To provide better customer service, your startup business needs to understand how they get to purchase your products or services. That is where journey mapping becomes an essential process. But how do you do it effectively? And can you outsource it? Let’s find out.
Understanding What The Customer Journey Map Is
As the name implies, the journey map represents the customer’s interactions and experience with a business. It serves as a way for your startup business to get into their shoes.
At first glance, you might think that the customer journey map only focuses on the events that lead to a purchase. But that is not the case. The journey map actually extends beyond that, showing how your customers will engage with you after purchase.
Image from Nielsen Norman Group.
It is also worth noting that there is no single customer journey map. Every customer will have different ways of getting to your company. Specific journeys are also not linear. They might take different branching paths to make a purchase. That means you will often need multiple maps to better track your customers and guide them through their purchases.
The Importance Of Startup Business Customer Journey Mapping
This is where the customer journey mapping comes in. The work involves you identifying and assessing all of the possible touchpoints that your customers will use during their interactions. You then use that map to predict the possible directions they will take in different situations. While this work will be tedious, there are several benefits that you can gain from it.
A Clearer Picture of Customer Preferences
According to Salesforce, 80% of customers consider their experience with a company as important as the products or services they buy. Thus, having an experience they will like will contribute to their satisfaction. A comprehensive journey map will give you a clearer idea of the kind of experience they would best respond to.
Creating Benchmarks For Your Customer Service Team
Image from Science Soft.
Extensive metrics play an important role in determining whether you live up to customer expectations. The customer journey map serves as a benchmark that you can establish acceptable levels of service. You can then use this to measure your team’s performance more accurately.
Understanding How Your Customer Evolves
Image from Link Nexus.
Your customers are not static entities. Every purchase they make is a new experience for them. And with each new experience, they change their preferences. Using customer journey maps, you better understand how and why these changes happen. You can then use that knowledge to predict future changes in customer behavior and prepare.
The Components Of Your Startup Business Customer Journey Map
While customer journey maps vary greatly, they still contain several vital components. These components describe the various events that happen in the journeys. Thus, they should always be present when developing your customer journey map.
The Buying Process
The first element that your map needs to have is the buying process. Start by drafting the basic buying process you intend customers to go into. Since your customers can deviate from these basic buying processes, you also need to list these deviations horizontally alongside the stages they appear in.
User Action
Image from Expert AI.
To better give you an idea of what happens at each stage, list all the user actions. Note that these actions go beyond directly interacting with your brand. For instance, they might talk to friends first about your startup business before proceeding. With that, you can get a good idea of the ways customers go to achieve their goals.
Emotions
You might not realize it, but emotions play a significant role in buyer decisions. Depending on what they feel, they might respond to your brand differently. Understanding what triggers these emotions will help you better prepare for them. You can effectively tap these to direct your customers into making the desired actions.
Pain Points
Image from REVE Chat.
Pain points are the various problems that customers encounter in their journey. These problems make it difficult for them to accomplish their goals. By anticipating which pain points would appear at a given stage in the customer journey, you can determine what kind of negative emotions they are feeling. That helps you better devise the solutions to implement for these.
Solutions
The next element that your customer journey map needs are the solutions mentioned above. Your goal with these solutions is to reduce the number of pain points your customers encounter. You also want these to reinforce the positive emotions that your customers are feeling at each stage.
Understanding Startup Business Customer Touchpoints
A common item you hear when working with journey maps is customer touchpoints. A touchpoint is any time that a customer interacts with your startup business. Note that these touchpoints consist of both direct and indirect interactions.
Image from SentiSum.
The former are the ones that your customers purposely interact with your brand. Examples include them making a call to your service center or posting a comment on your social media pages. Meanwhile, indirect touchpoints are those interactions where customers simply stumble upon your brand, such as when they see your ads.
Furthermore, touchpoints are instances when customers can form their opinions about your brand. These opinions are based on their experience at that particular touchpoint. Hence, when developing your map, you want to be clear on what kind of opinions customers should be able to form at each stage. You can then visualize the overall opinion that will guide your customers.
Helping Your Startup Business Build More Effective Customer Journey Maps
As part of Virtua Solutions’ partnership with you, we will help develop more effective customer journey maps for your startup business. Here, having data becomes vital, as you use it to identify the various elements of your map.
For that, we incorporate data collection strategies into our customer support services. That lets us gather all the necessary information as the action happens. We turn this over to help you update and refine your journey maps.
Additionally, we provide useful insights based on our experience with different customers. For instance, we can suggest which touchpoints you can focus on. We will also give you suggestions on engaging customers at these touchpoints.
Of course, you will need to continuously evaluate and refine your customer journey maps to connect with people better. This is also part of our long-term commitment to supporting your business. Sign up with us today and let’s accompany your customers on their journey.