Customer Journey

The International journal of analytical and experimental modal analysis ISSN NO: 0886-9367
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP A TOOL FOR INNOVATION
Dr.S.Sujatha
Assistant Professor,
Department of Commerce,
PSGR Krishnammal College for Women,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India,.
Ms.Menaka.G
Ph.D Research Scholar,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Ms. Anusuruthi.A.R
Ph.D Research Scholar,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India,
ABSTRACT
It is challenging for service companies to obtain a detailed overview of their
customers' end-to-end service delivery processes. Customer journey mapping helps to
identify how the customer is treated during each contact and how the customer feels towards
the organisation at the end of the experience. This information can then be used to aid the
management for decision making. Customer journey maps give businesses a way of getting
into their customers’ heads, helping them gain valuable insight and understanding regarding
common customer pain points.This paper extends the view about customer journey map,
Need, Components, steps to create CJM and advantages of customer journey map.
Keywords: Customer, Mapping, Challenging, Organisation.
Introduction
A customer journey map is a way to describe all the experiences a customer has with
the organisation and the emotional responses they provoke - from their first impression of the
building, to speaking to staff or receiving a service. In a large company, the process of
providing a service or 'product' is often complex, with multiple interactions taking place over
long timeframes with little by way of tangible outputs. Customer journey mapping is a
particularly useful tool to help identify the customer's interaction with the organisation, their
thought processes and reactions, which can reveal opportunities for improvement and
innovation in the customer's experience. Customer journey mapping helps to identify how
International Conference on "Strategic Human Resource Management", Erode Arts And Science College ( Autonomous), Erode, Tamil Nadu
Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1074

the customer is treated during each contact and how the customer feels towards the
organisation at the end of the experience. This information can then be used to aid to
management for decision making. It is a key tool helps to understand how the public
experiences the delivery of services, especially in terms of identifying 'moments of truth'.
These are the critical points when activities or initiatives are most likely to succeed or fail.
The customer journey mapping is a strategic tool to ensure every interaction a
customer has with an organisation is as positive as it can be.
Need of Customer Journey Map

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to understand what customers go
through and improve the quality of the customer experience, ensuring consistency and a
seamless experience at all touch points and across all channels. There is no substitution for
listening to a customer about how the steps in the journey are working out for them. Having
built an understanding of the customer journeys with a business are now in a position to
improve the customer experience enables:
 Provides a bird's eye view of the entire customer journey
 Bring teams together to resolve specific customer hurdles for understanding core
customer journey paths, where additional development will provide biggest impact.
 Build faster and higher customer conversion rates by minimizing negative customer
experiences, through identification of key steps and decision points.
 Improved customer retention, through understanding how they transit through, say,
each stage of a procurement cycle to ensure the correct information is available and
accessible to all stakeholders.
 Allows a business to zoom-in a single customer journey in a specific channel.
 Understanding of required metrics to identify customer's progress and fall out points,
providing opportunities to bring customers back on board.
 Allows businesses to prioritize actions in their customer experience strategy
 Reveals the gaps between various channels and departments
Components of Customer Journey Map

The following components are used to create an optimized customer journey map
 Buyer personas: A buyerpersona is a representation of the target customer based on

detailed market research. It includes demographics such as age, gender, job title, etc.
Each buyer persona has separate buying behaviour, and this is why there is a need to

create a different customer journey map for each persona. The persona information
already collected helps to map out a customized journey for that particular buyer
persona.
 Customer stages: Before mapping out the customer journey need to figure out the
stages of customer goes through to come into contact with a particular brand. The
customer steps are more commonly referred to as the marketingfunnel, which is a
customer acquisition model consisting of the following stages – awareness,
consideration, decision, and retention.
 Understanding customer goals: It is very much needed to understand the goal of the
customers that are trying to achieve at each customer stage, this helps inform the
shape of the customer journey map should take. Collect data through surveys,
interviews and customer service emails to figure out the customers’ goals so they can
align them with the customer journey touchpoints.
 Identify touchpoints: Touchpoints are the interactions the customer has with the
brand at each customer stage on specific web pages or ads. For example, awareness
stage touchpoints are likely to include short-form post-click landing pages, case
studies, webinars and the blog, etc.
 Maintain a time frame: Because the real time data will be collected through
customer analytics, surveys and interviews can maintain a realistic schedule as to
when each customer stage should end. It is important to know how long the touch
points take to convince customers to move to the next stage.
 Consider customer emotion: The client’s journey is told from the customer’s
perspective. So, keeping into consideration which emotion (whether delight or
frustration) the customer is likely to feel helps to ascertain if they will move from one
stage to the other.
Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map

