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All customer success professionals have an idea in their minds about what the ideal customer journey map looks like. It’s easy to get caught up in the traditional picture of customer experience and how a customer is expected to interact with a brand but, as more customer success leaders are finding out, the traditional route doesn’t always cut it any more.
Today’s brands expect the same level of engagement and personalization as individual consumers. This means that customer success teams may have to rework traditional customer journey maps with an added element of the customer perspective. While it may sound tedious, most organizations and customer success teams have probably been collecting customer prospective data for a while without any structure around how to organize it into a journey map.
The customer journey map outlines every touch point a customer has with a brand and corresponds these interactions to a particular department. Customer journey maps help organizations understand who exactly is responsible for particular customer interactions and can help departments determine which customer success metrics are most pertinent to track.
View a high rez version of the customer journey map
The first step is to actually walk through the entire customer journey from the customer’s point of view, from the very first brand impression to the renewal process. Here, it’s important to not let previous judgment get in the way. Maybe a piece of content on a website looks great to a marketing team, but it’s just not resonating with consumers. Making decisions such as this, no matter how difficult they may seem, will pave the way for even more customer-centric strategies.
Experiencing brand interactions from a customer’s point of view can also serve as a wake up call to processes or procedures that are tedious or add no real value for the customer. Maybe a brand’s current onboarding process seems straightforward to support leaders, but customers could be experiencing those processes in a much different way.
After an internal team has reviewed the customer journey, it’s time to open it up to customers. One option is to ask for feedback from some established, ‘white glove’ customers. This is a great way to strengthen organization-wide relationships and reinforce the customer/vendor bond that is so critical. Another way to get real-world input on the customer journey is to survey new customers as they are actually experiencing these touch points in real-time. This can be beneficial because customer success managers (CSMs) can address and rectify any customer issues as they’re occurring, leaving little to no time for these issues to compound and lead to bigger red flags.
After a brand has reviewed the customer journey map and received input from current customers, it’s time to roll the new strategy out to the organization. Every department is involved in creating the ultimate customer experience, and it’s critical that everyone knows their role in the journey.
At both an organization level and a departmental level, teams should go back and review the customer journey map frequently. Processes can warp and change, and some customers may not be as receptive to the new processes as others. It’s a good idea to have every department review their individual contributions or portions of the customer journey every few weeks. Leaders from across the organization should commit to reviewing the process quarterly. This way the entire organization is in lock step on customer strategy, renewal processes, and more.
The customer success journey map is a continuously changing and evolving strategy that involved an entire organization. In order to make the customer experience a truly customer-centric process, it’s critical to receive input from valued customers on processes and procedures. How does your customer success team take the customer journey to the next level?
Customer Success eBooks:
Customer Success as a Culture: Customer Success Leaders Edition
5 Ways to Surprise & Delight Your Customers
Customer Success Blog Posts:
3 Keys to Restoring Customer Confidence
5 Best Practices to Build a Customer Success Journey Map
Learn more about how ClientSuccess can help your company develop a strong Customer Success methodology and strategy with easy-to-use customer success software by requesting a 30-minute demo.
