Basically, all companies with one or another success collect information about their customers. But the data is just data; Often the real experience of the client, his disappointment and problems remain mystery for seven seals. The history of the client's interaction with the brand will help clarify the situation. In business, this story isCustomer Journey Map, or Client path map.

What is Customer Journey Map

This is a story about the experience of the client with a brand: starting from the very first contact, through the process of interaction and to long-term relationships. In essence, this is a graph that shows the contact points of the client with a brand, thus building it path. And this schedule shows you the weak points and "failures" in this way.

CJM maybe focus on a certain area of \u200b\u200bthis path, and give an overview of the whole experience. But that always in the spotlight is the identification of key interactions that the client has with the organization. It is important to find out the feelings of the client, its motives, and the questions that he has on each of these sensory points.

The client path map can be framed in any form. There is no single design standard, or some rules. Each organization is map in such a way as it is most convenient. Most often it is made in the form of a scheme or infographics. But it can be a table or chart, chart.

But the main thing is not that. Whatever the form, the goal is the same: the organization should learn more about its clients.

The need for this tool originated at the moment when the interaction with the client became systemic. Channels such as advertising, site, sales department do not work autonomously - all this forms unified system. As a result, the brands understood that it was easy to leave the client after the first contact with it: the client should feel care about himself, he needs to take his hand and spend from the very first point until the latter, passing from the department to the department so that he does not feel discomfort or jumps.

It is not surprising that marketers increasingly use customer path cards in their work.

Why need CJM

Client path map - a powerful tool that helps solve several important tasks at once:

  • makes the client loyal;
  • provides comprehensive work with a client at all stages of interaction with;
  • enhances the involvement.

The designer will help to see and realize the real aspirations of users.

CJM gives managers the opportunity to review customer experience entirely, see a complete picture. They see how customers take a sales funnel. Visible weak spotsOpened opportunities to improve user and client experience.

The client path map helps to identify spaces, points in the client experience, which are painful for people. It can be gaps between different channels of interaction, for example, the experience of moving from social networks to the website may be better.

First of all, this approach puts the user to the company's thinking center. Mobile, social networks And the Internet has changed the behavior of customers. And to these new realities, new channels need to be able to adapt to each business.

This tool will make it possible to consider feelings, questions and user needs. This is especially important for digital products and services.

CJM has a large number of Advantages, and it is really a great tool. But where to start?

I propose first to familiarize yourself with the examples, and then sort out its creation.

Examples of Customer Journey Map

In fact, the client's interaction card with a brand is an illustration, a model, or diagram of all touchpoints with which your customers come into contact with your company on the Internet or offline.

Of course, this is a simple model, often primitive. Like a portrait target audience, funnels or any other schemes, it is not 100% true in reality. Rather, this is a model with which we are trying to reflect reality with a certain degree of accuracy.

Unlikely you will find two similarCustomer Journey Map. . The design depends on your product and your goals. Sometimes it is quite complicated and detailed, as on this example:

The card can be much easier as here.

Here is an example of CJM service repair service. As you can see, this scheme is very different from the previous ones.

Look more examples. Dapper Apps. - Australian company that specializes in developing applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows and Web.

CJM Dapper. Includes 5 stages: research, comparison, seminar, questions and output.

One more example -IDEAROCKET LLC.. The company is developing animated business videos. Most of their customers come from SEM.

Finally, a map of the company operating in the construction industry. It includes six separate stages: design, financing, construction, leasing, model and completion.

There are many ways to study the client's path, as well as ways to create final product (Map itself). The result obtained can be used for specific directions. We hope that these examples inspired you to create their own.

How to create a Customer Journey Map

The process of creating a card must begin with acquaintance with customers. And you can already be on your hands some information about users. Start with this -collect information.

The most important thing you need to do is find out what you have buyers groups, and what questions they ask, being at a particular stage of interaction with the company.

Customer Journey, one of the most useful product tools manager. Why is it important to know how your product is involved in the user's life and what insights can be obtained from that? Talk.

Context, this is what is usually lacking for understanding certain questions. Imagine such a situation: a colleague is like a colleague or a friend, says that it is necessary to take a decision for him about the vacation. I simply expect a response from you to "go" or "Do not go" on vacation at the weekend. What would you advise him?

Most likely you would need to ask him a little about the details of the situation. Why he reflects on this decision, what the situation is at home or at work if he can transfer his vacation and so on. That is, you need to be performed in the context of the situation. So you can give a more useful advice.

The same applies to users. Understanding the context of the situation in which your product is used, opens considerable opportunities for growth.

Let's first look at what Customer Journey is.

Customer Journey: It

Customer Journey, this is visualizing the user interaction history with your product. Full description context and motifs of a specific customer segment, taking into account all advertising channels.

"Funale Sales," you say, but Customer Journey, it is more. These are situations and lifestyle of your users. Their habits and features, their preferences and tasks. Your product is part of all this. The more detailed you describe the picture, the more valuable knowledge will also receive the better quality solutions.

Similar "pictures" are called user cards or Customer Journey Map.

