Mapping the digital customer journey: Tools and tactics for success.

A customer is shopping on your eCommerce store’s app. When checking out, a bug in the keyboard prevents them from entering their credit card information. After multiple attempts, they abandon their cart. This is just one example of how your customer touchpoints can make or break your buying journey.

In order to prevent one issue from multiplying into thousands for your business, it's vital that you map and track your digital customer journey by event. Spread your focus across multiple touchpoints for a full, intentional picture.

In this blog, we will show you why mapping digital journeys is essential, how to map yours effectively, and the key tools and tricks you can use to leverage your digital journey map for successful outcomes. Interested? Then read on and learn.

Why customer journey mapping is critical.

Your customer experience can't improve if you don't know where customers come from and how they interact with your business or website. That's why customer journey mapping is so crucial. It gives companies a clear idea of what their customers are dealing with at every stage of the buying journey, showing actionable places where they might trail off. Here are a few other reasons why customer journey mapping is such a key practice:

Relieves customer pain points & friction.

Creating a comprehensive journey map involves more than just visualizing every touchpoint in your customer experience. Reviewing each touchpoint while in a customer's shoes helps your team identify pain points that you can prioritize and fix.

Example: Let's say you're mapping the journey for your eCommerce site. Your team noticed heavy customer churn on the checkout page. They analyzed and found that the cause was likely unclear shipping and handling costs right at the moment of final payment. This leads you to adjust the checkout section to show a more transparent final price.

Ensures cross-functional alignment.

Whether it's viewed by a developer, a product manager, or an executive, a customer journey map is an objective way to view how customers are interacting with your business. While each team brings its own unique perspectives, a journey map centralizes all of them around what they can do to build an experience that produces more satisfied customers.

Example: Your company uses a journey map to find that customers who made in-app purchases are having issues making returns at physical locations. The marketing team updates your digital content to help customers understand that online-to-physical returns can take extra time. Product and customer support teams work on improving your omnichannel customer experience for faster physical returns on online purchases.

Drives improved business value & results.

Ultimately, fewer pain points and stronger cross-functional performance lead to a better customer experience. In return for an optimal CX and high customer satisfaction, you receive stronger customer retention and increased revenue. Success comes down to giving customers what they are looking for, which is precisely what digital customer journey mapping helps you achieve.

Example: Your electronics company creates a journey map to help improve product development for higher customer satisfaction. By gathering and analyzing customer data based on your map’s findings, you uncover which products customers prefer the most. You prioritize the design and features of these products to develop new ones, furthering your business goals using real-time data. Your latest product line becomes popular, earning high customer satisfaction ratings and immense sales.

The right way to map a digital customer journey.

Producing a digital customer journey map involves research and data collection, as well as empathy and consideration for your customers. When done right, your company is capable of persistent optimization and steady growth. Here are the key steps to mapping your digital customer journey with Quantum Metric:

1. Set precise objectives: Define your "why" for mapping your customers’ journey. Are you seeking to increase conversions in your sales process? Or perhaps test the addition of loyalty programs to your domain? A clear goal for every journey map assures that you will get the results you want later on.
2. Make detailed customer personas: Using data from our analytics tools and customer feedback, your next step is to segment customers and develop accurate personas for each. Develop each persona with customers' shared needs, expectations, and motivations in mind.
3. Outline major stages & touchpoints: Next, outline your journey based on key stages, from Awareness to Advocacy, for example. Then, across each stage, determine what touchpoints customers interact with your business, such as your website, emails, social media, mobile apps, and so on. Consider their key motivations and possible pain points in every area.
4. Map the journey: Turn all previous details into a visual map. Consider using a customer journey map template based on its purpose, such as a current state journey map for identifying existing issues, or a future state journey map to help plan and implement new products or strategies.
5. Review your map & walk customer paths: Test your map's validity by simulating as a customer going through their own journey. Conduct usability tests and use tools like session replay software and heatmap analysis to verify your map's accuracy and find friction points you missed.
6. Check & iterate: Take what you've found in your review, optimize your map, and restart the process. With each iteration, consider new channels, market trends, or product features you've launched.

With every new journey map you create, always account for customers' latest expectations. That way, your company and its product will continuously improve and align with customer expectations. Streamline this whole process with a digital experience analytics platform designed for continuous optimization and development, like Quantum Metric.

Tools & tactics for optimized customer journey mapping.

To create an effective customer journey map, you need to rely on more than brainstorming and assumptions. You need comprehensive tools and useful techniques that give you the data you need and produce the answers you want to leverage. Below are a few of our recommendations:

Tools to use.

• Digital experience analytics platforms: These will give you the quantitative and qualitative data needed to gain a foundational understanding of your entire customer journey. From visitor traffic, bounce rates, and conversions to heatmap analysis and session replays, you'll gain in-depth insights into how customers interact at each touchpoint of your journey.
• Artificial intelligence: Look for platforms that come with AI tools. These help provide predictive capabilities, as well as immediate insights you can analyze and use in every element of your customer journey.
• Data visualization tools: These tools will help you quickly turn all your data into a coherent and structured visualization that your company teams can quickly read and understand. They can draw touchpoints across all customer journey stages, and nest detailed customer information in each.

Tactics to consider.

• Prioritize friction points: Once you have mapped and analyzed your journey, identify which touchpoints endure the most friction and churn and prioritize each according to severity. This way, you'll have a clear list of optimization targets for your team to quickly fix and improve, leading to easy wins.
• Align maps with KPIs: Connecting business-critical KPIs to each touchpoint speeds up the decision-making process for team leaders and executives. This helps lead to successful outcomes that matter to your company.
• Segment journeys by persona: Use your tools to track first-time customers versus returning customers to get a more nuanced view of customer journeys. Customer journeys can be vastly different for various customers, so segmenting journey maps accordingly can reveal insights you may not have found otherwise.

Use Quantum Metric for a better customer experience.

Simplify customer journey mapping by using a digital experience analytics platform that is made to facilitate it. With Quantum Metric, your teams can collect and track the most useful data points you need.

Our platform can then feed this data into customized dashboards that give you real-time insights into your digital product performance. We also provide an array of tools to help streamline your journey analysis, such as:

• Session Replays — Conduct in-depth user behavior analysis through direct customer interactions with your app or website. Discover friction points immediately, and see how consistent they are across customers in a single click.
• Felix AI — Our AI analytics platform analyzes customer sessions and, through our generative AI, provides quick, insightful summaries about a customer's interaction, giving you actionable information about your customer journey.
• Interactive Heatmap — Quantum Metric's heatmapping software not only reveals how customers interact across customer journey touchpoints but also matches them with vital business KPIs to help your team easily identify opportunities and pain points.

Create a customer journey that continuously improves with Quantum Metric.

Customer journey mapping is a critical strategy for helping your business achieve successful business outcomes. Using the tools and approaches to customer journey mapping we've discussed, your company can secure successful results, including higher customer retention, increased conversions, and a greater ROI.

Among the best tools you can use is Quantum Metric, a digital experience analytics platform capable of bridging journey mapping with responsive customer path optimization, ensuring immense results and continuous improvement. Learn more about our platform and schedule a demo today.