Do you really want to understand your customers and keep them into account while developing your new website? With a customer journey map you can identify all their needs and wishes. The process of creating a customer journey map must begin with determining your target group and creating personas. You can find everything about it here. Well defined personas will lead you to a good customer journey map. But what is a customer journey map anyway?
The Customer Journey map: your customer inside out!
A Customer Journey Map (CJM) is a graphic and holistic view of the customer story. It explains the interactions and experiences of customers with the product and/or website in different stages. This is always done from the customer’s perspective. It maps the touchpoints of the users with the devices and channels and shows the actions, thoughts and emotional experience of the users throughout their journey.
The various elements that we find in every CJM are: the different stages, the interactions and experiences, the touchpoints and the emotions. All these elements together ensure that the reader of the CJM can fully understand the obstacles, the limitations and the subsequent actions of the user. With the slogan “It’s not your journey, it’s theirs.” in our mind, the CJM will now provide an answer to the overall question “Who is the user?”.
Once you have a clear and good CJM the next question will be: ‘When do I have to use this?’. The answer to this question is easy, ‘Always’. The CJM needs to be a constantly developing document that you can always use to refocus on the thoughts, actions and emotions of customers. Because a CJM creates a vision of the entire customer journey, it’s a tool for creating cross-department conversation and collaboration. And finally, it’s a valuable tool to identify areas in which you can differentiate your customer experience and at the same time differentiate your brand.
