by upselling. It is an act of offering your customers additional products at the time of sale.
With a customer journey map, you'll be able to increase your chances of upselling. Since you understand their needs and where they already are in their journey, you'll know what and when you can offer complementary products or services they might be interested in, even if they didn't ask for them.
For instance, if you sell a product that runs on batteries, you may want to offer batteries as they go for checkout. Or if you're a clothing retailer, if someone buys an outfit, you can recommend some accessories that match it. The options get clearer and better if you know your customers—and that's the goal of a customer journey map.
Boost Customer Retention While Turning More Prospects into Customers.
You'll only know that your business grows when you already have new customers while keeping the old ones. But before we go to how customer journey mapping turns prospects into customers, let's start with customer retention.
Mapping your customer journey can help you identify those individuals on the path to churn. Seeing the patterns in their behavior and actions, you'll be able to spot the chances of them leaving before doing so. And when you do, you'll have time to think to prevent this from happening. Even if you don't retain all of them, having at least 5% retention rates can increase profits by 25-95%.
Now, in gaining new customers. As you know, most of the time, people who discover a new brand always look at its reputation by reading the reviews of those who support it. That said, improving the experience of your current customers with the help of a customer journey map will also help attract new ones.
The Bottom Line
Customer journey mapping allows companies to improve their strategies and boost customer experience—from enhancing their products and services to learning a better marketing approach. Taking the customer journey mapping approach will only lead to higher conversion rates. So, if you're finding it challenging to grow your business, mapping your customer journey now might be your chance.