1. Set clear objectives for the map.
Before dive into creating a map, one need to ask their selfwhy they are making one in
the first place. What goals are one directing this map towards? Who is it specifically about?
What experience is it based upon?

Based on this, buyer persona has to be created. This is a fictitious customer with all of
their demographics and psychographics who represents an average customer. Having a clear
persona is helpful in reminding them to direct every aspect of a customer journey map
towards them.
2. Profile of the personas and define their goals.

Next step, research has to be conducted. Some great ways to get valuable customer
feedback is through questionnaires and user testing. The important thing is to only reach out
to actual customers or prospects. We want the feedback of people who are actually interested
in purchasing the products and services and who have interacted with the company before or
plan to do so.
3. List out all the touchpoints.
Touchpoints are all the places on an organisation website that a customers can interact
with then. Based on the research, they should list out all the touchpoints the customers and
prospects are currently using, as well as the ones the believe they should be using if there is
no overlap.
This is an important step in creating a customer journey map because it gives the
insight into what actions the customers are performing. If they are using fewer touchpoints
than expected, does this mean they are quickly getting turned away and leaving the site early?
If they are using more than expected, does this mean the website is complicated and it
requires them several steps to get to an end goal?
Whatever the case may be, understanding the touchpoints is a tool that can help in
understand the ease and objectives of customer journeys.
This doesn’t just mean the website. We need to look at all the ways in which the customer
might come across the online. These might include:
 Social channels
 Paid ads
 Email marketing
 Third party review sites or mentions
Actions
List out all of the actions of the customers perform throughout their interaction with
brand. This might be a Google search for the keywords or clicking on an email from
them. They may wind up with a long list of actions.

It’s important to recognize when customers are being expected to take too many
actions to achieve their goals. Reducing the number of steps a customer needs to take can feel
risky, but pays off in higher conversion rates.
Emotions & Motivations

All marketing is a result of cause and effect. Likewise, every action the customer
takes is motivated by an emotion. And the customer’s emotions will change depending on
which part of their journey they’re at.The emotional driver of each of the customer’s actions
is usually caused by a pain point or a problem. Knowing this will helps to provide the right
content at the right time so that they smooth the customer’s emotional journey through the
brand.
Obstacles & Pain Points

Get to know what road blocks are stopping the customer from making their desired
action. One common obstacle is cost. For example, one of the customers could love the
product but abandon their cart on discovering unexpectedly high shipping rates.
Highlighting these potential obstacles in the customer journey can help to mitigate them. For
example, they could provide an FAQ page which answers common questions about shipping
costs.
4. Identify the elements one want to map to show.

There are four types of customer journey maps that each have their benefits.
Depending on the specific purpose to have for the map, they can choose the proper one.
 Current State
These customer journey maps are the most widely-used type. They visualize the
actions, thoughts, and emotions of customers currently experience while interacting with the
company. They are best used for continually improving the customer journey.
 Day in the Life
These customer journey maps visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions of the
customers currently experience in all the activities in which they partake on a daily basis,
whether or not that includes the company. This type gives a wider lens into the lives of the
customers and what their pain points are in real life. They are best used for addressing unmet
customer needs before customers even know they exist.

 Future State
These customer journey maps visualize what they believe will be the actions,
thoughts, and emotions the customers experience in future interactions with the company.
They are best used for illustrating the vision and setting a clear objective.
 Service Blueprint
These customer journey maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map
styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including
people, policies, technologies, and processes. They are best used for identifying the root
causes of current customer journeys or identifying the steps needed to attain desired future
customer journeys.
5. Take the customer journey of one self.

