Customer Journey: Definition, Benefits, and Steps to Create One

01 April 2024

Customer Journey: The Key to Understanding Your Business Consumers

As an important asset in a business, you must be able to understand what a customer journey is in order to know the needs and characteristics of consumers.

How consumers interact with your brand, their characteristics, and the interests and problems they face when interacting with the brand are important factors.

Through the customer journey, you will be invited to understand the consumer experience at every stage and interaction with the brand.

Let's see more in the article below!

Definition of Customer Journey

Quoted from Hubspot, a customer journey is a collection of consumer interactions with a brand, product or business that occurs because they become interested and want to make a purchase/use a service.

The customer journey is different from the buyer journey. The buyer journey only focuses on the general process of purchasing a product/service from a brand. Meanwhile, the customer journey is part of the buyer's journey itself.

When wanting to make a purchase, a consumer will do research first.

The customer journey is the actions taken by a brand based on the steps taken by consumers when carrying out research and these considerations.

Benefits of Customer Journey

Here are some of the benefits you will get if you implement customer journey mapping correctly:

1. Better Company Focus

Creating a customer journey will help your business better understand what makes consumers interested and what they don't like.

Knowing consumer needs can help inbound marketing. Then, it will be easier to create content and focus on appropriate marketing when you know consumer needs.

2. Create a new target market

Through the customer journey, you can see consumer demographics as well as their interest in the business.

Marketing with a target market that is too broad and general will only waste time and budget. These consumer demographics can help map what kind of consumers are interested in your business and determine new target markets

3. Proactive Customer Service

Customer journey is part of defining customer experience. Mapping it will help you identify what consumer barriers and interests are towards the brand.

Knowing the data related to this more quickly will enable you to create the right customer service strategy and of course improve the customer service experience better.

4. Increase Customer Retention Rate

To create brand loyalty or consumer loyalty to a brand, you must know their needs.

Through the customer journey, you can immediately find out what areas need to be improved to increase consumer retention and make them loyal to your brand.

5. Create a Consumer-Focused Business

Not all departments of a business can focus directly on consumers or are customer-based because each department in a business has varying goals.

To make your business focus on consumer needs, start by sharing the customer journey map with all departments.

That way, each section will get a clear picture of the process that consumers go through. Starting from interest until after purchase because this process influences marketing, sales and service.

Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map

After knowing the importance of the customer journey, here are the steps that must be taken to create customer journey maps, quoted from MindTools.

1. Determine Objectivity or Goals

Determining goals and objectivity from the start will help you focus more on determining touchpoints in the customer journey map.

If you determine goals that are too general, of course the mapping process will also be too broad and unfocused. The reason is, there are too many processes that may require different customer journey maps.

2. Data and Information Collection

After finding the goals and objectives you want to achieve, the next step is to identify what makes consumers interested and interact with your brand.

Asking these basic questions will make it easier for you to gather basic information about consumers and better identify customer behavior.

How you do this also varies, starting from market research, interviews, discussions, data analysis, email, and others.

The results of this research can be used to form a buyer persona which will help you find out consumer needs and what kind of service they want.

3. Identify Touchpoints or Points of Interaction

Touchpoints or points of interaction are important in forming a customer journey map.

There are also various forms of touchpoints, such as activities in stores, online searches, social media, telephone, blogs, help desks, campaigns via email or newsletters, chat services and others.

Once you have identified these touchpoints, think about how they will affect consumers. That way you can identify a suitable customer journey map.

4. Determine the Key Stages in Customer Experience

With the information you got from the research in the previous step, this data can be used to identify what processes consumers carry out.

A simple example, customer experience usually consists of several processes such as interest, research, purchase, delivery, support after purchase, and providing reviews, ratings, and sharing information.

This process will of course vary depending on the type of consumer and the type of product/service offered.

However, knowing these important processes will help you make your customer journey map easier to understand and implement in your strategy.

5. Start doing mapping

After all important data and processes have been identified, the next step is to carry out the mapping itself.

There are many ways to create customer journey maps, it can be in the form of diagrams, timeline tables, pie charts, even videos.

The thing to note is that each map must represent the steps/processes experienced by consumers and there is a touchpoint column as a fixed variable.

You can also add emoticons with emojis to describe consumer feelings at certain stages.

6. Map Analysis and Periodic Evaluation

After completing and applying the customer journey, you must carry out an analysis and answer the goals and objectivities that were created at the beginning.

Make a list of challenges/obstacles that arise in this analysis process so that they can then be evaluated periodically.

The goal is to stay focused on the customer journey goal while helping you analyze it better.

So, that's everything about the customer journey that you need to understand.

So that consumers are satisfied and loyal to your business, there is no harm in learning more about the customer journey as a way to achieve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

One way is to take the Customer Satisfaction and Relationship Program class at the Prasetiya Mulya Executive Learning Institute.

Starting from learning, concept application, to workshops and group discussions, this class will help you develop your business more effectively.
Register for the class here, now!

Customer Journey: The Key to Understanding Your Business Consumers

As an important asset in a business, you must be able to understand what a customer journey is in order to know the needs and characteristics of consumers.

