The Customer Journey has four distinct phases: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Loyalty. They all begin when a person first becomes aware of a brand.
Phase one: Awareness.
The awareness phase is when a person is first exposed to a brand. He is then introduced to the brand’s name, logo, website, social media presence, and other information that helps make his first impression about the brand. The goal of awareness is to get a consumer to begin thinking about the brand. Awareness means making the consumer aware of the brand’s existence. This is why companies spend so much money on advertising the brand.
Phase two: Consideration.
The consideration phase is when a consumer decides to go further and consider buying the product or service. The ultimate goal of the consideration is to make the consumer a willing customer by convincing him that he will like the product or service being sold. For example, a customer would not consider buying a product if he does not think the outcome will be advantageous.
Phase three: Decision.
The decision phase is when a buyer makes a final decision. The ultimate goal of this phase is for the buyer to make a purchase. The reality of the decision is that it is not necessarily clear-cut. Often there are multiple factors that a consumer will consider before making a final purchase. The goal of the decision is for the buyer to decide to purchase in favor of the brand.
Phase four: Loyalty.
The loyalty phase is when the customer begins to keep buying the product or service from the brand. This phase is the most important to the brand. The consumers who purchased the product or services previously are now loyal to the brand. Therefore, a brand needs to retain its customers throughout all four phases or risk losing them to a competitor.
What is Customer Journey map?
The customer journey map visually depicts the customer’s path to purchase and shows how each touchpoint affects their decision-making process. Using clear images, arrows, swords, and color, the customer journey map breaks down the customer’s path and shows how the customer becomes more interested in a product and ultimately converts.
The customer journey map helps brands and retailers understand whether the customer sees their offer as valuable, what attracts the customer to the proposal, what the customer dislikes about the suggestion, what the customer likes about the offer, and what the customer values about it in the offer.
The customer journey map helps brands and retailers understand which parts of the customer journey need to strengthen and optimize. It also helps drive business decisions by selecting content, testing offers, developing messaging, and implementing promotions.
It helps brands and retailers gauge customer experience across the customer journey. If the customer journey map shows that the customer has an unsatisfactory experience, the brand or retailer can immediately address the situation.
How Can You Build A Customer Journey Map?
To create a customer journey map, you will need to gather all the raw data about the customer, including data from every touchpoint, such as website visits, within a customer’s journey. Once all data is gathered, you will need to store it in a format that is easy to consolidate and access. The best form to create a customer journey map is a spreadsheet, but a customer journey map can also be made using a program such as Google Sheets.
Once you have created a customer journey map, you will need to analyze it to understand the full impact of the customer experience. This requires a deep perception of the customer, their interactions with a brand, and a deep understanding of the business.
The first step to creating a customer journey map is to see how the customer interacts with each business touchpoint. This activity aims to identify the parts of the process where the company is performing well and areas that may require improvement.
Using the customer journey map, you can identify areas of weakness and places where the business needs to improve. Not all consumers have the same journey, so the steps required to create a customer journey map will vary depending on whether the customer is a new customer, a returning customer, or a current customer that has purchased in the past.
How can you use a Customer Journey Map to enhance your Business?
A customer journey map can be used to:
- Improve the customer experience:
- Understand the customer experience at a deeper level.
- Identify where the business is weak.
- Analyze the customer experience across all touchpoints.
- Improve the customer experience:
- Identify which parts of the process the customer sees as the most valuable.
- Identify any areas of weakness within the customer journey.
- Analyze the customer journey to understand the customer experience across the entire purchase process.
- Improve the customer experience
- Gauge whether the customer is involved or not and why.
- Identify any opportunities for the business to improve the customer experience.
What Should you do to create a Customer Journey Map?
Research: Research how customers think about the messaging, offer, and brand of your business. Doing market research on your target market will enable you to make informed decisions that you will apply to your customer journey map.
Gather: Gather data about your target market. For example, if you sell a tangible product, gather data on the number of customers that have bought from you.
If you sell online, use Google Analytics or similar tools to gather data. Then, analyze the collected data and identify whether the customer is interested in your business and why. Next, analyze the data to understand the customers’ expectations and how the company is performing.
If you are selling a physical product, use a customer journey map to understand the entire customer journey. Create a customer journey map to identify areas where the business needs to improve its offer and its interactions with the customer, and distinguish the areas of the customer’s journey that are most valuable.