What Is a Customer Experience Map and How to Create One

December 21, 2022

What Is a Customer Experience Map and How to Create One

The history of customer experience mapping dates back to 1981 when John Carlson was named CEO of Scandinavian airline companies. Because three Scandinavian governments controlled the airline then, it was exceedingly bureaucratic and top-heavy, as are most government-owned businesses. John Carlson was aware of this issue and sought to address it by giving staff more power. 

They needed to base their decisions on the consumer’s opinions, but to do that, they needed to comprehend the customer and how the customer interacted with or thought about the company. He developed the “Moments of Truth” framework and technique to do this. 

This succinct post offers some general suggestions for what you ought to include when creating your customer experience map and how it can help upscale your business.

Customer Experience Mapping; What Is It?

Customer experience mapping is a visual depiction of a client’s engagement with a company. The power of customer experience mapping lies in its client-centric transformation and innovation in an organization. Mapping the customer experience means not concentrating on the inside-out views, such as departmental or stakeholder perceptions but the outside view through the customer’s eyes.

Customer experience maps are a constructive way for businesses to depict intricate client relationships visually. These maps identify recurring problems that frequently inconvenience or annoy customers, allowing businesses to realize opportunities that offer excellent customer experience. They demonstrate how your existing clients utilize your goods and services and often categorize tasks like the important stages of the buying process, listing pertinent touch points or platforms.

Additionally, it provides information on the desires and concerns of prospective clients, which directly affect or constrain their conduct. Large organizations, well-established businesses, and startups may boost consumer retention and improve conversion rates by enhancing the customer experience. 

Why Should You Have an Experience Map?

To most people, the customer experience is clear. When a company launches a product, it often uses vigorous marketing campaigns, and soon after, customers start purchasing. If the customer experience was this simple, most companies would have easily gained new customers and retained existing ones.

Customer experience needs a deeper understanding and is quite complex. A recent survey shows that 75% of customers value their experience more than the purchased product or service. In fact, most customers will rate your company based on their experience first, then later consider what they purchased. This is why you will hear people unknowingly praising how good a company is.

While taking this path, consumers might look at adverts, speak with customer service representatives in a contact center, or attempt to finish a purchase. These are roadside rest areas that affect the way they behave. By understanding the procedure and how it impacts customer experiences, a business may prepare and plan to persuade clients to make a purchase.

However, just being aware of the client’s path is wholly inadequate. It is best to depict this difficult journey in a visual that you and concerned staff members can refer to. This is where creating a customer experience map comes into the equation.

Mapping the Customer Experience; the Details

The customer experience is rarely depicted as a straight path from place A to place B because customers make trips in a circular, multi-channel, back-and-forth fashion. Due to this, it is challenging to visualize customer experience mapping effectively.

To demonstrate the experience, smart company executives utilize various approaches, including regularly posting on whiteboards and infographics. What matters the most is that the intended audience understands the map, not where it is. 

Therefore, you must first gather information from your prospects and clients prior to creating your customer experience map. The procedure for creating a pragmatic customer experience map is laborious but worthwhile.

Ideally, the following items should be listed in a customer experience map:

The Purchase Procedure

Significant turning points in the customer experience are depicted on the map. Drawing the path a client will go through to attain a goal is where you should begin. Use the standard purchase process phases to present each stage. The first step will simplify your mapping process if you are keen enough to identify the turning points.

Customer Behavior

In this section of the customer experience map, a client’s actions at each phase of the buying process are delineated. This could include discussing the product or service with a friend and telling them why they think it is a credible option. According to experts, this is classified as the awareness stage. The customer not only makes themselves aware of the product but also informs other people. 

Another way to seek information about the product is by searching the internet or social media. Through this, they can analyze what other people think of this product.  Following that, customers might test a demo on your webpage before making a payment. This stage looks at the many channels your customers could use to reach their goals.