What Profit from Customer Journey

"Well, at least it is beautiful," and this is actually so. Visualization of the full path of the user allows wider to look at the product and the context in which it is located. Thanks to this, we can:

  • Create continuous interaction experience (User Experience) with product.
  • More effectively solve user tasks.
  • Reduce barriers to product use.
  • Increase loyalty from your audience.
  • Get insights for development.

Customer Customer Journey

Usually, in a classic understanding of the user's path, several stages are distinguished.

It all begins with the fact that the user knows nothing about your product. Next, he learns about him, it begins to dive more stronger, learns more and more information. Signed if such an opportunity is activated, that is, the first time uses. Then the product is still used more and ultimately, the user becomes his "lawyer". Recommends to friends and defends before negative feedback from other users.

It would seem, simply and understandable, but everything is a little different in life. There is no such rectilinear movement from the stage to the stage. Customer Journey is diverse and chaotic. Stages may be less, some of them are combined, etc.

I propose to make out how to build a Customer Journey Map for your product.

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Customer Journey Map do it yourself

1. Person

Everything starts with persons. Select a specific user segment (as a rule, this is a target audience) and try to build a person, that is, as you can easily describe a person close to the selected segment.

As a rule, this is an invented character that has the characteristics as close as possible to the selected segment (social. We first: gender, age, financial position, habits, etc.).

Above this example of a person card, which was created in the Xtensio product. This tool allows you to create such user cards based on templates. There are free access to 1 card that can be created. You can create one person, unload it in the form of a picture, and then create a new one, for example.

Such cards allow you to simply submit your user and habit. Next, on the basis of this card, Customer Journey Map is drawn up.

2. Research and contact points

After you have prepared the person, go to contact points and research. For online products you can use analytics and see what the user came from. At what kind of request, from which sources.

For offline products best use polls and interviews. You ask people from where they learn about your product.

In an interview, ask questions about how the user solved his task / problem. Let him tell how he did it in last time. Material with recommendations, as it was previously published in the blog.

Personally, I am a supporter of mixed approaches (especially for online products). You are learning analytics data, then polish real users and secure the data.

Customer Journey Map is compiled based on all collected data. The task is to describe all the user's path as much as possible.

For example, as a result of research, you found that your user visited the conference, where someone mentioned your mobile application. After that, after a couple of days, he thugged you in the search engine, and after a week I installed the application myself on the phone. All this data will be needed for designing a map.

The more data about your target audience you will collect, the better. And now go to the design of the card.

3. Designing or creating a map

After the person is defined, and the data on the contact points are collected, our task is to create the Customer Journey Map itself.

Typically, the team is involved in the design of the card, which includes: analyst, designer (UX / UI), marketer, product manager.

For design use:

  • Markers and stickers (as a rule it starts with this)
  • Special software: uxpressia.com (one card free), RealTimeBoard.com (3 cards for free), Google tables (quite a solution, completely free). Software is used to finalize and design a map.

Start designing from stages (we disassemble them above). We break the Customer Journey Map on the column where the column is one of the stages (not knowledge, awareness, etc.). It is not necessary to use all stages that we discussed earlier. Depending on your product, the number of stages may vary, as we said earlier. The same applies to the names of the stages.

I will create a map on simple tables. Typically, such tables are marked on walls, fadcharts or magnetic boards. I propose for an example to take a subscription to the fitness club.

For Fitness Club, I allocated 4 main stages of Customer Journey.

All team members are going together and begin to land all the data obtained from research on the stage. The first string after the stages are tasks or user goals. Take out these tasks from the study that spent and apply to the card.

Then post the channel data for which the user comes on each of the stages.

After that, describe the process. An ordinary human language tell the user's situation for each stage.

Then, with the help of a brainstorming, you are trying to determine which senses the user is experiencing at each stage of interaction. If, as a result of the study, you managed to fix these feelings quotes, then you are big lucky. Take them and apply to the map.

Try to write with the human language. If the user has doubts about the "not knowledge" stage, then write (from the first person): "I don't know if I need to go at all on fitness?". Make one long table does not work, so the head of the new one (this is a continuation down the previous one)

For clarity, as well as with the processes / channels, you can visualize the senses of the user, his experience.

Brainstorming continues and you domade over barriers that can occur by the user at different stages of the path and above decisions / ideas that will help these barriers to overcome.

The working version of the card is ready.

Usually such a version is transmitted to designers to create a more colorful and understandable look. This card can be actively used in the company and extend to various units inside.

But, creating "beauty", this is optional. For me, there is nothing better cloud / flexible solutions when you can quickly update your card by simply clicking on the link (you can do in the tools that we understood above).

4. Implementation and testing solutions

Decisions that were born as a result of creating Customer Journey Map, you need to apply and test. Remember that you are not for fun to storm with the team all this time.

