Customer Journey Mapping

Introduction

Customer Journey Mapping is a visual representation of the process a customer goes through
to achieve a goal within your organization. It's a powerful technique that allows business
analysts to empathize with customers and understand their experiences to identify areas for
improvement.

Why It's Useful and Benefits

• Empathy: It helps you empathize with customers by viewing their interactions from
their perspective.
• Identifying Pain Points: It enables the identification of areas where customers
encounter difficulties or frustrations.
• Improving Customer Experience: It provides a means to enhance customer experience
by streamlining and optimizing the customer journey.
• Alignment Across the Organization: It ensures every department understands and is
aligned on how customers interact with your organization.
• Identifying Opportunities: It uncovers areas where new products or services could be
introduced.

How to Apply the Technique

1. Define Personas
Begin by defining personas. Personas represent different customer types based on their
unique behaviours, goals, needs, and frustrations.
2. Identify Touchpoints
Identify every point of interaction that customers have with your organization (website,
customer service, social media, etc.).
3. Map the Journey
Create a visual representation of the customer's journey. Include each phase the customer
goes through (awareness, consideration, purchase, use, loyalty), their goals, emotions,
touchpoints, and actions at each stage.
4. Validate and Refine
Validate the journey map with real customer data if possible, and refine as necessary.

When to Use Customer Journey Mapping

This technique is most useful when trying to improve customer experience, launch a new
product or service, or enter a new market. It's often used at the start of a project to inform
the design process but can also be revisited throughout to validate and refine.

Strengths of Customer Journey Mapping

• Customer-Centricity: It ensures a focus on customer needs and experiences.

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 • Breadth and Depth: It provides both a broad view of the customer's journey and the
ability to delve into specific interactions.
• Cross-Functional Understanding: It encourages cross-functional understanding and
collaboration.
• Identify Opportunities for Improvement: It effectively highlights areas for
improvement or innovation.

Weaknesses of Customer Journey Mapping

• Time-Consuming: It can be time-consuming to create and maintain.

• Requires a Wide Range of Data: It requires a wide range of data to accurately reflect
the customer's journey.
• Subjectivity: Without solid data, it can be based on assumptions that lead to a skewed
understanding of the customer experience.

Conclusion

Customer Journey Mapping is a powerful tool for any Business Analyst. It not only facilitates
a deep understanding of the customer experience but also fosters empathy among the
project team. Despite being potentially time-consuming and data-dependent, its ability to
highlight opportunities for improvement and promote customer-centricity makes it an
essential tool in the Business Analyst's toolkit.

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