Mapping customer journey is the process of visualizing the path that the customer follows from being a prospect, to a buyer, to a user, and hopefully to an advocate. When done well, it can help brands make decisions and build strategies that would improve customer experience and touchpoints along this path.

While there is a theoretical golden journey that an ideal customer would follow, in practice every buyer persona is unique and experiences a different buyer journey. During the process, the brand interacts with the customers at various points.

For example, in the prospect stage a customer could be collecting information in the digital arena (maybe via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter) or brand websites. They could also be trying out the product at a physical store. It may just be a new customer talking to the customer service executive on the phone for help with onboarding. Each point at which the customer interacts with the brand is a touchpoint. Every interaction, in marketing parlance, is called a moment of truth- an opportunity for the customer to form or change views about the brand. In every point, the customer’s perspective could also alter depending on the experience.

With every touch point, the customer leaves behind a footprint and these footprints allow you to track how close or far they are from the golden path. However, what is normally missing is a sense of their experience or satisfaction at the moment of truth. For example, mapping customer satisfaction after a test drive of a car can enable the manufacturer or dealers to predict the probability of purchase. It also provides additional information from customers by letting the company know of performance gaps.

In this blog, we will determine how Merren can gauge consumer behavior and track experience at every stage of the journey in the most effective way.

Why should a brand consider mapping customer journey seriously?

Customer journey mapping is one of the best practices across industries and is a must-have protocol for the following reasons:

• 1. Brands can identify a customer’s requirements, their desires and expectations and how closely is it fulfilling it. This can help close any performance or knowledge gaps presented by potential leads and efficiently track the buyer’s journey. 
• 2. Understanding various points of contact within the organisation can keep communication channels in tandem with each other. Mapping customer journeys can make their process seamless at each department and can help build a customized communication strategy. 
• 3. A well-defined mapping journey will help determine if people are a brand advocate, a one-time buyer or a potential churn candidate. Capturing their feedback during the process also impacts their decision to be a returning customer. 
• 4. Capturing conversations during a mapping process can identify service gaps and help close any feedback loop. How promptly and professionally you close a feedback loop determines a customer’s experience. People need to feel that their feedback was valued and validated. This determines customer retention and customer loyalty. 
• 5. Doing a detailed mapping on customer journey comes with a competitive advantage. It can equip marketers to reduce churn among new leads and build stronger relationships with their existing consumers. This is also a great way for brands to identify various cross-selling and upselling opportunities. 
• 6. Tracking KPIs across touchpoints can help identify performance gaps- both at organizational level and at individual employee level.

Factors such as customer retention strategy, improved CX can also determine the overall customer success. 

What are the common challenges when mapping a customer journey?

Common challenges when mapping a customer journey include collecting accurate data, integrating data from various touchpoints, understanding the customer’s perspective, aligning different departments or teams, and keeping the journey map updated as customer behaviors and preferences evolve.

How does Merren help navigate and automate the mapping process? 

Current systems of mapping the consumer purchase journey are largely outdated. This means leaving potential revenues at the door. 

Here is how our platform is different from the traditional ways of collecting customer satisfaction data:

Merren can collect feedback at various touchpoints:

Customers interact with an organisation during their purchase journey. Each user will have different types of customer journey throughout with the brand. At every point of interaction/ chat with any respective team member, Merren can be deployed to collect their feedback on their experience so far.

Merren can deploy custom survey templates to measure relevant metrics:

Merren can help build goal-oriented conversational surveys. Clients can also use our pre-tested customer journey templates that need no-coding experience. KPIs can differ at each touch point depending on the goals and objectives of the company. Our platform allows companies to customize data collection at each touch point. One can deploy metrics of net promoter score (NPS) or customer satisfaction score (csat), customer effort score (CES) via dynamic and interactive platform of AMP email , WhatsApp surveys or easy to create Facebook messenger surveys.