Set priorities among decisions that have come up with. Evaluate the implementation and take a job. Test and go to the next.

note

In order for your customer journey to be "as it should", consider the following recommendations:

  • Use a specific user segment. "On all users" card is not compiled.
  • Data on channels, contact points and other, are taken from analytics, research and surveys systems. With its expert opinion (read - guess) there is no point in filling the map.
  • Reflect the Stages of Customer Journey more detail. If, for example, before visiting your site, the user has the need to learn more about your product, the column (stage) called "the appearance of interest" should appear on the map.
  • The card is compiled primarily on the basis of user experience, and not your internal business processes. No need to immediately attach to user interaction within your company / project. You will have time to do this when you understand how exactly your customer solves its task and where in all this product.

Conclusion

As we found out, Customer Journey, it's quite useful thingwhich can be used in your projects. Visualization of the entire client path will allow you to get you a bunch of insights and develop your product to unprecedented heights. Collect your users experience, apply everything to the card and invent new solutions. The journey begins!

Alexey Kopylov, UX expert in Kaspersky Lab, co-founder UIDG, author of the training course on the design using Customer Journey Map, wrote an interesting manual for working with Customer Journey Map. With its permission, we give the option of this article on.

Introduction

When I am asked to design a user interface for a certain website, I immediately ask a question - whether it is also necessary to design an interface for mobile devices and, as a rule, I get an affirmative answer. The fact is that modern sites and programs that can be called digital products are, as a rule, part of a large service. And the farther, the more digital products (websites, applications) will be involved in interaction with the user.

I will give an example of a fairly popular service - listening to music. I listen to music on personal Computer running OS X, on a smartphone (iOS), and on Apple TV. Apple quite well thought out the music consumption process: I can buy an album on my iPhone, and then I can listen to this album on Apple TV to which I have large columns. However, I can't start listening to a certain composition on the iPhone, and then continue listening to Apple TV - for this I have to search for the right album in the Apple TV menu, you can't call this procedure. That is, in Apple, no one has taken care of such an opportunity and did not realize it. At the same time, as an iPhone designer so and Apple TV did well. The functionality I need is on the border of two devices and, it is not clear who should be responsible for the design of such bundles.

This example shows that in our time it is not enough to think through the user interface of one digital product in detail in the detail from interaction with other products with which they are in a single infrastructure. You need such a tool that allows you to identify problems at the joints, and also allows you to design bundles between products. As usual, the need provoked the creation of a new wonderful technique, which is called "Customer Journey Map".

Customer Journey Map is perhaps the best User Experience tool over the past 10 years (after characters).

What is a service?

What is a service? For lovers of strict definitions, I will give a quote from GOST-9000-2008:

The service is the result of at least one action that must be implemented in the interaction of the supplier and the consumer, and, as a rule, is intangible.
Let us remember the word "result" - this is what is most important for any consumer.

As I have already reported, modern consumers interact with mobile devices, web browsers, people, environments and spaces and so on. Each certificate of interaction with the service is called the "Point of Contact".

Contact points may be not only digital, but also analog or offline.

Take, for example, a modern bank. What contact points here can we allocate?

  1. bank Website;
  2. web service "Client-Bank", where the user can carry out operations with its account and bank cards;
  3. mobile application "Client-Bank";
  4. the physical branch of the bank, which can also be considered a product. Similarly, as in the case of websites, there is a navigation system inside the bank compartment.

Suppose you came to the bank with some purpose and are not very familiar with the rules of his work. If the navigation has been designed unsuccessfully, then you may be incomprehensible to whom it specifically access to solve your problem. You have to contact the girl at the reception, to which it can be separate customers.

With this example, I wanted to illustrate a simple idea that bank branches can and need to be designed similarly to websites.

What is Customer Journey Map?

So what is a Customer Journey Map (to reduce further just CJM)?

CJM This is an oriented graph on which the Consumer Path of the Services provided using the contact points is displayed. CJM fixes the details of the interaction with the service.

That is, CJM displays exactly how the consumer interacts with the service - which interaction points exist, through which channels is interacted (web, mobile application, offline presence point and so on), as well as what happens inside each contact point.

Here are examples of typical CJM (so far pay attention only to the outer side of the diagram):

Let's look at the simplified example of CJM:

You see three representatives, each of which personifies its consumer group. In the process of consumption of services (achievement), they have to interact with different products. At each point there is an act of service with a certain level of quality:

The overall impression of the service, as a rule, depends on the quality of service at all points of contact. The principle of weak link is valid - one unsuccessful interaction throws the shadow to the whole service. Therefore, it is very important that each interaction point is worked out with maximum quality.

However, it happens that all the interaction points are simply implemented on perfectly, and problems are hidden at the borders of the transition from one point to the other. That is, it may turn out that all employees of the company serve customers well, and some of the consumers still does not reach their goal:

Let's illustrate it simple example: Many online stores require the registration procedure and, often, there is a step such as the registration confirmation by the transition by a special link that comes to your mailbox (it is necessary to prove that a living person is registered, not a robot). In this case, the likelihood increases that the user will not be able to pass this step: You may have a letter with a link to spam, you may have entered Gmail.Ru instead of gmail.com, it was possible to gmail.ru or another non-existent address, perhaps he generally forgot that it was necessary to confirm the registration. In the examples known to me, the loss of users at this step reached 70%!

