You want to run a successful business; who doesn’t? But to achieve that, you really need to understand your customers and how they interact with your business. You should also know who needs to be involved with creating a customer journey.
In other words, you have to create a customer journey.
Achieving this isn’t always simple, but the process can be made simpler by creating a customer journey map, finding the gaps, and closing them. A customer journey map is a powerful way of visualizing your customers’ experience from their point of view.
That’s why it’s essential you create one to fully understand what’s going on inside your customers’ heads. But who should be involved in creating such a journey? You may be surprised at just how many people and elements should be included.
Let’s break it down.
Your In-House Creative and Marketing Teams
Here, we’re talking about any team member and/or department involved in creating the customer experience, from copywriters to graphic designers to social media managers and all marketing and creative rolls in between. Anyone involved in marketing needs to familiarize themselves with your customer’s pain points, hopes, passions, etc. so that their content resonates with them.
Similarly, when your web designers and user experience designers help to refine your customer journey, you’ll gain a better understanding of how:
- Customers move from one device to another.
- How they interact with your website
- Whether there are any gaps between touchpoints
Your marketers will have valuable insights from market research they have conducted, and your digital teams can give you information about web analytics and other useful data (see below).
Top-Tier and Middle Managers
Sometimes, it’s easy for managers and senior staff to forget or lose sight of their customers as they move through your sales funnel. Yet, these are the very people responsible for making strategic decisions about your company’s direction.
By involving them in mapping out your customer journey, you’ll help ground their decision-making process in what really matters: your customers. This is an effortless way to ensure your organization is genuinely customer-focused.
Your Customers
Who better to tell you what you’re doing right and what you can do better than a sample of your customers? You can ask them about their pain points and:
- How they know about your company and what attracted them to it
- How easy your website and social sites are to navigate
- What their experience is of customer service
- How long they typically spend on your website
- If they intended to make a purchase but didn’t, what led to that decision
- What problems they have experienced
- If they have any ideas of how you can improve their overall experience
Your customers can also tell you which communication methods they prefer and which work best for them when trying to engage with you. You can ask your customers either via focus groups and/or questionnaires and user testing.
Your Customer Service Staff
We talked about senior team members, but equally important are staff who best understand the customer journey from the customer’s perspective.
Cue, your customer service team.
These heroes engage with your customers daily and have anecdotal knowledge about the common complaints and issues faced by your consumers. This info is valuable and should definitely be taken into consideration as you create your customer journey map.
Your Touchpoints
They may not be people, but an essential part of creating a customer journey map is understanding all the different parts of touchpoints on your website that your customer interacts with.
But let’s not forget your social channels (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest), paid ads, 3rd party review sites, and email marketing. It’s a way of gaining a greater understanding of what actions your customers are performing.
If you find your customers are using fewer touchpoints than you expect them to, you’re going to have to map out why that is.
Your Data
You can’t map out a customer journey without invaluable data about your customers, where they are, what their tastes are, when they buy, how much they spend, and so on.
In fact, data-driven companies are:
- 23 times more likely to gain new customers
- Six times more likely to retain customers
- 19 times more likely to be profitable
As these stats highlight, it’s imperative you use data-driven customer personas to understand better how and why they’re interacting with your business.
Your Stakeholders
Are there any essential third-party stakeholders that should be part of this journey? For example, your warehouse staff and any relevant external suppliers?
If, say, you sell products and your customers love them but complain about delivery times and shipping, you may want to involve representatives from these quarters too.
Your Action Team
We’ve called them this because these are the people who will be the core team who will take action upon any agreed deliverables that come out of the customer journey mapping process.
You’ll need to think about every department that may be affected by any changes you make as a result of the mapping process, such as technical support, finance, and IT. This is especially the case if you are planning on using technology in your mapping process further down the line.
Ready to Construct a High-Converting Customer Journey?
Hopefully, you now understand how creating a customer journey is a useful and essential part of your business, and who you should consult during the process.
Do you want to find out more info about how to create a high-converting customer journey? If so, contact our friendly team today. We look forward to hearing from you soon!
