Connecting the Dots of the Customer Journey
Customer experience is intricately diverse. At the crux of many research objectives, we often hear these questions from our clients.
Where do they go to get information? What drives our customers to shop with us? How can we make them buy more and more frequently?
The first essential step in looking at your customer experience is mapping out your customer journey. Whether you’re offering a product, a service, in-store, online, or a combination, what is integral to the success of your business is being fully equipped with the knowledge of your end-to-end customer journey. A solid customer journey map framework will provide you with the ability to identify your customer personas, understand the different behavioural stages, touchpoints for interactions, motivations and barriers to purchase, and gaps and opportunities for improvement.
How to create a customer journey map
Companies have long emphasized touchpoints, and it is a great starting place to begin building your customer journey map. Once the key stages have been mapped out, it is important to look at what is happening at each of the stages.
Who: is likely to come into contact with this touchpoint / channel? (e.g. TV commercial, word of mouth, in-store). For example, if the touchpoint is Facebook promotion, who is the key demographic your brand will have the most interactions with?
What: is the customer doing at this stage? What actions do they have to take / what does the business have to do to move the customer to the next stage? Are there any key barriers? What are they most interested in?
How: can you motivate your customer to keep interacting with your brand? What emotions are they feeling? How are you emotionally connecting and building an experience with the customer at this stage?
Why: Why are your customers seeking you out / key competitors? What information are they after for them to keep progressing to the next stage?
The answers to many of these questions will be grounded in conducting sound market research. A large-scale market study would yield a good understanding of your overall customer journey, whilst in-depth ethnographic-style interviews and in-context observations will give voice to your customers, allowing you to get into the nitty-gritty details. What is mentioned above is only one way to create a customer journey and it is important to note that the journey is not always linear as each customer journey is unique. One person may jump from awareness straight to purchase, whilst another person may be inclined to undertake thorough research and analysis of the competitor set before making a final decision. By walking in your customers’ shoes and mapping out their journey, you will be able to clearly identify your customer and include what is most important to them to build on the success of your business.
By Kalai Chu, Senior Research Consultant
For further information on THINK Global Research, please contact Kristy Ihle (Managing Director): info@thinkglobalresearch.com.