How could we reduce these barriers? For example, you can control what the user enters as email and offer to correctly correctly erroneous addresses. Further, if the user has not clicked for several days to link from email messages, you can re-send him a letter with reference. But the best, of course, to abandon this step, to use other methods of protection against robots!

In general, you should always implement the system so that any point of contact motivated the consumer to go to the next step (the "push" principle), and the next point pulled the consumer from the previous contact point (Tanya operation). The principle of "Tanya-Pull" contributes to a smoother consumer interaction with the service.

Recall an example with listening to music. In fact, Apple has a way to provide the transition from listening to the iPhone to listen to Apple TV, namely AirPlay technology. However, not all consumers know about the magical technology and therefore can not use it. There is a rule that the functionality that users cannot find for them no matter how there. It would be possible to implement the principle of "Tanya-Pull": as soon as the user turns out to be available to Apple TV, it immediately receives a message (not interrupting listening) that it can enable an audio system (connected to Apple TV) and continue listening to her. Conversely, as soon as the user includes TV, he sees a message which composition is played on the iPhone and what needs to be done to redirect the sound on the audio system (by pressing one button).

So, CJM allows you to control the process of designing services that are implemented using various interactive products, as well as to visualize the service performance process itself.

Tasks solved CJM

List all the tasks that CJM solves:

  1. Creating a continuous UX throughout the consumption of the service.
    Recall the aforementioned "Tanya-Pull".
  2. Increase consumer conversion.
    Due to the reduction of barriers, as well as due to the reduction of losses during the transition from the point of contact to the point of contact, more consumers reaches the target.
  3. Increased consumer loyalty.
    Retention Rate - the number of returning consumers is growing if we designed and implemented the service without barriers.
  4. Increase the responsibility of company specialists.
    Each interaction point has its own responsible employees by the company. After we inflicted all the interaction points on the card, all employees in the company can see who is responsible for and how it copes with their responsibilities (if you configure KPI for each point). This in itself increases the level of responsibility.
  5. Acceleration of the development of multichannel services and products and improving the quality of development.
    Due to the fact that all parties participating in the development are more fully seeing how the service is carried out, and also see all the potential weaknesses of the service and can intervene in time in their development.
  6. Creating new exciting interactions.
    It is possible to come up with and implement new innovative capabilities (remember an example about the continuation of listening to audio recordings when moving from one device to another).

Everything looks great, but how to create CJM?

Create CJM, step-by-step instructions

Step number 1. We identify all contact points and channels of interaction

We apply on the map all the interaction points of a certain typical consumer with the service. Do not forget anything! It may be so that there are hidden interaction points that you have not guessed. For example, you can find out that some issues of consumers solve informal in the way - with social networks (what happens often). That is, someone from the company's employees associates with the consumer directly within the social network and helps to achieve its goal. It is necessary to configure everything, including such interaction points!

To miss anything, use the secret buyer's technique, that is, they will walk around all the steps of a typical consumer of the service. You can also find an external company that will professionally reveal all the interaction points with the involvement of a large number of respondents.

Remember that for one target group (or for one character, if you use the character techniques) one CJM diagram is drawn!

Next - it is important for each point to determine all possible channels of interaction. That is, to determine with which devices interactions are carried out, for example, it can be web browsers, mobile applications, phone calls, Skype, email calls, social networks. Do not forget about offline channels - visiting offices, meetings with couriers, meetings with agents and so on. Again, the channels unexpected for you can be revealed, for example, you can find out that a huge number of consumers comes from mobile devices. And it may be so that the design of your site does not take into account this channel of interaction.

Graphically CJM can have a different type - a diagram may be linear if the nature of interaction with consumers is also linear:

It may be branched if consumers have multiple alternative interaction scenarios:

May have a temporary view - it is suitable for displaying the interaction with the service during the day:

We can make several CJM charts for various groups of consumers and for various purposes.

Step number 2. Describe contact points

Now each point of contact and each channel must be described.

Here is the typical information that we must fix:

