Customers engage with companies and brands numerous times on their journey from being a shopper to becoming a customer. During this experience, companies have a chance to create satisfaction through engagement. With so many interactions, however, companies face challenges while evaluating the customer experience.
Journey mapping uses visualizations to improve their consistency of service. By portraying reams of information in a graphic format, managers can quickly identify positive and negative elements of their operation and respond by taking corrective action
As an essential tool for customer experience evaluation, the journey map can particularly help call centers improve their performance to provide consistency and satisfaction at every stage.
Defining Customer Journey Map
Businesses that want to perform a customer experience evaluation can begin by creating a graphic portrayal of how customers relate to their brand. This visual representation, described as a customer journey map, gives managers an easy way to understand every stage of customer interaction from initial contact to post-sale support.
Call centers recognize the importance of the customer journey map because it helps them understand the lifecycle of their customers. As a result, managers can look for ways to improve their entire operations, including the call center user experience.
The Purpose of Customer Journey Mapping
Normal operating conditions for a firm typically involve a variety of complex processes, all of which combine to deliver products and services to customers. The graphical format of a journey map depicts every process in a way that people can easily understand.
Without a journey map, businesses would need to depend on volumes of text documents that attempt to describe the every nuance of the customer experience. Such lengthy preparation processes would require an equal amount of time for managers to read and decipher. The journey map simplifies the effort.
Prepared as an infographic, the map can reveal vital information such as the points within the organization that have the most significant effect on customer satisfaction. In response, managers can act to capitalize on organizational strengths while addressing weaknesses.
A journey map can also display the portrayal of a firm in various media channels. Such an approach could reveal, for example, that agents communicate well on the telephone, but online tools leave customers underinformed.
Companies can also create journey maps for the purpose of understanding their various types of customers. This type of mapping evaluates the diverging experiences of each persona as they engage with the call center.
The Elements Of a Customer Journey Map
A successful journey map should communicate the steps customers take as they engage with an organization as well as their expectations and emotional state. The map should also communicate a definition of what success looks like to provide a benchmark.
Every critical part of the customer experience, including those that can bring the most happiness or frustration, should also appear on the map. The graphic should also represent so-called “opportunities to disappoint,” which are features that customers might not notice unless they are absent.
Aside from its basic appearance and data points, however, every customer journey map should have particular components in common:
- Stakeholders – The map should provide context by including every stakeholder group and the extent of their influence. Customers might, for example, take center stage on the map and would appear with points of interaction where quality most affects their experience.
- Profiles – The customer journey must depict the persona for every customer group, along with their present and future personal and professional conditions.
- Results – Journey maps should draw attention to desired outcomes. What do customers expect to get from each interaction?
- The journey – The map should include every action that customers take to reach their outcome. Usually, this element looks like a straight line. The journey begins before the buying decision and reveals patterns of behavior that govern customers through the post-sale period.
- Points of contact – Every action listed on the map should include every service customers encounter, including those that are outside the firm. This facilitates the accurate portrayal of the customer’s perspective.
- Critical moments – So-called “Moments of Truth”, the encounters with the brand that have the most effect on customer experience.
- Delivery – The person or team that delivers service should appear below every customer interaction.
- Emotions – At every touch point, the map should include a rating for how customers feel. Vertical lines and a zero-to-ten scale can help open eyes and guide conversations.
- Organization – Supporting organizations found below every point of contact should illustrate who influences the customer experience and complete the illustration of how a company operates in relationship to its customers.
- Improvement -The final element of customer journey mapping looks for ways to alter the customer journey in ways that cause customers to feel positive and satisfied.
Customer Journey Mapping for Call Center Improvement
Call centers can benefit from journey mapping because they often represent the primary point of interaction between businesses and their customers. As a result, some of the most substantial gains made possible through journey mapping lie within the call center environment.
Traditional methods for evaluating call centers can reflect the perspective of management without considering the customer’s perspectives and emotions. Journey mapping changes that. As a result, call centers can change their processes to give customers a consistent and emotionally pleasing experience.
Journey mapping can also identify operational holes and resolve them by adding additional touch points into the customer experience. Some missing interactions that can address gaps might include sending email messages that support lead development.
Segmenting contacts into appropriate groups can also improve the customer experience as can the establishment of additional workflows. Establishing follow-up procedures for sales and marketing can also fill holes in the customer journey that can make customers feel more valued, engaged and satisfied.
Companies and their brands who embrace the “engage your customers” mentality can use customer journey mapping to accomplish their mission. By creating a visual examination of the call center from the perspective of a customer, managers can identify and improve critical touch points and fill-in procedural gaps. As a result, customers become more satisfied and businesses more profitable.
Let us help you make your call center a success!
For further information about our services, give us a call at 888-571-9492 or 917-837-5225, or send us a message via the convenient website form.
