What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is the process that includes all touchpoints and interactions—from initial awareness to post-purchase loyalty—that a consumer undergoes with a brand, aiming to understand and optimize the experience to each unique individual’s needs.

Demo CSM
Things to know about customer journey?
What is the difference—customer journey vs. the buyer journey? What are the stages of the customer journey? Why is the customer journey important? What are the benefits of customer journey mapping? How can you create an effective user journey map? Manage your customer journey with ServiceNow
Expand All Collapse All What is the difference—customer journey vs. the buyer journey?

The customer journey is a comprehensive framework that outlines the entire spectrum of interactions between a customer and a brand. In this way, it goes well beyond the transactional aspect covered in the buyer’s journey. Instead, it encapsulates the entire experience of a customer, starting from the initial awareness of a brand or product and extending through various stages such as consideration, purchase, post-purchase, and advocacy. 

The thing that sets the customer journey apart is its focus on the customer’s ongoing relationship with the brand, including all interactions that shape their perception and satisfaction levels. This journey is not linear but rather a dynamic process influenced by multiple factors. These factors include things like customer needs, preferences, feedback, and even market conditions.

Customer mapping plays a vital role within the customer journey framework as it involves identifying and analyzing different touchpoints that customers encounter throughout their journey. By mapping these interactions, businesses gain a deeper understanding of the customer experience at different stages and can tailor their strategies to enhance engagement and address potential pain points.

In essence, the customer journey, coupled with effective customer mapping, empowers businesses to proactively manage and enhance the overall customer experience, driving customer satisfaction.

Think beyond traditional CRM Discover the advantages of end-to-end solutions for seamless quality customer experiences that go beyond traditional CRM capabilities. Get Ebook
What are the stages of the customer journey?

The journey that a customer takes is married to each instance that a customer comes in contact with your company. These instances include pre-purchase, mid- purchase, and post-purchase. When you break these three instances down into their constituent parts, there are seven phases of the customer journey to be aware of.

Out-of-market

This is the phase where a customer is looking to improve their business, and they want the company to be productive and efficient. At this point, they may not have a solution to achieve their goals, but they are open to inspiration and ideas.

Trigger

A customer uncovers the opportunity to grow and improve their business at this phase—they have identified an issue that could be resolved.

Initial consideration

After customers have identified a solution to their problem, they will begin to research. Stakeholders and a project group work to identify the top brands in the market they need, scope out a project, and review the key functionalities and requirements.

Active evaluation

Customers then take their long list of possible solutions and narrow it down to a short list of brands. Customers contact the vendors on the short list and invite them to a meeting or demo, at which point they will review the solutions based on their trust, expertise, and scalability.

Purchase decision

This is when the customer decides on a vendor, agrees on the solution, and works out a purchase contract. Implementation begins, and customers start to roll out a team. The solution provider supports the customer as they outline KPIs, success criteria, and a timeline.

Experience

Once the customer has found the solution and teamed up with a company, they want to get the solution up and running as quickly as possible, and they want a smooth launch process. It is important to ensure that all users are trained and have proper access to consultants or account managers for support.

Loyalty

Once the solution has been rolled out, the customer wants to see fast results. The provider of the solution follows up, implements the solutions, and continues to help the customer fulfill their goals. This phase is where customers become loyal as results are being delivered.

Why is the customer journey important?

The customer journey holds immense importance for businesses across industries since it provides a holistic view of customer interactions and perceptions throughout their engagement with your brand. By mapping out the customer journey, businesses can gain insights into customer behavior—including both preferences and frustrations. This information is essential for developing targeted marketing strategies, designing personalized experiences, and improving overall customer satisfaction.

Identifying critical touchpoints and moments of truth

The customer journey also helps businesses identify moments of truth that significantly impact the customer’s perception of the brand. Focusing on these touchpoints allows businesses to optimize their efforts to create positive and memorable interactions. This also helps your business foster stronger relationships and loyalty among customers.

Aligning processes and resources for customer needs

Another reason the customer journey is so important is that it enables businesses to align their internal processes and resources to better meet customer needs at every stage. For instance,understanding the pre-purchase research phase allows businesses to provide relevant information and support to guide customers towards making informed decisions. Similarly, post-purchase interactions can be enhanced to ensure smooth onboarding.

Facilitating continuous improvement and innovation

By regularly analyzing and evaluating the customer journey, businesses can identify areas for enhancement and test new strategies or initiatives. It even helps businesses adapt to evolving customer expectations and market trends. This iterative approach leads to increased competitiveness and long-term success in the marketplace.

Driving customer retention and lifetime value

A well-defined and optimized customer journey contributes to higher customer retention rates. Satisfied customers who have positive experiences throughout their journey are more likely to become loyal advocates, referring others to the brand and making repeat purchases over time. This not only drives revenue but also reduces acquisition costs and enhances brand reputation through positive word-of-mouth.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

It’s been said that you will never really understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Customer journey mapping allows you to do just that: placing yourself in your customers’ position and gaining a clearer understanding of their perspective. In addition to more clearly defining the realities of your customers’ experiences, journey mapping provides other advantages as well.

Provides an inbound perspective

Inbound marketing depends on your ability to create interesting and useful content to help generate interest and draw in prospective customers. Customer mapping gives you clever insight into your customers’ interests, as well as how they feel about individual aspects and touchpoints as they interact with your business. With this information, you can tailor your content offering to better attract and retain qualified leads.