  1. Channel interaction
    Points may have several channels, list all the channels.
  2. Target action, scenario, success criteria
    Describe what the consumer wants to achieve with this interaction. We also describe how the perfect scenario of interaction arises, as well as what needs to be done if the consumer has problems. Describe the specific criteria for the success of the script passage - this is usual for collecting statistics of the quality of each contact point.
  3. The degree of criticality of the point / channel
    Helps concentrated at the most critical points.
  4. Barriers
    We list all the problems that consumers may encounter inside this interaction point.
  5. Ways to reduce barriers
    For each barrier, we define the countermeasures that we must implement when optimizing the service. For example, as in my example, registration confirmation, we can control which emails enters the consumer and offer to correct the errors in writing the address.
  6. Conversion and ROI optimization
    We consider the number of consumers who came to this point to the number of successfully reached the next interaction point. Ideal if all consumers came to the next point (coefficient \u003d 1.0). This is the main KPI point of interaction and a company employee who is implementing this interaction. Conversion will allow you to calculate economical effect From reducing one or barrier. For example, you can calculate that reducing the barrier inside a certain point of contact will increase the conversion by 20%. Tracking these 20% further along the CJM chain and reaching until the consumer brings money, you can definitely determine how much money will bring the optimization of this point. If you still evaluate the cost of reducing the barrier, then you have the value of the ROI coefficient (return on investment). Having the ROI value will be quite easy to prove top managers to benefit such optimization.
  7. Other KPIs (for example, Retention Rate, contact time and so on)
    We can come up with a large amount of KPI, which more fully characterize the quality of the service at this point.
  8. Psycho-emotional condition, degree of frustration and stress
    This data we can get browsing consumer complaints or using high-quality research methods (interviews, field observations). Like the degree of criticality of the contact point, this information helps to concentrate at the most important points of the service.

Important Council

When describing contact points, use the vocabulary of consumers, and not your professional.

Below in Figure Examples of the description of the interaction points. I migrated the loyalty program of a petroleum company.

Step number 3. We find who and for what is responsible inside the company

For each point and channel, add a specialist or a group of specialists, from which the success of interaction with the consumer depends on the action.

Depending on the level of development of the company, this task can be very simple, and maybe on the contrary, very difficult. The more opaque the company, the more difficult it is to collect similar data.
The situation is aggravated when employees find out that you are going to fix the KPI quality of their work. Part of the employees can start to sabotage the KPI collection process, they simply will not give you the necessary data. First, you need to convince all employees in the fact that KPI fixation will contribute to improving the quality of the service, which in turn will contribute to the promotion of career stairs. But, as a rule, there is always a couple parsive sheepwhich will impede increasing transparency - and to overcome such resistance you will need support from the top management.

ATTENTION, ETICAL QUESTION!

Do not all work strictly on the working instructions. Some employees can bypass them to increase their efficiency. In this case, anonymize sources of your information as much as possible.

Step number 4. We optimize the most critical points / channels

We take the most critical interaction points and reduce barriers within these points.

Take an example with an oil company - barrier №2 Step No. 3:

This barrier can be reduced by competent information in the form of a sequence of actions (using graphics similar to comics). Just need to remember that any optimization must be checked after the implementation - is it really a new version Contact points works better than previous?

Also consider whether you could implement the "Tanya-Pulli" principle to motivate consumers when moving on CJM?

A more radical optimization method is to remove unnecessary interaction points. Figure below shows the CJM scheme before optimization and after optimization. In the right scheme, extra levels of hierarchy were removed and, the chain of interaction as a whole became shorter.

Step number 5. We take control of the optimization process

We make the optimization process regular. After fixing the most critical points of interaction, we begin to successively optimize less critical points. At the same time, we establish a regular fee of KPI (including conversion). All changes in UX services and products are constantly checked with KPI.

Thus, we consistently increase the quality of the service and earn credibility within the company. It is important to start from the very critical, in this case you will be easier to get approval and budget for other services improvements. Immediately take for everything expensive and long and there is a risk of concentration on insignificant problems.

CJM tools tools

POST-IT leaves

Use POST-IT leaves to start working on CJM for brainstorms, for constructing hypotheses and fixation preliminary results. Leaflets contribute to group work and are probably the cheapest tool and most fast way CJM fixation.

Beautiful schemes

At an advanced stage, you can draw a sexy scheme in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, on which all contact points are filled as tasty as possible. Such schemes are suitable for presentation by various top managers for additional funding. However, these schemes are static and uncomfortable for development, they do not have much of the descriptive information. Do not abuse such schemes!

Excel + Schemes

Now I work using two tools: Flying Logic to draw diagrams and Excel (or Google Docs) to enter information at each contact point. Flying Logic is quite well suited for such charts, since it was originally made to build a restriction theory schemes, which conjugates quite well with CJM. The disadvantage of this method - you have to constantly synchronize the diagram and the table so that the information is relevant.

TouchPoint Dashboard Web Service

This is the only web service known to me, which is specifically designed to work with CJM. You can not only fix CJM, but also create cross-table type importance / simplicity of implementation / effect or correction time / Correction cost / effect. Such cross-tables will help you determine the procedure for optimizing the service.

It looks all very pretty, however, the cost of the service looks like this (per month):

  • $ 175 for 1 user
  • $ 625 for 5
  • $ 950 for 10

In my opinion, it is still too expensive for most teams - we are waiting for a competitor's appearance, I am sure that the cost will decrease after that.

RESULTS

Finally, briefly list the benefits from the use of CJM when reflashing the service:

  • CJM allows you to distribute knowledge about the real state of consumers in your company.
  • Helps to draw the attention of top managers for blatant facts or potential growth opportunities.
  • Helps calculate the ROI CJM optimization.
  • Promotes development strategy for the development of services and products that are included in it.
  • Improves communications within the company.
  • Enhances the level of personnel training (we go beyond the scope of pure UX).
  • Improves organizational culture your company.
  • Most importantly: improves the quality of the service, which contributes to the loyalty of your consumers!

