Customer journey (mapping): useful tool or completely superfluous?

They asked if I could give a session on the 'customer journey'. "Sure," I said, "but how far does general knowledge extend today regarding customer experience?" There was a moment of silence. After asking a few more questions, it turned out that they were looking more for general inspiration and tips on customer experience.

The first time, I thought it was an exception. Since then, I have come to realize that there is a lot of confusion surrounding the term customer journey. This is not so illogical, considering that marketing, sales, and customer experience experts alike have quite different interpretations of this term. So, it is high time to delve a little deeper into this fascinating subject!

Customer journey in plain language.

As is my custom, I start with the basics. After all, you can only get started with this thought exercise if you fully understand what we are talking about. That is why, in the following paragraphs, I explain exactly what a customer journey is and what other technical terms are involved.

What is a customer journey?

A simple question with a multifaceted answer. Depending on whether you ask me, a marketer, or a sales professional, you will receive a slightly different answer. For me, viewed through a CX lens, a customer journey is the following:

Sounds quite abstract, doesn't it? So let me clarify a few things with a (fictional) example.

Suppose I want to switch energy suppliers. In my case, I do some online research beforehand, but I can't figure out the online application myself and end up calling customer service. They then send me a stack of papers by mail, which I have to fill out and return. After a few weeks, I receive confirmation of my contract. In the meantime, I spoke with a colleague about my switch, who warned me about incorrect billing at the chosen supplier.

All those different touchpoints constitute the customer journey. Where telephone contact and receiving mail are direct touchpoints, but my colleague's warning is an indirect touchpoint.

Suppose you were to ask the same question in a marketing or sales environment; you would get more or less the same definition, except that the focus here is usually on the 'preliminary stage' or the buyer journey. From this perspective, the primary goal is to determine how to convert a prospect into a customer. That is not wrong, and is even a very useful exercise, but it has little to do with the journey mapping exercises we conduct from a customer-centric perspective.

What is customer journey mapping?

Now that you understand what a customer journey is, let's delve deeper into how to map one out. This is customer journey mapping: a practical approach to describing and visualizing the customer journey. Specifically, we will work together in one or more workshops to map out the customer experience during a specific customer journey (e.g., "I want to take out a car loan").

The objectives of such an exercise include:

• Clearly and realistically mapping your current customer journey
• Discovering what the ideal customer journey for your business / your customer entails
• Generating improvement proposals and concrete actions to bridge the gap between the two

The ABC of the customer journey.

Before I take you through my vision regarding the sense and nonsense of customer journey mapping, I would like to explain a few technical terms that you will certainly encounter during your own customer journey quest:

• Peak-end rule : The peak-end rule is a psychological phenomenon. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has demonstrated that we do not remember every moment of an experience equally well. The two moments we remember best are the peak (good or bad) and the end. When mapping a customer journey, we look for these two crucial moments, among others.
• Emotion curve : Every touchpoint triggers a specific emotion in the customer. Happy, satisfied, uneasy, curious… there are countless examples and also many different emotion models. When you can determine the emotion for each moment and connect them, you get an emotion curve. This allows you to deduce whether your customer is primarily happy during this specific journey or is experiencing rather negative emotions.
• Touchpoints : A touchpoint is another term for the contact moments. All the various (direct and indirect) contact moments together form the customer journey.

In the customer's shoes: the sense and nonsense of journey mapping.

Personally, I prefer to view the customer journey mapping story from a different angle. An angle in which I sincerely believe that the exercise itself can be a great starting point for giving the customer a voice within your company, or at the very least for creating awareness regarding the necessity of customer-centric business practices.

Moreover, I notice that quite a few companies have never really mapped out the 'non-marketing part' (sorry, dear marketers) of the customer journey map. In that case, it is ALWAYS a useful exercise to check whether the customer experience you claim to deliver is actually perceived that way by the customer.

Remember: research shows that 80% of companies *think* they deliver a good customer experience, but only 8% of customers agree. Therefore, there is a very high chance that, thanks to a journey mapping process, we will discover numerous areas for improvement or customer frustrations, after which we can eliminate them one by one.

Does having a well-developed customer journey make you a customer-centric company? No. Just as you aren't a customer-centric company simply because you regularly send out surveys, for that matter. But I do guarantee that you will know more about your customers and be better informed as you move towards a thoroughly customer-centric approach.

Mapping your customer journey: here's how to get started yourself!

Customer journey mapping, just like customer experience management, is not rocket science, but rather a matter of common sense and looking at your company from a different perspective. Therefore, I recommend arranging the necessary guidance for a thorough and in-depth customer journey exercise. This prevents, among other things, you from continuing to think within the framework of existing processes and, for instance, from primarily trying to improve your own internal operations during improvement proposals. Moreover, this provides you with an independent view of both your customer feedback and your customer-centric plans, and finally, the guide/facilitator can also perfectly moderate customer panels or focus groups.

If you still want to get started on your own, keep the following practical tips in mind:

Choose a simple customer journey to start with.

Less is more, especially when creating a customer journey map for the very first time. So don't go for 'someone buys something from us online or in the store,' but rather for 'the customer makes an appointment for pool maintenance.' In other words: make sure you yourself understand what you are trying to map!

Ensure the approach of all departments within your organization.

Assemble a multidisciplinary team, making sure to include people who initially have little to no customer contact. In smaller businesses, I often recommend really thinking this through with the entire team. You will be surprised by the amount of customer information you actually already have in-house.

Write, draw, and formulate everything from the customer's point of view and perspective.

A golden tip. Formulate everything you want to note in the first person, where 'I' is the customer. So not: sending reminder, but rather 'I receive a payment reminder'. This feels unnatural at first, but it forces you to think from the customer's perspective every time and immediately lets you feel a bit of what the customer is experiencing.

Customer journey mapping: you'd better avoid these pitfalls

Mapping out the customer journey without the customer

It seems logical, but please base your approach on real customer feedback. And therefore not on assumptions of your own, your colleagues', or 'the industry'. If you start the exercise with 'we think the customer wants', or 'we know the customer wants', or any other form thereof, you are not basing it on relevant data. The only relevant data is that of your customer. That is precisely why we often combine journey mapping with an in-depth listening exercise based on customer interviews, panel discussions, or observations.

Focusing solely on the detailed customer journey as an objective

Having only a beautifully mapped-out customer journey on your wall doesn't bring you a single step closer to a customer-centric approach. Therefore, ensure that you can translate the necessary improvement actions from your exercise into practice and link them to a concrete action plan. This not only creates more support for customer centricity among your employees but also demonstrates to your customers that you effectively take their feedback to heart.