Get to know your customers on a deeper level.

Transcription

1 Journey Mapping Get to know your customers on a deeper level.

2 About the Authors Tony Quiroz Anthony is a UX Design Strategist at Ethology with deep knowledge of Windows, Web and mobile design. He splits his time between business development, thought leadership, and lots of good old fashioned hands-on design work. Outside of his role as an Ethologist, he is a local leader for IxDA Phoenix and a seasoned presenter and educator on design and development. Sean Rice Sean is a Senior UX Designer at Ethology, focusing on user empathy through research, journey mapping, and usability testing as well as interaction design through innovation workshops, collaborative sketching and prototyping. Editorial Support Brandwyn Boyle Chris Brown Kacie Willis 00 / 2

3 01 Consumers Are In the Driver s Seat.

4 If we look at historical trends, consumers were only truly in control of two of the five stages of the buying decision process. We have all seen a diagram like this: Need Recognition Information Search Evaluate Alternatives Purchase Decision Post-Purchase Behavior In the past, when it was time for a consumer to research and evaluate all of his or her possible purchases, all a marketer needed was enough money to saturate a few channels at the top of the funnel to inspire someone to buy almost anything. It doesn t work that way anymore. Because of incredibly easy access to information, and communication now consisting of touching a few buttons on a laptop, smartphone or tablet, consumers control the entire buying decision process and every part of the funnel. 01: Consumers are in the driver's seat / 4

5 Want more proof? Let s look at some fun stats: 81% 57% of shoppers conduct research online before buying 1 of the purchasing process takes place before ever talking to sales 2 71% of in-store shoppers who use smartphones for online research say their device has become more important than their in-store experience 3 69% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing or relevance of a company s message influences their perception of the brand : Consumers are in the driver's seat / 5

6 With so many more opportunities for marketers to reach potential customers, it s amazing that: 22% of consumers say the average retailer understands them as an individual buyer 5 21% say the messages they receive are relevant 6 Thankfully, a lot of businesses are finally catching the drift: 88% say their growth depends on personalizing the customer experience 7 37% believe that they have the tools they need to deliver exceptional customer experiences : Consumers are in the driver's seat / 6

7 Because consumers, not marketers, are the information gatekeepers, it s extremely important that your brand has a compelling story. If you don t have an attention-grabbing story, you re flushing your marketing budget down the toilet. What tools do you need to know what actually resonates? Buyer personas and customer experience maps. This may challenge traditional marketing conventions, but it will allow you to truly understand how your customers buy. For the first time you will be able to build empathy for your customers and the problems they are trying to solve. By focusing on their unique problems and pain points, you will become their champion instead of just another product pusher. 01: Consumers are in the driver's seat / 7

8 02 The New Role of Customer Experience Design Within Modern Marketing

9 Building your marketing strategy around the idea of an optimized customer experience helps you construct a big picture of your customers: how they buy and what they do with your product after the purchase. Creating a model of your customer s experience will help you: Define business objectives and measurements that are customer-centric. Build a concrete model of your customer s interactions with your brand, your marketing and your products. Help you understand what tools and technologies your customer is using. Make your brand and your marketing messages relatable. 02: The New Role of Customer Experience Design Within Modern Marketing / 9

10 What Customer Experience Is and Is Not Humans intrinsically stereotype we do it every day. Many marketers believe that customer experience only describes how a customer interacts with their website, app or marketing. In other words, customer experience only encompasses the layout and design of interfaces. This thinking is too narrow. User interface is not Customer Experience. Creating amazing customer experiences requires so much more, including: Interaction design. Conducting field research. Holding face-to-face interviews and focus groups. Gathering and organizing stats and figures. Creating actual personas of your target customers. Designing your products around actual human use. Information architecture. Usability testing. Mapping the real-life experiences of your customers. 02: The New Role of Customer Experience Design Within Modern Marketing / 10

11 03 Mapping the Customer Experience

12 We re assuming that you ve read a map but have you ever drawn one? The purpose of a map is to illustrate how you get from point A to point B. A customer journey map illustrates how your customer gets from having a need (point A) to buying your product (point B) by documenting their tangible interactions with your brand, as well as their intangible thoughts and feelings. If you don t draw these maps you will never understand how your customers can take radically different online and offline paths to purchase, such as: Your website. A banner ad. A YouTube video. Someone s comment on Facebook. Someone s photo on Instagram. A text from a friend. An ad in a store window. A piece of direct mail. So where do you start? 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 12