Afterword: What to read?

On the Internet will find many articles on keywords This article.

There is also a pair of books on this topic:

This Is Service Design Thinking

Excellent fresh book, quite relevant - in every way I recommend!

Customer Journey (client path) is in every business, but most entrepreneurs do not think about it. In each business in the CIS, the client's path begins at the moment when the client fell into the business activity area. Or speaking simple language, I went to the site or crossed the store threshold. Successful businessmen Think differently.

Take a bright example of Customer Journey CompanyStarbax . The path begins with the moment when a person came the idea of \u200b\u200bdrinking coffee in the office, then he discusses with friends where he will drink coffee, then he rides, parked, enters the cafe, stands in line and so on.

Customer Journey is something like a sales funnel, only in the more global sense of the word. The client path can be designed for years. The funnel is a small part of your business, and the client path is a larger task.

Successful examples You can argue on the key phrase "Customer Journey Map. "

Let's wonder how to analyze Customer Journey in your business. I will describe the client path for the online store of children's clothing / shoes. In this example, we will not specify the details, now it is important to understand the essence of this approach.


Determination of the main stages of Customer Journey (client paths)

The first thing to be done is to smash the path of your customers on points. The more points will, the better. There should be 5-10 of their minimum.

  1. The client sees some kind of goods from other children, on the Internet on the pictures or in some other place. At this point, the need and desire to learn about this product.
  2. Begins to ask about this product from friends or google examples
  3. He forgets about this product
  4. Again somewhere sees the goods and begins to want it
  5. Looking where you can buy
  6. Hit to website
  7. Fits a product card
  8. Watching the characteristics
  9. Compare with competitors
  10. Leaves an application
  11. Call manager
  12. Payment
  13. Delivery of goods
  14. Consumption of goods
  15. Story about the product and your store Friends
  16. Re-purchase

These items may be even more. I described the first who came to mind.

Determination of what feels and makes the client at these stages

After we have identified the main stages of Customer Journey, we need to understand how the client perceives these stages: what he feels that he sees what he hears that good is what is bad and how it can be improved.

Stage 1. The client sees some kind of goods from other children

What feels: Joy and interest. Gets visual pleasure and the desire to have these goods.

What sees: Goods on someone else's child.

What's wrong: aboutdezhda, the child can be dirty and not attract attention to other potential buyers. The future client may not pay attention to the new product on someone else's child.

How can I improve: Phold up the reason why the mother of the child, who has a product, would say another mom:"And we have a new job, how do you?" (If you think about only this step, then the money will already be twice as much).

Stage 2. Begins to ask about this product from friends or google examples

What feels: Interest and sometimes fatigue from search. Disappointment that cannot be found immediately.

What sees: Many other offers.

What's wrong: It is not clear where and what to look for. You can get to competitors. Many similar proposals. I was looking for one, bought another.

How can I improve: Pridhem how to avoid search in Google and provide a direct visit to the online store from the phone immediately after receiving information on the playground.

Stage 3. The client forgets about this product

What feels: is distracted by something else. There may be different feelings.

What sees: Other offers from different spheres.

What's wrong: I forgot about the product, and there is a chance that I will not remember.

How can I improve: Come up with how a girlfriend with another child can learn a potential client. It is trite to say that the action ends tomorrow.Invent how you can take contact with the client when visiting the site.

Stage 4. Again somewhere sees the goods

What feels: Feels the need for product. He understands how he is good and begins to want him.

What sees: Advantage of goods.

What's wrong: There is no possibility to immediately remember the site where she could buy this product. I have to look again. Can get to competitors.

How can I improve: Send email with a reminder of the product. The client must immediately remember what this product can buy on your site and he does not need to look for an alternative on the Internet.

Stage 5. Looking for where you can buy

What feels: Excitement from the future purchase is in a state of waiting for pleasure. May feel anger after long searches, lack of information, irritation from uncomfortable competitors sites, etc.

What's wrong: goes to competitors.

How can I improve: Remind yourself by email, make a convenient site and a product description, where everything is immediately clear.

Stage 7. Fits a product card

What feels: Anger from long searches. Incomprehensible price, availability of goods, no available product characteristics, etc.

What sees: Little photos. Little photo. Incomprehensible interface.

What's wrong: can not understand anything. Uncomfortable site interface, many categories and unnecessary products.

How can I improve: Send relevant email messages, bypassing the entire structure of the site. Implement usability and site design. Increase the download speed of the site, to introduce additional navigation numbers that will show what a man watched last time and will push to buy.

Stage 8. Watching the characteristics

What feels: Misunderstanding of goods and desire to compare with another commodity. Thinks about the price and value. Doubts buy.

What sees: Little product characteristics, does not understand whether it is available.

What's wrong: no video review and detailed description. High price. To the end does not understand why he needs it.

How can I improve: Put feedback, make a video review, if a person came out several times per page, make a floating window with a discount. Improve the usability of the goods card.

