The above customer journey map, created for Intuit, highlights various stages of the customer journey. This template, called “ The Story Spine,” is a good way to keep the narrative front and center: As you pull together data, keep the story in mind. It tells the story of how a particular type of customer encounters your brand and chooses to make a purchase. Tell a StoryĪt the heart of it, your map should be a narrative. When you involve all your stakeholders, the end result is a more comprehensive view of the customer for everyone, not just the marketing department. They likely have unique insight into the buying process, and it’s good to get their buy-in early on. And, of course, it’s a good idea to involve leadership, too. Even the finance department and HR might have data that helps complete the map.
Your customer service department can help with statistics on customer interactions, demographics, common complaints, and more. They can talk about frequently asked questions, referral sources, what causes prospects to bail, and more. The sales department can share details about interactions with prospects, for example. The customer map project is a perfect opportunity to start bringing other departments to the table. It’s vital to the future success of the organization to have departments working together toward shared goals. Your organization is probably already moving to break down silos, share information between departments, and consolidate data to help shape the customer experience. But creating it shouldn’t be a task confined to the marketing department. Your map will be a valuable document for setting marketing strategy. Invite Stakeholders from Across the Organization
CREATE A CUSTOM MAP HOW TO
Here’s how to create a customer journey map that’s unique to your business and your customers. Mapping your business’ unique customer journey can help you focus your strategy, create more relevant content, and ultimately guide more customers to purchase. It’s a useful abstraction to show how the majority of people move through the system. It doesn’t have every feature, building, or bus route.
Notice the London Underground Map doesn’t show every twist and turn on the tracks. The London Underground Map, also known as the Tube map, is widely considered one of Britain’s design icons.
There are an infinite number of ways that customers go about becoming aware of a need, researching alternatives, and ultimately deciding on a solution.Ī customer journey map attempts to take all of that data and make it useful for creating strategy. We know it’s not one straight slide through the funnel. And while the funnel still has value as a content strategy tool, these days marketers have far more insight into the customer journey. Maximize the number that enter at the top, and barring a leak or two, you can increase how many actually convert.īut then came the Big Data boom. Many potential customers enter at the top a few buyers trickle out the bottom. In the beginning, there was the funnel, and marketers and salespeople revered it, and it spread across the marketing world, because it was a simple way to understand how marketing works.