4 Major Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping and Why You Need It in 2021
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn a reputation by trying to do hard things well.” – Jeff Bezos.
In today’s highly competitive business landscape, taking the customer’s perspective into consideration is very important to understand their expectations and experience with a brand. This is why a lot of companies are now focusing on customer journey mapping to assess a user’s experience and identify areas where improvements can be made.
The arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has played a very important role in redefining customer expectations. Today, an average consumer uses around 10 channels to communicate with companies and brands.
The increasing number of customer touchpoints has paved the way for tricky customer journeys that are not very easy to understand. In addition, as customer touchpoints continue to increase, it is becoming increasingly challenging to provide an optimal customer experience.
Having said that, customer experience has become more important than ever before. A Salesforce research revealed that around 80% of customers consider their experience with a brand to be equally important as their products and services [1].
At present, customer expectations are evolving at a rapid pace driven by a range of factors. The main question here is: why do brands require customer journey mapping?
In this article, we will take a look at the major benefits of customer journey mapping and how brands can offer a personalized experience to their customers.
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Customer Journey Mapping: Definition
Customer journey mapping refers to the process in which a customer’s journey map with a brand is created. In other words, when you create a visual story of a customer’s engagement with a particular brand, it is known as customer journey mapping.
This exercise provides in-depth insights into a customer’s challenges and how they can be addressed.
Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping
1. Improve team collaboration
It is very common to see companies of all sizes operating in silos. When we say operating in silos, we mean that the internal teams are not very proactive in sharing data, tools, goals, files, and more with other departments within the company.
This fragmentation within the internal processes leads to a very subpar customer experience.
For instance, one department may have all the information about different customer groups to make critical decisions. However, on the other hand, other departments may not have access to such information, which could affect customer experience.
Customer journey mapping solves this problem! When you create customer journey maps, you have a clear picture of how different departments work in tandem to cater to the requirements of customers.
Apart from unifying different departments, customer journey mapping provides a 360-degree view of all customer interactions.
Marketing and product managers also understand more about the type of interactions customers are having with the support team.
When the decision-makers use this information to craft relevant and effective strategies, it increases the chances of customer acquisition and retention by a significant margin.
2. Understand your customers
Brands that do not compromise on providing a seamless experience to their customers are more profitable and also show a faster growth rate.
Besides, when you provide an out-of-the-world experience to your customers, you are likely to get more positive referrals. This means that you do not have to spend big on marketing efforts.
Despite this, a lot of companies ignore the importance of providing a spotless experience to customers due to the wide customer empathy gap.
This is why customer journey mapping is so important! It allows you to step into the shoes of your customers and take action from an empathetic perspective.
Customer journey mapping allows companies to understand the thought process of their customers and use data to influence their experience at critical moments in their buying journey.
3. Content marketing strategy
Today, nearly 2/3rd’s of the brands face challenges while optimizing and sourcing relevant content.
Besides, nearly 70% of customers have revealed that their shopping experience was not up to the mark when the experience was impersonal [2].
Today, customers are increasingly moving in favor of brands and companies that provide a personalized experience. In addition, more customers are bound to engage with your brand if you deliver tailored and relevant content to them.
Customer journey mapping can take your content marketing strategy to a whole new level.
When you create a customer journey map, you will recognize a range of hurdles, pain points, and positive areas of every customer’s journey.
Since every customer’s buying journey is unique and different from others, you require a comprehensive understanding of various parameters. These parameters include a customer’s behavior, demographics, desires, values, and more.
Once you identify these, you are presented with a bunch of personalized content opportunities, which you can make the most of by crafting tailored and ultra-personal content.
4. Create a seamless experience
As we have mentioned above, your customers are interacting and engaging with your brand via different channels across their buying journey.
Within each of these channels, your customers expect a spotless experience.
One of the main advantages of customer journey mapping is that you can easily put your finger on areas where you need to improve.
The key areas can be identified when you have a clear understanding of how your customers navigate between different touchpoints through their journey.
Era of personalization
Although customer journey mapping provides multifold benefits and enables you to offer a flawless customer experience, you should remember that every customer may not take the same route.
This is why tailoring and delivering personalized customer experiences has become very important.
Customer journey maps lay the foundation for your brand, but as every customer is unique, you should be aware of what channels you should rely on to deliver the most relevant content at the right time.
The advent of data analytics within the commerce sector is proving to be a game-changer. Besides, as visual analytics combines extensive customer data with content intelligence it is helping brands curate a personalized content experience via your website and other marketing mediums.
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Feature Image Source: rawpixel.com
Image 1 Source: rawpixel.com
Image 2 Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/coolinsights/18092125306 used under the license Attribution 2.0
Sources:
[1] (2020) “What is Customer Journey Mapping & Why is it Important?” Salesforce [online] Available from: https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2016/03/customer-journey-mapping-explained.html [accessed July 2021]
