The first step to improving your customers’ experiences is to view their journeys from their perspective.
Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is a highly-effective, practical method that creates a rich, tangible, customer-experience visualisation.
It allows you to examine interactions from the customers’ points of view, both emotional and intellectual, thereby illustrating the detail of the actual Customer Experience and enabling all stakeholders and executives to identify, understand, measure, prioritise, and improve, the service-experiences that matter most to those customers.
Whilst Journey Mapping can be both inspiring and powerful it is not an end in itself – it is one of a variety of methods that can provide a deep, holistic understanding of your customers. Frequently, the very process of mapping the customer encounter can surface significant benefits. ‘Getting close’ to customers and ‘walking in their shoes’ can lead to unexpected insights, and the perspective on customers that it provides can be a highly-effective, visual technique for winning the hearts and minds of employees at every level of the organisation – from the front-line to the boardroom.
Simplicity
There are many journey mapping techniques and methodologies available, but, at a basic level, the approach is very straightforward and anyone who is involved with customers, directly or indirectly, can contribute.
Scalability & Scope
Whilst journey mapping can, if necessary, entail formal, primary research and substantial budgets, it doesn’t have to be that way. It is perfectly do-able to start off simply, easily and cheaply – perhaps with an informal team, focused on a single process. Then, when results are achieved and confidence, capability and competence have grown, add deeper and deeper levels of sophistication and broaden the scope.
At the end of the day, Customer Journey Mapping is about improving your services and satisfying your customers. The critical first step, however, is to just get started – start conversations with like-minded colleagues, build momentum, use lo-tech, if you want, but start mapping and make improvements!
A Customer Journey Map (CJM) Canvas
Now take the next step on your journey
If you would like to find out more about how we could support you in travelling along your Customer’s Journey then, please, get in touch.