13 Building a Buyer Persona If you want to understand your customer s journey, you need to understand what makes your customer tick. A buyer persona is essentially a dossier of your customer. Constructing one is equal parts art and science, but if done right will give you an iconic representation of your customer that is grounded in real research, data and facts. A proper persona will show you: What triggered your customer s search for a new product or solution. What your customer s decision criteria are. The outcomes and results your customer is looking to achieve. His or her feelings while moving through the buying process. The perceived risks associated with your customer s decision. Note: It s important to remember that personas represent individuals and do not solely consist of demographic information, though they may be based on demographic research. 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 13

14 For example: Mary is not Mary is a 15- to 24-year-old female who lives within 50 miles of a city. a 24-year-old single mom who lives in Detroit with her parents and doesn t know that she needs life insurance, or even what a premium is, and uses her cell phone for most things so she can make transactions with one hand while pushing her oldest child in the backyard swing as her youngest naps in the house. Do you see the difference? This level of specificity helps you uncover the motivations and feelings underlying the purchasing decisions of your users, and these revelations are what can ultimately help you identify valuable opportunities to innovate and grow. Be careful to avoid these common mistakes when building personas: Creating a persona with only demographics. Letting sales reps be your primary source of research. Your sales team doesn t usually have information on the most important parts of the buying cycle. Customers come their way only after completing 50 to 75 percent of the buying journey. Assigning the interview process too little value or importance. Using personas built from another department in your business. Building personas around executives of companies who aren t actually buying your product. 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 14

15 Journey Map Essentials There is no standard format for a customer journey map. Each one is different because each customer s journey is different. However, there are common elements to each map that help you flesh out: How your customer thinks. How your customer feels. What your customer does. What his or her pain points are. What tools/devices he or she uses. What marketing channels he or she interacts with. What opportunities there are to solve his or her problem and improve the customer experience. 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 15

16 Every map should include: Guiding Principles Your guiding principles are general assumptions that you know for sure influence all parts of the customer journey. Your guiding principles should be used to help you maintain perspective as you examine the individual steps your customer takes. Steps of the Journey The steps of the journey represent groups of interactions with your brand, such as researching checking accounts or signing up for a new account, that can occur both online and offline. These steps can also include interactions outside of your circle of influence, such as talking to friends or visiting a competitor s site. What a Customer Is Doing Documenting what your customer is doing means identifying all of the tasks and subtasks (don t leave anything out!) that make up the steps in the journey. This includes micro-moments of interaction, such as finding a specific size or color of a product, looking up an address, reading an online review and comparing prices. It s helpful to diagram these micro-moments in a visual flowchart so you can see and better understand how one interaction leads to another. What a Customer Is Thinking and Feeling This piece is revealed by researching your customer while you build your buyer personas. Customer care representatives, product managers and others who have lots of direct contact with customers are also good sources of information. Use thoughts and feelings along with moments of truth and touch points to identify gaps or pain points in your customer experience. 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 16

17 Moments of Truth Along the Way Moments of truth are pivotal moments in the journey and often hinge on a question that will directly influence a purchase. For example: Does this hotel allow pets? or Are these shoes that I like available at a store near me? Touch Points with the Customer Touch points represent all physical and digital entities a customer will interact with as he or she seeks out information on the way to making a decision. For example, when doing research on checking accounts, a customer could: Use search engines. Visit your brand s website. Visit competitor websites. Walk by a local bank branch. Talk to a friend or family member. Opportunities to Improve and Win with the Customer Based on your research, buyer persona and all of the data captured in your journey map, you re now in an optimal position to identify key opportunities for improvement. Document these in the map so they coincide with each step, and prioritize them for easy visibility. 03: Mapping the Customer Experience / 17