Emotional Reactions

One thing business owners fail to understand about customers is how they tie emotions to products or services. If the procedure is drawn out, they could go through a range of emotions. By adding these feelings to the experience map, you can possibly prevent them from criticizing the company. While you might not capture every emotion a customer might experience, having an idea of what they could entail will help. 

Problem Points

Every negative review stems from a problem within this loop. By including pain spots in your customer experience map, you may determine during which phase and for what cause your consumer is experiencing unpleasant emotions. Since you cannot, in actuality, control what the customer feels, it might be impossible to resolve them all.

Remedies

The final component of your customer experience map is remedies. Ideally, you should discuss how to improve your purchase process so that customers have fewer issues.

How to Create a Customer Experience Map

Once you understand your customer’s point of view, you can carefully craft a map to guide you and your team. Remember, there is no linear path when creating a customer experience map, so get your whiteboard or anything else you might require ready. 

Come Up with Objectives for the Map

You can’t just start drafting a customer experience map without determining why you want one, what you aim to achieve, or who it involves. You might consider creating a buyer persona to answer such questions. 

This imaginary client encompasses all the sociodemographic traits of the usual customer. Having a distinctive personality may help you concentrate on keeping the customers at the center of the customer experience map at all times.

Describe Your Personas’ Profiles and Their Objectives

Do some research by incorporating user testing and surveys. These are two excellent approaches for obtaining insightful client feedback. It’s crucial only to contact genuine clients or prospects. Come up with questions that will help you get more information about the customer’s experience with your business.

Make Your Intended Consumer Personalities Stand Out

You need to narrow your focus to one or two client profiles after understanding how they interact with your business. Remember that a customer experience map captures the interaction of a specific client who is moving along a very specific route with your company. Your experience map won’t properly depict your consumers’ perspective if you include too many characters.

Make a List of Touchpoints

A touchpoint is any interaction, including those lacking physical contact, that could change your customer’s perception of your products or brand. List each touchpoint that your potential consumers now use and those you believe they should be using. This step is essential because creating a customer experience map compels you to think of the steps your customers go through.

Analyze Whether You Have the Necessary Resources

Drafting a customer experience map will have you looking into your business resources. During the process, you might realize your customer’s experience isn’t so great because, perhaps, there are no customer service tools to help your team keep up with demands. 

Test the Experience

Consider the designed map an experiment that needs testing, and the best person to test it on is you. For all the personas you came up with, keenly follow the mapped journey and see if the points you made are realistic and applicable.

Make Improvements

You cannot get the map right with the first attempt; therefore, you will have to make several changes during the process. Don’t be alarmed by the number of changes you make; take as much time as needed to develop an outstanding customer experience map.

How Can Call Criteria Help Enhance Your Customer’s Experience?

If you operate your business online, you probably have a contact center where your customers can reach you for inquiries. A contact center is one of the most important touch points you need to consider when mapping the customer experience. This is why you need to maximize it, ensuring every detail from the conversations with agents is captured. You can then use such information to establish an impeccable customer experience map.

Call Criteria utilizes artificial intelligence and human vetting to bring out a scorecard of how well you handle your customer inquiries. We have worked with numerous clients before, and most of the time, their major concern is improving their customer experience. From a financial standpoint, our past clients realize a 20-50% increase in their overall performance alongside reducing quality assurance costs by over 30%.

Your customer experience map will be more accurate, and you will be able to produce greater results if you have more data. Let us handle the labor-intensive monitoring of calls, representatives, and statistics, and you will see a great change in your performance. 

Final Thoughts

Now that you understand what a customer experience map is and how it can upscale your business, you should create one for your business. To create the perfect customer experience map, you will need accurate data to make informed business decisions.  

From here, refining the data using our refined combination of artificial intelligence and human support ensures more precise results. With Call Criteria, you are assured of immediate turnaround time, consistent call quality monitoring, increased customer retention and satisfaction, and agent standards that match yours.