In any business it is extremely important to understand what motivates the client: what are his needs, doubts and worries. We already know that when buying a thing or service, we actually buy experience and emotions. But what happens to the potential consumer before acquaintance with the company, while getting acquainted with her and her product, and also in the process of making a decision to purchase the product and what is required for him to return again? On this subject, tons of books and articles were written, hundreds of techniques were invented, but one of them amazes with its versatility and scope. It is called the Customer Journey Map.
Before starting to consider this technique, it is important to understand what the point of contact is.
Points of contact are various situations, interfaces and places where a real or virtual meeting of the consumer with the company takes place. Therefore, when a customer enters the company's website virtually or physically - into the company's office, a contact point appears. There can be a lot of these points. Still some a couple of decades ago they could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but now they are so large that any business can easily get out of control.
Why are contact points so important to business? It's simple - at each point of contact the client can decide to stop dealing with the company, and for many years, or forever. The bank can spend a huge amount of money on advertising, hire high-quality employees in the office, be fairly honest and transparent, but all this will not matter if a potential client visits the bank's website, where he will be offered a half-hour registration of his office. On the Internet, time goes differently.
When talking about contact points, it should be understood that they exist on the principle of a weak link - the weakest link brings the whole chain. Therefore, when the potential consumer and the company come into contact, there is both a point of contact and an emotional, intimate moment, spoiling which, the company completely discredits itself before the client. A potential competitor can easily recognize this weak link and use it to his advantage.
What can happen at the point of contact?
- The client may change his mind about working with you
- Competitor can bypass you
- You can purchase a customer
- Can strengthen the relationship with the client
- Can confirm the high reputation
- Can disappoint the customer
Your main tasks at the points of contact are to provide emotional positive interaction with consumers, which will then come again and again, and also talk about you as friends, will become loyal to you. They need to be dealt with systematically and never let it go.
There are several dozens of them, and here are just a few of them: advertising, social networks, communities, events, staff, PR, the process of sale, delivery, training, feedback, signage, name, call center, site (in which there are more points of contact like design, content, SEO and much more). The devil is in the details. Ideally, it is worthwhile to ensure that each contact point becomes a wow-point of contact.
What is the Customer Journey Map?
This is a visual interpretation of the interaction between the company and the client. Simply put, this is a visual document, a diagram or a picture on which contact points are drawn, their features are described. It is, rather, a client's journey to your contact points, from one to the other, than describing individual points. At each point there must be at least three customer reactions (positive, neutral, negative). You can draw a map on a board, on a sheet of paper, in virtual editors, it can be stickers on the wall. The card includes the characters, timeline and emotions that arise or can arise from the client at each point of contact.
The map can be linear if the consumer's path is linear in itself. It can be nonlinear if there are a lot of variants of the development of events. Can have a timeline if the company provides different or changing services depending on the time of day. As a rule, there are several travel cards for the consumer - for different purposes and for different groups of consumers.
Key conditions for constructing an effective consumer travel map
- Identify the purpose of your product or service
- Collect all possible data - web analytics, interviews with consumers, observation of competitors, a survey of social networks
- Make a list of all possible contact points
- For each point of contact make a list of channels. For example, for a point of contact "Pay for a service" you can have three channels: online payment, cash payment, payment by mail
- For each channel, determine the list of responsible persons, as well as the targeted actions that customers must perform in each channel
- Identify barriers that prevent a client from achieving the desired action and ways to reduce barriers
- Ideally, the contact points should be smaller, but the channels that flow from the points are larger. So the client spends less time and is not subjected to frustration. The smaller the points, the more likely the conversion (the purchase of a product or service)
- Draw up a map of empathy. It depicts everything that a client can hear, see, feel, think, say and do when interacting with your company
- Brainstorm for new ideas, ideas and concepts. It needs to be carried out more than once and not only before drawing up the map, but also to conduct constantly, improving CJM
- Make an Affinity Diagram, where you mark out all the ideas about how you see your client and what different clients might look like
- Sketch the sketch of your map on a sheet of paper, so you will see its advantages and disadvantages, because it is very important to make it clear
- Make it digital, which will help the rapid spread of the map to all employees
Some maps are works of art. People come up with maps in the manner of Odysseus' travel, with a three-cycle structure, ups and downs - at the end of their client catharsis experiences. Someone's card can be made with an emphasis on emotions / words / actions, although not every consumer's travel map includes empathic, because in that case it will grow several times. It should be understood that the card should be filled not for a tick, but in good faith, everything should be visual and interrelated, as in many cases it hangs before the personnel of the company so that each employee understands what he is responsible for.
After the map is ready, you can easily assess the effectiveness of each point of contact and its channels, improve it and notice which points need to be worked out and are the weakest. Observing the emotions and behavior of customers will show you the weaknesses better than the assumptions, so if the card has not changed in a few years, then you are a genius or just created it for a tick.
The main advantage of the map is its clarity. If it is compiled correctly and logically, the structure of interaction with customers is in front of your eyes, not in your head, which frees up a lot of space for reflection and analysis. Finally, it becomes possible to see the real state of affairs and develop a strategy for the development of products and services. And also optimize the most critical points, which cause the greatest harm to the company.
There is no one right way to create such a card. Its detail depends on imagination, finances and efficiency. Optimization is required not only by any company and any card, but also by the approaches and principles of drawing such cards. Therefore, each card is unique in its own way and reflects the personality traits of its creator, which makes any business unique.
Leave comments about what you think about this card and its effectiveness.
