When organizations first map their customer journeys out, they are typically doing so with an inside-out approach. Businesses will construct a path that they believe will be most economical for customers to get in, receive help, and get out.
While efficiency is the goal, this method of building customer experiences (CX) can make interactions feel overly transactional and less personal. When customers feel this way, they will not want to interact with an organization.
A company should never want to deter engagement from its own consumers and should strive to do the exact opposite. This encouragement can start with the construction of a more relationship-based CX strategy.
As business leaders know, strong relationships with customers are critical to creating and sustaining loyalty to a brand. For many companies, the most frequent direct communication between a customer and the organization occurs during customer service inquiries. Because of this, businesses must strategize their CX to facilitate relationship building.
The process begins with the development of a customer journey map. A map will act as a visualization of customer interactions over time with an organization, service, product, or brand.
Creating a customer journey map starts with insights from customers. Interviews can help shed some light on customer thoughts and concerns about each touchpoint along their CX journey. Every interaction can add to or take away from the overall relationship between a company and its customers, so no step should be ignored.
It is also important to gain a full understanding of customer expectations for each stage, so these desires can be acknowledged and addressed. Staying-up-to date with expectations is critical as they can change very quickly. Expectations now are vastly different than they were just a few years ago, and businesses need to plan to regularly review and refresh this view, using new learnings and insights gained from customer interactions.
After all the information is gathered, a customer journey map can be constructed. Once completed, a full picture of customer journeys can provide very valuable and actionable insights.
With direct knowledge from customers and a complete visualization provided by a customer journey map, organizations can better manage customer experiences across their journeys.
Businesses can address their needs and ever-changing customer expectations with cloud-enabled capabilities like: contact centers as a service (CCaaS), communications platforms as a service (CPaaS), experience management, and workforce optimization. More sophisticated versions of these tools will have integrated AI technologies that can save time and further improve experiences for both agents and customers.
With these solutions, custom journeys can be created across all available communication channels. Customers will then be able to experience delightful and satisfying interactions with your business, resulting in longer lasting relationships.
Read our eBook now to learn more about what a customer journey map is, and how to design, implement, and measure the results of one. These detailed steps will help your organization unlock the value of customer perspectives to ultimately evolve and improve your CX.
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