Merren uses omnichannel platform to collect relevant data:

Consumers use multiple channels to communicate with the brands. Sending everyone a feedback form on one medium is hence suboptimal as the customer might not have access to those mediums or might not be comfortable with them. Merren can run surveys on messenger based platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, SMS/RCS, chatbot, email etc. Brands can deploy surveys at the right time and on any interactive channel where their consumers use for regular communication.

Merren integrates with the CRM to automatically trigger surveys without manual intervention:

Manual handling of data is time consuming and error prone. Merren can be integrated with the CRM to immediately deploy ready-to-go surveys without manual push eliminating such issues.

Merren offers multilingual surveys to collect data in 100+ languages:

Brands today have a global reach and translating surveys into multiple languages can be troublesome. Merren makes this easy by facilitating automatic translation of surveys in the language for a region where it will be deployed.

Merren’s ability to help close a feedback loop upgrades CX:

Merren can help predict customer behaviour by identifying satisfied or unsatisfied customers. Organisations can close a feedback loop using Merren by identifying grieved customers, attending to their complaints and collecting feedback close to the interaction.

Merren is omnichannel. Brands can use the most relevant channels to collect data:

Consumers use multiple channels to communicate with the brands. Sending everyone a feedback form on one medium is hence suboptimal as the target audience might not have access to those mediums instantly. Additionally, the users also might not be comfortable with one platform. Merren can run surveys on messenger based platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, SMS/RCS. We also deploy chatbot surveys and work on a dynamic AMP email survey. Brands can deploy surveys on any channel their consumers use for regular communication. The goal is to upgrade user experience across customer touchpoints.

Merren captures real time data while the process is still in-moment for the customer:

Using automated features of bringing in customer data, the feedback forms are deployed close to the moment-of-truth. This helps brands collect in-moment feedback from consumers when the process is still contextual. This means that the customers are still in the mindset of the entire experience. Capturing the customer’s experience at this point will bring more vivid insight to the table. Hence in-moment insight does not rely on the customer’s memory.

Download data from dashboard, identify user persona and capture pain points:

Merren has the ability to measure key performance indicators (KPI) of multiple stores across cities and collect this data for frequent service evaluation. Businesses can capture data across dealers and agents and get detailed analysis of statistics on clear segregated graphs and charts. When looking at the user journey via this route, marketers can instantly attend to customer needs, and upgrade their current experience. Our analytics and data visualization abilities are strong.

Data is also a major way to comprehend your target persona. Capture their emotions, needs and requests at every level and find out feasible solution to their pain points.

Merren dashboard offers deeper insights to identify issues at multiple sublevel:

Every data collected with our campaigns, can be sliced for different organzational levels – for example country, city, branch, manager, or executive level. This helps companies identify the source of the performance issue more closely. Different stakeholders can also understand areas that will need upgrades and improvements for new products and services.

Merren’s ability to help close a feedback loop is a major business advantage:

Merren can help predict customer behaviour by identifying user satisfaction and customer expectations. Organisations can close a feedback loop with our tools by identifying grieved consumers, attending to their complaints and collecting feedback at various stage of the customer journey.

Merren is developed to help organizations build a modern, actionable, omnichannel feedback experience and upgraded customer support. Our customer journey map templates can be administered during multiple touchpoints of a customer purchasing journey . These templates empower brands to build personalized communication strategies, identify roadblocks and understand customer pain points. Our ability to build result-oriented surveys, translate them into multiple languages, and deploy them through the channel of choice is what drives higher customer response. Its ability to process and present data meaningfully at organizational level all the way down to the individual level helps them identify and diagnose the performance gaps. High customer response and continuous monitoring helps companies improve various segments of their market research.

Conclusion

Truly identifying the customer persona can help industries curate specific types of customer experience map. Even though a detailed diagram of a customer map can guide with clarity, offering understanding and empathy to the end consumer can boost your ROI efforts.

Use Merren to power your customer’s purchase journey now. Set up a demo today with our 14 day free trial and take your customer’s journey to the next step!