How to design a good customer experience (CX) map

Madrid, Jun 29, 2023 – Customer orientation has become the primary objective of today's companies. One of the challenges in achieving this is that departments in most organizations operate in silos.

They are simply unaware of how or, in some cases, when each department has interacted with a customer. This prevents them from delivering a single seamless customer journey in line with customer expectations.

Companies must realize that it is increasingly important to invest time, money, and resources in the proper development of maps that describe the customer journey. Integrating these maps into the organization's platforms is critical so that all departments are coordinated and can deliver an excellent customer experience.

Creating a good map involves understanding and visualizing the journey that customers take when interacting with the company at all stages, from discovery to post-sales.

But how to design it? Here are the seven necessary steps.

Seven steps to designing an effective customer experience map

1. Identify the touchpoints: A list of all the touchpoints that customers have with the company should be drawn up. These can include website visits, social media, phone calls, emails, visits to physical stores, etc. It is important to capture as many interactions as possible to have a comprehensive view of the customer journey.
2. Define the stages of the customer journey: It is necessary to divide the customer journey into key stages such as discovery, research, purchase, use of the product or service and support/sales. These stages may vary from company to company, but it is vital to clearly understand the different phases that customersgo through from start to finish.
3. Identify customer behavior and emotions: In each of the previous stages of the customer journey, it is important to analyze customers’ behaviorand the emotions they experience. This involves understanding what they are trying to achieve at each step and how they feel about it. This information can be obtained through surveys, customer interviews, data analysis and feedback collected through different channels.
4. Map the touchpoints and interactions: In this step, the touchpoints identified in step 1 are placed on the map according to the customer journey stages defined above. For each touchpoint, it is advisable to describe the specific interactions that occur and how they relate to customerbehavior and emotions at that stage.
5. Identify pain points and opportunities for improvement: When reviewing the map at this point in its development, it is necessary to identify the pain points where customers may experience difficulties, frustrations, or dissatisfaction. These may be moments of high friction or lack of clarity in communications. One should also identify opportunities for improvement where it is possible toadd value, surprise, or exceed customer expectations.
6. Propose solutions and improvements: Based on the pain points and opportunities for improvement identified in the previous step, it is now time to generate ideas and solutions, which may include changes in internal processes, improvements in communications, implementation of new technologies or staff training. Normally, several solutions are proposed, so it is advisable to prioritize them and establish an action plan to address them.
7. Track and continuously improve: The customer experience map is not static, but dynamic, i.e., it must be updated and adjusted as the company evolves. Results and key metrics should be monitored regularly to assess the effectiveness of the improvements implemented. It is also necessary to continuously collect customer feedback and maintain an open dialogue with customersto understand how their needs and expectations are changing.

Benefits of customer experience mapping

Customer experience mapping is a powerful and valuable tool for understanding customer interactions and emotions throughout the customer journey. Companies can leverage this information to optimize the experience and deliver exceptional service at every stage of the process.

Maps also helptransform the customer experience beyond optimization, if necessary. The most important thing is to take the necessary distance and shift the focus to adopt an outside-in perspective. Sometimes the trees do not let us see the forest.

Among the many benefits of these maps are the following:

• Provide a comprehensive view of all touchpoints
• Help companies understand where the experience is not seamless
• Enable companies to focus on what matters most to their customers
• Improve companyresponsiveness
• Facilitate collaboration
• Help break down organizationalsilos

Specifically, one of the most outstanding benefits of these maps is that they enhance omnichannel customer communications. It is undeniable that customers interact with companies through numerous channels.

So, in the midst of some confusion and market saturation, the challenge is to make a difference by allowing customers to choose how they want to interact with companies. And this is the power of sophisticated mapping tools.

Given that the weight of customer experience does not fall on a single channel, the objective of good customer journey management is to achieve the integration of all channels.

In fact, according to The Aberdeen Group, companies with strong omnichannel customer interaction strategies retain 89% of their customer base on average, compared to 33% for companies with poor omnichannel strategies.

An omnichannel map allows companies to anticipate their customers' needs in real time and across channels. With the data they collect from each interaction, they know when customers move from one channel to another. For example, a customer may start an interaction on the phone and finish it online or via SMS. The result is increased customer contact and satisfaction, which is always profitable.

In conclusion,the customer journey map is an essential component of the overall customer experience strategy. However, it has been the object of a lot of criticism, for example, that these maps are useless or impractical.

To get the most out of them, these tools must be linked to the customer communications management (CCM) platform. This is the only way to gain visibility and ultimately improve the customer experience.

As the acronym CCM evolves into CXM (customer experience management), customer journey maps will bring even more value as an indispensable process to ensure excellent results by enhancing customer interactions, strengthening relationships, and improving trust.

Companies that commit to improving the customer experience will increase revenues and stand out from competitors. The question to ask is: Is my company capable of understanding current and future customer journeys?

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