Just because they designed the map doesn't mean the work is done. This is the most
important part of the process: analysing the results. How many people are clicking to the
website but then closing out before making a purchase? How can be better support
customers? These are some of the questions should be able to answer with finished map.
Analyzing the results can show where customer needs are being unmet. By
approaching this, one can ensure that are providing a valuable experience and making it clear
that people can find solutions to their problems with the company's help.The whole exercise
of mapping the customer journey remains hypothetical until one try it out oneself.
For each of the personas, follow the journey they take through their social media
activity, through to reading their emails, through to searching online.
6. Make the necessary changes.

The data analysis should gives a sense of what they want the website to be. they can
then make the appropriate changes to the website to achieve these goals. Perhaps this is
making more distinct call-to-action links. Or, maybe, it's writing longer descriptions under
each product to make its purpose more clear.
No matter how big or small the changes are, they will be effective as they are directly
correlated with what customers listed as their pain points. Rather than blindly making
changes in the hopes that they will improve customer experiences, they can feel certain that
they will. And, with the help of visualized customer journey map, they can ensure those
needs and pain points are always addressed.

The map should be a constant work-in-progress. Reviewing it on a monthly or

quarterly basis will helps to identify gaps and opportunities for streamlining the customer
journey further. Use of data analytics along with customer feedback to check for any
roadblocks.
It will be useful to keep all stakeholders involved in this process, which is why my
maps are usually visualized on Google Sheets shared amongst the people I work closely with.
It’s also beneficial to have regular meetings (quarterly or yearly) to analyze how new
products or offerings might have changed the customer journey.
Main Advantages of Customer Journey Map

1. Get valuable insights: Customer journey mapping gives an insight into customers’
expectations of the brand at each step of their journey which in turn helps to create
customer experiences that motivate customers to reach the last point of the journey.
2. Understand customer expectations: Creating customer journey maps allowsto
understand the channels and touchpoints the customers are likely to take to get to the
product, what expectations they have for the product and what their possible
frustrations could be.
3. Predict and influence consumer behaviour: A detailed customer journey map
informed by the right data helps to predict and therefore change customer behaviour
which in turn optimizes the conversion process.
Conclusion
Customer journey mapping helps marketers to gain a better understanding of the
buying experience from the customer's perspective by tying a buyer's pain points and actions
to specific needs. Doing so has a multitude of benefits such as: Visualizing the buying
experience through the eyes of thecustomer, identifying shortcomings and opportunities for
improving the customer experience, enabling marketing, sales, and customer service teams to
work together and it ensures the effectiveness and determines success of the organisation and
helps the management for better decision making.

References:
 Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L. & Morgan, F. N. (2008). Service blueprinting: A
practical technique for service innovation. California Management Review, 50(3), 66-
94.
 Clarke, S. (2014). The digital journey is being mapped by the customers. MIT Sloan
Management Review, (January). Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/capgemini/mit-digital-journey-2014.
 MSI. (2014). 2014–2016 research priorities. Retrieved March 20, 2015, from
http://www.msi.org/research/2014-2016-research-priorities/.
 Norton, D. W., & Pine II, J. (2013). Using the customer journey to road test and refine
the business model. Strategy & Leadership, 41(2), 12–17.
 Skinner, C. (2010). The complete customer journey: Avoiding technology and
business barriers to measure the total value of media. Business Strategy Series, 11(4),
223–226.

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The International journal of analytical and experimental modal analysis ISSN NO: 0886-9367

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP A TOOL FOR INNOVATION

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1074

Need of Customer Journey Map

Components of Customer Journey Map

 Buyer personas: A buyerpersona is a representation of the target customer based on

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1075

Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1076

2. Profile of the personas and define their goals.

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1077

Emotions & Motivations

Obstacles & Pain Points

4. Identify the elements one want to map to show.

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1078

5. Take the customer journey of one self.

6. Make the necessary changes.

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The map should be a constant work-in-progress. Reviewing it on a monthly or

Main Advantages of Customer Journey Map

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1080

Volume XI, Issue VIII, August/2019 9367Page No:1081

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