book.chapter Customer journey maps

Customer experience maps are essential tools that provide the framework and building blocks for designing exceptional customer experiences. By linking multiple maps together in a coordinated way, organizations can engage in comprehensive customer experience planning. These maps are meticulously crafted to outline all the elements necessary to delight customers, ensuring that experiences are more consistent and repeatable. Specifically, customer experience maps serve several critical functions: they document strategy for later improvement, train staff, empower employees to make aligned decisions, focus organizational attention on customers, increase efficiency, highlight potential decision points so everyone can assist customers, and provide infrastructure insights. The components of a customer experience map are carefully chosen to create a focused and effective plan. They include target audiences of specific customer segments to maintain a tight focus, a single response point objective that defines the desired feelings and reactions to measure success, touch points that represent actual interactions to convey intentions, voting points where customers decide whether to continue which ideally only occur at the end, and knowledge transfer detailing what one person must convey to another for smooth experiences. Touch points are the moments where customers interact with the brand while experiencing the service or product. The response point is where the intended reactions and feelings are defined. Voting points are critical junctures where customers decide whether to continue their journey with the brand. To create an effective map, one must first specify the desired responses and related touch points. Then, as interactions occur, customers should ideally experience the intended response while avoiding mid-stream decisions. Delivering experiences according to a map means guiding customers to each touch point while avoiding voting points, which cumulatively leads to achieving the target response. Mapping is both a science and an art. It involves systematically documenting experiences and linking maps for seamless integration. However, since every interaction is a touch point, shaping them creatively and consistently is key to crafting great experiences. Artful coordination of touch points is crucial, and often, less is more: a few well-chosen touch points are more effective than many that create confusion. The optimal number of touch points balances reach, which involves low-cost touch points, and richness, which involves high-value, targeted touch points. In any economy, brands that make emotional connections with their customers tend to thrive. Loyalty and delight are the cornerstones of building strong customer relationships. Mapping should be done with the intent to consistently delight rather than to excel randomly, which can lead to confusion. Strategic guidance of relevant interactions toward a response point is essential. Paths to delight that interact with all selected maps should be established. Specifically, contiguous touch points derived from maps lead to accomplishing a planned response while avoiding voting points. It is important to remember that every interaction is a touch point, whether it is planned or not. Executing touch points requires creativity to make them valuable and acceptable to customers, as well as discipline to keep them focused toward the intended responses. The art of mapping requires imagination and a deep understanding of customer needs to craft relevance. The science of mapping provides direction through measurement and adherence to standards. Aligned touch points are crucial as they convey what customers think and feel, and are the essence of the customer experience.