In our previous article, we discussed how to create a customer journey. From awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy, journey maps document the user’s journey through your product/service. It resembles a storyboard and maps your user’s journey through different stages and emotions. Read the article here.
This article will discuss pitfalls to avoid while mapping customer journeys. Find reasons for customer experience breakdowns and see how journey mapping can prevent such occurrences. Drive product adoption through customer journey mapping. Let’s begin.
Overcome bias with insights.
Customer journey maps clarify what customers are trying to do, what barriers they face, and how they feel during each interaction with your product or service. If you haven’t mapped out a customer journey, doing so can feel daunting. When creating a customer journey blueprint, don’t skimp on your research. Bain & Company's research found that while 80 percent of companies think they deliver a great experience, only 8 percent of customers agree.
You cannot simply map out what you think the customer will experience. Creating customer journey maps based on your assumptions is a bad idea — because they are bound to be inaccurate. Personal bias could come in the way of your decision-making, or you could be overcome with expectation bias — what you expect to happen in the customer journey may not happen.
Most organizations strategize and make decisions based on the solid bedrock of information provided by data and analytics. You should do the same.
Five ways of driving product adoption for customer success teams
Product Awareness: The first step in driving production adoption is awareness. Customers must know the product and what it can do for them.
Product Interest: Once customers know the product, it is important to generate interest. This can be done by highlighting the product's benefits and how it can help them achieve their desired outcomes.
Product Evaluation: After customers are interested in the product, they must evaluate it to see if it fits their needs. This evaluation process includes considering the cost, comparing it to other solutions on the market, and testing it out.
Product Trial: Once customers have evaluated the product and decided it is a good fit for their needs, they will need to try it. This is where customer success teams can provide the most assistance. They can help set up the product, ensure that all features are working properly, and answer any questions that arise during the trial.
Product Adoption: After customers have tried the product and are happy with it, they must adopt it. This is where customer success teams can provide even more assistance. They can help customers implement the product, train them on its use, and provide ongoing support. Additionally, customer success teams should continue to check in with customers after adoption to ensure they are still happy with the product and meeting their needs.
Watch out for these red flags in your customer relationship
Often, when clients aren’t reaching out, it’s usually due to:
(1) There is a lack of clarity about who you help.
(2) Your content is just tips and tricks with no real depth.
(3) You’re not sharing your offer enough.
(4) People don’t see you as an expert.
(5) You don’t have a lead-generation process in place.
(6) You’re not making moves to invest in yourself (self-growth).
(7) You hide away from selling, afraid that no one will buy.
Let's look at the challenges faced when creating a journey map
- Complex Web of Multiple Channels
- Monitoring User Behavior Across Channels
- Mapping Every Buyer Persona in a Single Map
- Missing the Moments of Customer Silence
Here are five common mistakes companies make when creating customer journey maps
- You focus on touchpoints and not the journey
- You don't include customer input
- You make one map for every customer
- You create maps from just a marketing standpoint
- You think of it as a one-and-done project
Customers don’t distinguish between different channels, departments, or divisions in a multichannel environment. Companies must align their brand identity, voice, and standards across every digital touchpoint. Poor performance at any touchpoint or channel can devastate consumer perceptions of your company.
Also read: Why Customer Service is Integral to New-Age Marketing Strategies
Poorly planned customer journeys can upend your business
Poor customer experiences are often a result of overly engineered customer experiences, where customer service agents are stuck with inappropriate scripts or employees across departments do not have autonomy. Most customer experience breakdown happens when a customer issue or initiative crosses from one department to another.
Here are a few examples:
- Targeting the wrong customer persona or bad lead generation
- Transitioning a customer from pre-sales to onboarding
- Introducing customers to support after implementation
- Logging customer feature requests between customer success and product development teams
Look carefully, and you will notice that these scenarios risk lost context and communication breakdowns. From your customer's perspective, your brand image is taking a severe beating because of the following reasons:
- There was no sense of urgency created
- Nothing was actually confirmed by you
- You do not meet clients at their convenience
- No enthusiasm from a brand’s CS teams to meet and help the customer during the journey
- There wasn’t enough trust or value built
During these moments of truth, the customer is asking themselves:
- “Did they hear what I said?”
- “Will I have to repeat myself, yet again, to someone who has no clue who I am?”
- “Will they be able to solve my problem as quickly as I need a solution?”
- “Do they understand what I’m trying to accomplish?”
These issues affect customer satisfaction and your ability to retain and grow customers. So, what’s the solution?
Besides mapping customer journeys successfully, organizations reputed for being customer-centric, driving customer success, as well as attaining customer-value-driven growth employ the following strategies:
- Adopt a culture of customer success
- Hire people who are collaborative, teamwork-oriented, and who empathize with customers
- Build a dedicated customer success team that can create realistic customer journeys
- Design operational processes that anticipate gaps
- Build business processes and support systems that don’t let customers fall through the cracks
- Invest to empower all customer-facing teams and cross-train them on all critical systems
To deliver successful customer outcomes and experiences, you should be able to oversee process design, data-driven operations management, and cross-functional collaboration. You should also be attuned to go-to-market needs for success stories, case studies, and references.
That means you should be able to design near-perfect customer journeys. An ideal customer journey map does not flow off into too many different directions that detract from the main journey or experience you’re mapping.
To keep yourself on track, ask yourself the following questions:
- "What are the starting point and ending points of this journey?"
- "What are the outcomes for the customer?"
- "What is the customer trying to achieve in this experience?"
Now, you know all about the customer journey, its phases, and how you can define your customer experience strategy through a journey map. Don't keep your customer journey map siloed or restricted to a few employees or teams. Share it with all business stakeholders, including your customers. When you share, you care.
Also read: 2022 and Beyond: Join The Customer Experience Renaissance
Let ThinkOwl take your customer success teams higher!
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