Stage 9. Compare with competitors

What feels: The ability to find cheaper.

What sees: Other sites.

What's wrong: Can buy from competitors.

How can I improve: Sailing a trigger newsletter, configure retard. Cheering attention. Make it so that it does not leave to watch other sites.

Stage 10. Returns to your site

What feels: what he already looked and found nothing

What sees: Your site through the prism of other sites, on which he was. Is your site good or bad compared to others?

What is wrong: The site may be worse than competitors.

How can I improve: Earn usability. Make a flashing window "You are returned to us."

Stage 11. Leaves an application

What feels: Waiting and the need for product, interest.

What sees: Your site or other goods, or goes to competitors.

What is wrong: Wait.

How can I improve: Improve the response rate to the application, take the user's attention while the manager calls. After the application, substitute the useful content associated with the goods, and not lose the user's attention until the manager's call.Make possible payment without a manager.

Stage 12. Call of Manager

What feels: Seeking or dislike for voice and accent of man. Subconscious speech literacy analysis.

What sees: It is better to watch the goods that are discussed.

What is wrong: No physical contact. The user needs to talk with the manager. Competence of the manager, response rate to the application.

How can I improve: Introduce the bus service and sell without managers. Register scripts managers. Make a good content marketing so that the user gets answers through video reviews and articles, and not from the manager.

Stage 13. Payment

What feels: Anxiety and doubt.

What sees: Clear or incomprehensible interface of payment systems. Beautiful or ugly design. It feels that he can fool. Need support.

What's wrong: May be distracted and not finish the payment process.

How to improve: Remove card data, selling TripWire, and thus cause trust before selling the main product. Make a convenient payment in several ways. Make a video instruction for payment. Add reviews to the payment page.

Stage 14. Delivery of goods

What feels: Waiting and anger if the delivery is delayed.

What sees: Focus of attention disappears.

What's wrong: Focus of attention disappears.

How to improve: Improve logistics, make content to use the goods during the delivery period to retain focus of attention.

Stage 15. Product Consumption

What feels: joy

What sees: Product itself (here you can come up with packaging, etc. Good example - MacBook: I have not had time to use, and the packaging already gives emotions).

What is wrong: It all depends on the product. It is impossible to see the moment of product consumption.

How can I improve: Constantly improve the product itself. Make instructions for efficient product consumption.

Stage 16. Story about the product and your store to friends (the success of the business will depend on this stage)

What feels: Joy or anger.

What sees: other potential product users.

What is wrong: May tell about the minuses of the product and dissuade buying others.

How to improve: come up ready storiesThrough the content marketing to tell them and make people retell ready-made stories to others.

Stage 17. Re-purchase (key stage)

What feels: Trust and loyalty to the brand.

What sees: Repeated on the site.

What is wrong: may not buy again.

How to improve: Implement an airport and marketing automation for constant sales stimulation. Make a chain of letters after selling goods. Make separate chains with any priests of other products.


In this example, I did not deepen into the essence of the processes, but only showed the methodology of how to do it. If you understand the essence, you will notice that at certain stages of the path you will have serious holes. If you take our TIMEDIGITALCRM company, then a serious hole in the client path is to install the code to the site. This merges very many, and we have to explain how to do and find contractors who can help our clients cope with this, at first glance elementary, task.

In this article you learned the basis of the approach in the development of Customer Journey. In the next article, I will tell specific techniques that will improve different stages of the client path.

If you are interested in this topic, then sign up for our who pass every Tuesday and Thursday. We tell about them in more detail about the topic of marketing automation. And of course share your comments and tell me where the Customer Journey of your client begins.

In the CustomerThink blog about how to make a consumer path card. In the article, he defined the main components of the card and described them in nine points.

If you were looking for information on how to create a consumer path card, then most likely you have found many information about huge quantities different approaches. After search, you could have some questions, for example:

  • Why do Customer paths differ so much from each other?
  • How to start if I want to create a path map?
  • How to understand what approach will be the most effective for my organization?
  • Are there card templates that can be used in operation?

In this article, I will define the nine most common components of the user path cards. I hope that this will help you create the most effective card suitable for your needs.

1. Focus on buyer

The first thing you need to decide is a map of whose path you are going to make up. For example, you can make a scheme of movement of a certain type of buyers (the image of an ideal buyer), a potential (target) buyer or a whole segment of buyers, depending on which you follow the goal.

In order to determine the card of whose path you want to make, it is worth identifying a commercial goal, to achieve which you start this study. Here are some examples of commercial purposes that you can achieve with the preparation of the card:

  • Determine the template path that can be applied to all or almost to all buyers, and which can be used to work in a company, for example, in order to create employees with a general understanding of each stage of the buyer's cycle, purchasing purposes, points of interaction with buyers and so on .
  • Relate separately branches of the company and its structural units With key problem areas in the buyer's experience.
  • Make the planning process together to experienced way Contribute to an increase in the number of buyers.
  • Practically implement a new client segmentation scheme.
  • Optimize customer experience under the priority client group (High Value Clients).
  • Understand what the user experience of a certain segment of customers is distinguished or a certain image of buyers from the experience of another customer segment.
  • Expand the business by starting working with new buyers or with those involving the involvement of which they did not fully.

