Creating a customer journey can be an incredibly rewarding process. It involves gathering data, analyzing it, and then creating a plan of action to ensure that customers have the best possible experience with your business. One of the tasks in my Domain Modelling and Content Types course involved creating a simple customer journey – defining the user’s story, his steps and emotions. This inspired me to create a customer journey map for my 2nd semester project work.
In this article, I will share what I learned during this process so that you too can create an effective customer journey for your business.
1. learning: What is a customer journey and why do you need it?
A customer journey is a path that a customer takes when interacting with a brand. It can be divided into five stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, use, and loyalty. Each stage has its own objectives and strategies that brands use to engage customers.
Creating a customer journey is important because it allows businesses to understand how customers interact with their products and services. This information can be used to improve customer experience and increase sales. By understanding the different stages that customers go through when interacting with a brand, businesses can develop strategies that are tailored specifically to each stage. This helps to create a positive experience for customers and encourages them to return to the business in the future.
2. learning: User research
User research is one of the most important steps in creating a customer journey map. This involves collecting data such as customer feedback, preferences, and behaviour. Through this research, businesses can gain insights into how customers interact with their products and services. This information can be used to identify potential areas of improvement, create strategies to engage customers, and tailor content to their needs.
There are many ways to do user research – from interviews to surveys and focus groups. I heavily relied on Erika Hall’s book Just enough research which helped me choose the right method and also execute it.
3. learning: User’s emotions
Understanding the emotions of customers when interacting with a brand is an essential part of creating a successful customer journey. Customers often have strong emotional reactions to products and services, which can be used to create more engaging experiences. Through user research, I recognized their pain points as well as where their experience was satisfactory. With each step, I included the user’s emotions in my customer journey map – happiness, sadness, frustration, etc.
4. learning: Visualisation
Visualising the customer journey map was another important learning for me. First I put everything on a piece of paper to see the amount of information I was working with and to help me create visuals that displayed the steps and emotions of a customer’s journey. The visuals included flow charts, diagrams, and infographics – which made it easier for me to convey information and ideas visually. To ensure accuracy, I also included relevant data points in my visualisations.
5. learning: Tools and resources
From this piece of paper, I had to turn everything into a readable and presentable customer journey map. I searched for tools that would fit my needs and make the process easier. In the end, I chose Uxpressia, which has a free plan and offers extensive functionality to create in-depth customer journeys. It also allows users to add data points, create visuals to convey information, and preview the customer journey map in real time.
My experience
Overall, creating a customer journey map was an incredible experience. I learned about the importance of user research and understanding customers’ emotions. Additionally, I gained insight into how to create visuals that convey information effectively, as well as which tools can be used to make the process easier. With these skills in hand, I am now better equipped to help businesses understand their customers’ needs and design experiences tailored specifically for them.