18 04 Leveraging the Journey to Improve Customer Experience

19 Now that you have a journey map, what do you do? Do you keep refining it? Do you try to perfect it? Remember, a journey map is a tool to help you visualize your customers and their goals in order to reveal key moments throughout the buying decision process where your brand has the best opportunity to connect and make an impact. It s ultimately a springboard to other actions, so at this stage it s no longer about refining, but rather utilizing. In order to do this, you need to be able to recognize the guideposts in your map that will drive your next steps. We have found over time that there are a few guideposts that are common to most journeys. 4 Common Guideposts Your Journey Maps Will Reveal 1. Your customers need help finding you online. You can t sell to people who don t know that you exist. This is why SEO and keyword research are so important. While many experts today shoot down SEO and keyword research because they re not as important as they once were, there is still a tremendous amount of valuable data to be mined from both. SEO and keyword research help you speak your customer s language translating what you want to say into what your customer wants to hear. Keyword research helps you find the terms and topics that matter most, and identify and address any gaps in your content that you uncovered in your journey map. 04 : LEVERAGING THE JOURNEY / 19

20 2. Your customers need an easier way to research. Consumers are conducting unprecedented amounts of research before making purchases. Designing and strategizing your content for your customer s journey is crucial each section needs a clear header, keywords that map to what your customer cares about and appropriate content that drives conversion. Your content must make it easy for your customers to find what they need to make a decision, such as pricing, ratings, reviews and specifications. We experienced this firsthand when working with Culligan, a water treatment company. We discovered through SEO and keyword research that potential Culligan customers were researching ways to get rid of smelly water. In order to fill the gap, we developed a content strategy geared toward helping customers more easily find solutions to this problem. 3. Your need to optimize for mobile use. Mobile responsiveness is a given. Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a task if a site isn t optimized for mobile. Here are a few other points to consider: Decide Whether You Need a Mobile-First Design The majority-use case for accessing your site drives the answer to this question. Do you know where your customers are when they shop? Are they in an office on a desktop? At home on a tablet? On the street using a smartphone? Design for Multiple Folds This goes hand in hand with your content strategy. As you scroll, you should chunk your content and place it accordingly to tell your story as a user moves down the pages of your website. Personalize When Possible Leverage location awareness whenever you can. For example, on an Arizona banking site, your customer should see pictures of local Arizona branches and not branch locations in New York City. 04 : LEVERAGING THE JOURNEY / 20

21 4. Your customers have pain points that need to be addressed. While customer pain points will vary depending on the type of product and solution, there are common pain points that you should address in the design of your website, app and content: Services/Expectations/Goals When you clearly communicate to your customer what he or she can expect from you, you gain trust which is a huge step toward conversion. Answers for FAQs Not only do quality FAQ answers help your customers, but they also reduce the overhead of your customer support team. Targeted Calls to Action (CTAs) with Relatable Langauge Don t put off your customers at the top of the funnel. For example, with one of our university clients we discovered that placing Apply Now or Register buttons on top-level Web pages was scary to users. On the other hand, Get More Info and Learn More felt safer and helped move people through their research. Friendly Forms with Condensed Requirements Putting nice-looking forms on your site isn t good enough. Spend time understanding the conversation around them and how it relates to your customer. Optimize for Local Search When a customer searches for a specific location of your business, you should be optimized to show up in one click, not many. 04 : LEVERAGING THE JOURNEY / 21

22 05 Get Started! Your customers may be in the driver s seat but they still need to know where they are going. While consumers may be in the driver s seat when it comes to engaging your brand, they still look to you and your brand to provide the information, services and products they need. Recognize that consumers are getting smarter about their research. Being there for them at the right time, in the right way, builds trust and makes it easy for them to do business with you. Spend your marketing dollars wisely by focusing on the key moments that influence customer decision points and actions. Make those as easy and intuitive as possible. Do your homework to really get to know your customers, then build a strategy that you know will lead to a great experience. Need help? We d love to meet you. We could talk to you about our marketing capabilities all day long. But we both know that won t solve anything. So we put your business, your customer and your strategy at the forefront over everything we do. To meet the people behind Ethology s Journey Mapping process & playbook, send us an or give us a call. info@ethology.com Ethology.com 80 Ethologists. Four offices nationwide. Phoenix, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago. Our one focus. Great customer experiences. 05 : GET STARTED! / 22