How consumers interact with your brand, their characteristics, and the interests and problems they face when interacting with the brand are important factors.

Through the customer journey, you will be invited to understand the consumer experience at every stage and interaction with the brand.

Let's see more in the article below!

Definition of Customer Journey

Quoted from Hubspot, a customer journey is a collection of consumer interactions with a brand, product or business that occurs because they become interested and want to make a purchase/use a service.

The customer journey is different from the buyer journey. The buyer journey only focuses on the general process of purchasing a product/service from a brand. Meanwhile, the customer journey is part of the buyer's journey itself.

When wanting to make a purchase, a consumer will do research first.

The customer journey is the actions taken by a brand based on the steps taken by consumers when carrying out research and these considerations.

Benefits of Customer Journey

Here are some of the benefits you will get if you implement customer journey mapping correctly:

1. Better Company Focus

Creating a customer journey will help your business better understand what makes consumers interested and what they don't like.

Knowing consumer needs can help inbound marketing. Then, it will be easier to create content and focus on appropriate marketing when you know consumer needs.

2. Create a new target market

Through the customer journey, you can see consumer demographics as well as their interest in the business.

Marketing with a target market that is too broad and general will only waste time and budget. These consumer demographics can help map what kind of consumers are interested in your business and determine new target markets

3. Proactive Customer Service

Customer journey is part of defining customer experience. Mapping it will help you identify what consumer barriers and interests are towards the brand.

Knowing the data related to this more quickly will enable you to create the right customer service strategy and of course improve the customer service experience better.

4. Increase Customer Retention Rate

To create brand loyalty or consumer loyalty to a brand, you must know their needs.

Through the customer journey, you can immediately find out what areas need to be improved to increase consumer retention and make them loyal to your brand.

5. Create a Consumer-Focused Business

Not all departments of a business can focus directly on consumers or are customer-based because each department in a business has varying goals.

To make your business focus on consumer needs, start by sharing the customer journey map with all departments.

That way, each section will get a clear picture of the process that consumers go through. Starting from interest until after purchase because this process influences marketing, sales and service.

Steps to Create a Customer Journey Map

After knowing the importance of the customer journey, here are the steps that must be taken to create customer journey maps, quoted from MindTools.

1. Determine Objectivity or Goals

Determining goals and objectivity from the start will help you focus more on determining touchpoints in the customer journey map.

If you determine goals that are too general, of course the mapping process will also be too broad and unfocused. The reason is, there are too many processes that may require different customer journey maps.

2. Data and Information Collection

After finding the goals and objectives you want to achieve, the next step is to identify what makes consumers interested and interact with your brand.

Asking these basic questions will make it easier for you to gather basic information about consumers and better identify customer behavior.

How you do this also varies, starting from market research, interviews, discussions, data analysis, email, and others.

The results of this research can be used to form a buyer persona which will help you find out consumer needs and what kind of service they want.

3. Identify Touchpoints or Points of Interaction

Touchpoints or points of interaction are important in forming a customer journey map.

There are also various forms of touchpoints, such as activities in stores, online searches, social media, telephone, blogs, help desks, campaigns via email or newsletters, chat services and others.

Once you have identified these touchpoints, think about how they will affect consumers. That way you can identify a suitable customer journey map.

4. Determine the Key Stages in Customer Experience

With the information you got from the research in the previous step, this data can be used to identify what processes consumers carry out.

A simple example, customer experience usually consists of several processes such as interest, research, purchase, delivery, support after purchase, and providing reviews, ratings, and sharing information.

This process will of course vary depending on the type of consumer and the type of product/service offered.

However, knowing these important processes will help you make your customer journey map easier to understand and implement in your strategy.

5. Start doing mapping

After all important data and processes have been identified, the next step is to carry out the mapping itself.

There are many ways to create customer journey maps, it can be in the form of diagrams, timeline tables, pie charts, even videos.

The thing to note is that each map must represent the steps/processes experienced by consumers and there is a touchpoint column as a fixed variable.

You can also add emoticons with emojis to describe consumer feelings at certain stages.

6. Map Analysis and Periodic Evaluation

After completing and applying the customer journey, you must carry out an analysis and answer the goals and objectivities that were created at the beginning.

Make a list of challenges/obstacles that arise in this analysis process so that they can then be evaluated periodically.

The goal is to stay focused on the customer journey goal while helping you analyze it better.

So, that's everything about the customer journey that you need to understand.

So that consumers are satisfied and loyal to your business, there is no harm in learning more about the customer journey as a way to achieve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

One way is to take the Customer Satisfaction and Relationship Program class at the Prasetiya Mulya Executive Learning Institute.

Starting from learning, concept application, to workshops and group discussions, this class will help you develop your business more effectively.
Register for the class here, now!

Prasetiya Mulya Executive Learning Institute
Prasetiya Mulya Cilandak Campus, Building 2, #2203
Jl. R.A Kartini (TB. Simatupang), Cilandak Barat, Jakarta 12430
Indonesia
Prasetiya Mulya Executive Learning Institute
Prasetiya Mulya Cilandak Campus, Building 2, #2203
Jl. R.A Kartini (TB. Simatupang), Cilandak Barat,
Jakarta 12430
Indonesia