If we talk about attracting customers in B2B, then the client's path card usually includes various types of buyer employees who perform different roles in the B2B purchase process. In this case, it will be useful to include in the map several types of buyers and show how and when one or another type is involved in the main purchase process.

Usually, buying roles are determined using images. The buyer's image is a certain purchasing archetype, with the help of which your organization is easier to understand the needs of the client, its expectations and types of behavior. Images are a very useful tool with which you can provide your customers with a positive and memorable purchasing experience.

The image of the buyer is a certain purchasing archetype, with the help of which your organization is easier to understand the needs of the client, its expectations and types of behavior

If you associate your customer's path map with the definition of a client's image, it can help install and maintain a general understanding of the images of ideal customers and their likely way. If you do not define images, you should think about the development of types of images to the process of creating customer path maps.

2. Creating a client path map with certain stages from the buyer's position

Client path cards consist of stages of the purchase process (sometimes they are called phases). Each stage is a significant goal that your buyer is trying to achieve with progress throughout the path.

The client path map must be built in accordance with the stages that will represent the client's path specifically going to achieve their goals. The card should not be focused on the steps of your internal processes.

Why can not be configured between the stages of the client path and the stages of internal processes? This is universal confusion that in this way you instantly turn the client's path card into the graph of internal processes - this approach is usually called from the internal to external. As we learn later, you can apply your internal processes on the client path card after you are the client-centered model of the stages of the purchase process.

Stages may reflect common processes, for example, stage in relations between the buyer and your brand. Or the opposite is narrower - as, for example, the test flight stage, which simulates the experience of the first flight of the buyer with the airline. How common or narrow will be the stage depends on what way you decide to apply on the map.


Each stage is a significant goal that your buyer is trying to achieve with progress throughout the path.

Such format stages is linear, because one stage follows. However, you can use visual design in your maps to show cyclical customer behavior models.

3. Identify the goals of your buyers

Your buyer interacts with your brand to achieve its goals, which are also called desires, needs or expectations.

Here are some examples of the buyer's goals:

  • I want to know what options I have.
  • I want to be sure that the price is valid.
  • I want to feel that I am respected.
  • I want to be productive while traveling.

If you clearly define the goals of the buyer at every stage of the way, you can evaluate how much the purchasing experience you contributes to (or does not contribute) to achieve the buyer to them goals.

And the value of your card as an auxiliary tool for making business solutions depends just because you define the goal. So try to clearly understand the goals of the buyer.

4. Description of points of contact between the buyer and your organization

Contribution points (TouchPoints) are the buyer's interaction points with a brand or vice versa - lack of interaction with the brand. Most often the value of the client path cards is a clear understanding of the client's interaction points with a brand throughout the client's path.

The interaction points may occur in one or two channels, using tools or resources, but the interaction points and the tools and resources used are not the same. For example, if the buyer enters the retail store site to conduct a study, then the interaction point here are the actions of the buyer to achieve its goal using a web channel. That is, the interaction point is the intersection of the buyer with a specific tool or resource.

The easiest way to think about interaction points as about tools, resources or channel. And this is normal. But by themselves these points of interaction are not part of the user experience and in fact they do not give you a lot of information. In order for them to become an element of this consumer experience, you need the real buyer to take advantage of them on the way to your goal.


Points of contact (touchpoints) are the buyer's interaction points with a brand or vice versa - lack of interaction with the brand, while the buyer is looking for a way to satisfy your own needs or achieve goals

Some cards simply summarize all tools and resources, without describing the actions of buyers at every point of interaction. This can be useful if at each stage of the client path there are many interaction points and you need to understand which tools and resources use your buyer in order to achieve your goals, as well as determine their relative significance.

Regardless which terminology you use speaking about interaction points - or even if you indirectly describe key interaction points in your map, applying actions and model of your buyers' behavior - be sure to use a customer-centered approach or an approach from external to the internal one, which Describes how your buyer uses them to achieve their goals.

5. Using the path map in order to visually transmit emotions

Emotions cause most of the human actions - even if we do not realize it. The most rational to the form of a decision on the purchase in B2B, even those that are supported by large-scale questionnaires and many estimated matrices are powerless to emotions of buyers.

That's what we found out over the past decade and thousands of polls of buyers, which I spent, only confirmed: Emotions occupy an important place when making a decision on purchasing in B2B.

- Tony Zambito in the article "The role of emotions and goals when making a decision on the purchase between companies"

It is very important to catch the emotions of your buyers (they are also called feelings) on all of their paths to get a real understanding of their experience. It is very important to understand that your buyer wants to feel at every stage of its path, and the way he actually feels at every stage.

Regardless of the nature of the experience that your organization provides the client, you will save your client and attract new if the service you offer brings people positive emotions. In other words, you need to give the buyer a memorable experience, which he wants to repeat.