Introduction
A Customer Journey Map is a visualization of how a particular User Persona engages with your product — starting from the awareness of a problem or opportunity to be addressed and ending with them advocating the solution to others who may benefit from it.
How do I make a Customer Journey Map?
Most often, Customer Journey Maps are laid out as a table with:
- The columns being the general stages of the customer journey (you may adjust as needed):
- Awareness — The customer becomes aware of a problem they want to solve (or opportunity they want to pursue) and of your product being a potential solution to it.
- Consideration — The customer learns about what value your product has to offer them and at what cost.
- Decision — The customer decides whether or not to purchase your product.
- Service — The customer uses the product.
- Advocacy — The customer becomes a loyal customer and ideally refers your product to others in your target audience.
- The rows being the following:
- What does the customer do at each stage?
- What are your touchpoints at each stage?
- Things like advertisements, social media, your website, phone calls, emails, etc.
- What is the customer’s general feeling at each stage?
- What would your KPIs be at each stage?
- During the awareness stage, it may be customer reach; during the decision stage, it may be conversion/sales rate.
- What are your goals at each stage? Your KPIs will measure your progress to these.
- What teams are involved at each stage?
- During the consideration stage, it may be your marketing or sales teams. During the service stage, it may be your account management, customer service/success, etc. teams.
Conclusion
Having a solid, clear customer journey map is akin to having a storyboard for a movie or screen play. Along with User Personas, which help you understand your customer, Customer Journey Maps will help you understand how they will learn about and engage with your product and its delivery. As a last point, from experience, I strongly recommend you revisit your customer journey map periodically. As your business and product grows, your customer journey map will inevitably evolve as a result. Thus, you’ll want to review at least annually, more if you’re moving and growing fast, to ensure you have an accurate understanding of how your customers are engaging with your product.