5 Powerful Advantages of CX Journey Mapping

The essence of customer experience (CX) journey mapping is to walk in the customer’s shoes as they interact with an organization using different touchpoints. As such, CX journey mapping focuses on the entire end-to-end journey for using an organization’s products and/or services from the customer’s perspective.

A best practice to improve CX is to understand your customers’ end-to-end journey with your company and the key personas of those customers who are using your products and services. The CX journey mapping process is an outside-in approach to improve CX, allowing organizations to use and apply CX feedback to people, process, and technology practices to deliver the experience that customers expect.

The primary purpose of CX journey mapping is to conduct customer survey research and in-depth interviews with customers and employees to understand what customers experience for each interaction and touchpoint key moments of truth and, most importantly, to discover CX improvement opportunities.

Here is a list of just 5 of the Powerful Advantages of CX Journey Mapping:

1. Holistic approach – the main advantage of CX journey mapping is its focus on the customer’s entire journey (e.g., brand awareness through to renewing) when using an organization’s products and/or services. A focus on the entire customer journey, versus a focus on only the individual touchpoint or interaction, provides a holistic view of CX that can be very helpful in understanding and improving CX.
    
2. Understand CX better – the essence of the CX journey mapping process is that it allows you to walk in the customer’s shoes as they interact with your organization through their lifecycle stages. Put simply, CX journey mapping is an outside-in approach. Having a trained interviewer conduct in-depth interviews with customers who interact with an organization’s touchpoints provides a better understanding of the CX. The in-depth interview gives the organization valuable and detailed insights into customer interactions and touchpoint MoT experiences. In addition, voice of the customer (VoC) perception and transaction survey research and in-depth interviews are used to better understand CX.
    
3. Discover improvement opportunities – an effective CX journey map provides insights on customer expectations for every significant interaction using a touchpoint, how well the organization is doing at meeting those expectations, customer emotion experience, and, most importantly, what the opportunities are for improving CX for an interaction when using a touchpoint. The CX journey mapping process is an outside-in approach which allows the organization to use CX feedback and apply it to its people, process, and technology practices.  
    
4. Visual journey map – an infographic portrayal of CX and an extremely helpful approach for conveying current CX to all stakeholders. CX journey maps can be presented using journey mapping software, PowerPoint presentations, a condensed one-page handout, or any other manner that is appropriate for your organization. It is important to remember that when the stakeholders easily understand the CX journey map, then they are typically more willing to buy into developing and implementing solutions for improving CX.
    
5. Foundation for developing an action plan – CX journey map insights are the foundation for developing an action plan. In other words, the information garnered from the CX journey map is not an action plan in and of itself. The action plan needs to be based on insights that show the interaction and touchpoint moments of truth (MoT) which have CX dissatisfaction and/or negative CX emotions. Based on identifying the CX dissatisfaction and/or negative CX emotions, an organization can develop an action plan for implementing solutions for eliminating or reducing the touchpoint MoT that are driving those experiences.

Most executives are aware of the importance of understanding the entire CX journey for customers who are purchasing and using the organization’s products and/or services. However, the emergence of self-service digital contact channels and simultaneous channel usage has heightened the importance of understanding CX in today’s connected customer world.

To better understand and improve the entire experience for customers purchasing and using your organization’s products and/or services in today’s connected world, contact us today.