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What is a Customer Journey?

As the world moves towards a model where most transactions and relationships are managed remotely, businesses need to define processes and capture the points of engagement with their clients in order to deliver real value. This is more important now than ever before.

The role of the website has moved from being a simple placeholder to being a strategic platform for business. Critically, it along with outbound email campaigns and social media form a platform where business communicates and touches its audiences. Communicating with clients on the platform they prefer is especially relevant in today’s environment, where the boundaries between work and home are now blurred.

customer journey momentum

So what does this mean?

To remain relevant you need to examine the end-to-end flow of how the customer interacts with your company. We know that clients self-educate, so by the time they engage with your business they usually have an advanced level of knowledge and understanding of your product or service.

But the question is: Is the knowledge good and the understanding correct? Where did they get that information?

Depending on the purchase, your value could be reduced to nothing more than a click and a promise that what was purchased is right for them. To improve the customer experience, your value needs to be more clearly communicated. What is your process to do this?

You need to understand the interaction with your brand. You need to understand and map out the pain points of your customers so you can anticipate and deal with them. By looking at historical customer feedback you can focus on improving the experiences of not just clients, but everyone you encounter.

customer journey complete

A Customer Journey is a map of interactions and a plan.

A customer journey map is your holistic guide to interacting with your customers to achieve a goal.

Do you want more lead conversions?

Increase customer satisfaction?

Boost sales?

Gain a holistic client view?

Working from a customer journey, you and your staff stay in control and accountable. Journey maps are tools that take guesswork out of important stages in the interaction with customers and not only increase customer satisfaction but improve conversion rates for new prospects.

They increase transparency and improve business efficiency. When everybody in your organisation knows what the plan is, everyone can stick to it.

A good map not only lists out all the critical points of interaction but should also be flexible enough to be tuned to the specific needs of individual clients.

So what does a customer journey map look like?

A typical layout has a header with the Journey goal. Under that we usually find key tasks, and the steps needed to complete those tasks.

customer journey diagram

What should you expect from a modern Customer Journey tool?

Modern customer journey tools integrate with CRM systems and have developed a high level of functionality. Here are some of the things you should expect:

  • Tasks can link to to-do lists that appear on your daily dashboard.
  • If task types are calls or meetings, the tool should automatically create calendar entries and even dial the client for you if you choose.
  • The journey map should be be colour coded to give you a glimpse of how you’re progressing along the journey.
  • You should expect that the journey tool comes with real-time reports to give you quick overviews of your overall progress along any given plan.
  • The best tools also allow you to easily add stages or notes on the fly, giving you the ability to customise the journey to the individual client.
  • It should be easy to use and self-explanatory.
  • It should be data driven, and able to update other parts of your customer experience toolset.
customer journey dash

Mapping the future…

Businesses that actively control their customer relationships will thrive, and Customer Journey Maps are an integral part of that toolset.

If we can assist you with planning and reviewing your customer journeys, we are happy to help.  Talk to us about how to implement a customer journey in Sugar CRM or Zoho One.