Encourages proactive service

By mapping out the customer journey, you are able identify potential points of friction well in advance. You can then adjust your customer service strategy accordingly, intervening where necessary to increase your brand value and help cement a positive customer relationship. Being proactive makes your brand more reliable and helps you provide better support options for parts of the journey that may become difficult.

Identifies and refines target audiences

Locating and guiding prospective customers through their journey can be expensive, and when your leads fail to become customers, then all of that cost goes to waste. A detailed customer journey map can help you more clearly identify the demographics and traits of those who would be most interested in your services. By understanding their needs, pain points, and goals, you will be better positioned to market to the right audiences.

Improve customer retention rates

The customer journey isn’t designed only for new customers; a complete view of the customer journey provides opportunities to improve any areas that stand out as possibly problematic for returning customers as well. Customer journey mapping can help you identify those who might be considering leaving. By comparing journeys between churned customers, you may be able to identify common issues, which you can then then address to help ensure that future customers keep coming back again and again.

Creates a concise representation of the user experience for your entire organization

It can be difficult to coordinate all departments as your company grows. Sometimes, sales and marketing goals may not be aligned, or might not actually be relevant to your customers wants or needs. Your customer journey map supports a shared vision across departments. When adopted throughout your business, it can become the basis for decision-making, informing goals, supporting strategy, and aligning teams towards creating a better experience for your customers.

How can you create an effective user journey map?

Understanding the importance of the customer journey map is only the first step. Before you can enjoy the advantages it offers, you first have to build it. Here, we break down the essential steps you’ll need to consider to create an effective journey map for your customers.

Define the scope for the map

  • Take the time to identify the persona that you are mapping, and provide a single point of view per map to build out a strong and clear narrative.
  • Choose the process that you’ll be mapping and ensure that it has a clear beginning, middle, and end point, and that it relates to the business insights you are seeking.
  • Conduct research using resources such as call center logs, field studies, usability results, and user feedback.
  • Include the goal of your personas and what their expectations are, as well as quantifiable expectations, such as time to completion.

Identify the journey phases

  • Think of the phases of the map as stages along the journey. If you’re mapping the user experience for onboarding, it’s possible that the journey may include setting up training, facilities access, benefits, and more.
  • Choose simplicity and craft a journey map that tells a simple story. That said, be sure to include all relevant information and touch points.

Map the user’s action steps and experiences for each phase

  • Document action steps for each phase of the journey, encompassing the actions that need to be taken. Most often you will have from four to twelve action steps, which may include learning about options, resolving questions, comparing choices, selecting services, etc.
  • For each step, clearly document customer emotions, pain points, and challenges.

Use your journey map to build a shared vision of the user experience

  • Create a journey map visualization and gather feedback from key users.
  • Use the journey map to identify potential opportunities to improve the customer experience and process.
  • Continuously socialize and evolve the customer journey map to improve its effectiveness over time.

Measure your success

The success of your customer journey map relates directly to how positive and successful the overall customer experience is that you are offering. With this in mind, you can use many of the same success metrics as those used to measure and evaluate CX. These metrics include the following:

Involve the right people

Creating an effective customer journey map requires involving the right people from various departments within an organization. Marketing and UX teams play crucial roles in understanding customer behavior, pain points, and preferences. Marketing teams research the target audience and market trends, while the UX team focuses on user interactions, interface elements, and building a seamless experience.

Ultimately, you will want to include the following teams at some point during the process of developing a user journey:

  • Process owners
  • Technology owners
  • Upper management
  • End users
  • UX or UI representatives, such as an experience architect
Pricing for ServiceNow Customer Service Management Get ServiceNow Customer Management pricing here. Connect customer service with other teams to resolve issues quickly and proactively. Get Pricing
Manage your customer journey with ServiceNow

Understanding the customer journey is essential for businesses that want to deliver exceptional customer experiences and build lasting relationships. Mapping out the various interactions across the customer lifecycle can help your organization better understand and meet customer needs. However, creating an effective customer journey requires the right tools and strategies.

The ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) platform offers a comprehensive solution for managing and optimizing the customer journey. With features designed to streamline customer interactions, automate processes, and personalize experiences, ServiceNow CSM empowers businesses to deliver seamless and memorable customer experiences.

Explore firsthand how ServiceNow CSM can help you exceed customer expectations to drive loyalty and keep your customers coming back to you for reliable solutions. Demo ServiceNow today!

Reimagine the customer experience Transform operations and empower employees to address customer needs quickly and positively. Explore CSM Contact Us
Resources Articles What is ServiceNow? What is customer service management (CSM)? What is CRM? Analyst Reports CORINIUM: The Customer Experience Perspective CCW Digital’s Future of the contact center: A forecast Forrester Study: The Total Economic Impact of ServiceNow Customer Service Management Data Sheets Improve order management efficiency Agent Experience in Customer Service Management Omni-Channel in Customer Service Management Ebooks Navigate the Era of New Customer Expectations Evolving your customer journeys to the next normal Five best practices for connecting customer service resources White Papers How CSPs can connect the dots for a better customer experience Service Assurance in the 5G Era – Report – TM Forum Activate ESG use case guide