Customer journey mapping is becoming increasingly popular as brands embark on initiatives to improve their end-to-end customer experiences. And it’s no wonder. When done right, customer journey mapping gives you real-time data about how customers interact with you, which you can then use to make strategic decisions that have a tangible effect on profitability.
In this blog, we’ll explore 4 ways you can use customer journey mapping – not just to increase customer satisfaction – but to boost overall ROI.
What is customer journey mapping?
Before we dive in, it’s useful to look at what we mean by the term ‘customer journey mapping’.
Market research giant Forrester defines it as a “methodology to deepen customer understanding, break down siloed behaviours and inject customer thinking into the design process.”
In simpler terms, we define it as the process of obtaining a bird’s-eye view of all your customer interactions and touchpoints across every channel.
Mapping lets you see your business from your customers’ perspective, which helps you make customer-centric decisions that will ultimately benefit your bottom line (as well as your brand’s reputation).
So how can customer journey mapping help drive ROI?
1. By encouraging customers to buy more
Happy customers buy more. It really is that simple.
By mapping your customer journeys, you can easily identify areas to improve – for example, by decreasing friction, increasing digital self-service options or incorporating more personalisation. And all that helps increase average spend.
In fact, McKinsey research shows that improving customer experience can increase profitability by 25-90% while also decreasing costs by up to 20%. And that’s a significant ROI boost.
2. By encouraging customers to buy more often
Big orders are great, but brand loyalty is better. Because, as we all know, it’s way more cost-efficient to retain existing customers than it is to attract new ones.
Improving journeys helps you keep people coming back for more: 87% of customers who say they have a great experience end up making another purchase from that brand.
3. By tracking referrals and recommendations
Customers trust word-of-mouth recommendations far more than they trust marketing and advertising campaigns. And brands with superior customer experiences are more likely to generate those recommendations.
Perhaps even more important is the fact that negative customer experiences generate negative word-of-mouth: customers tell an average of 9 people about positive experiences they’ve had with brands, but they tell 16 people about negative ones.
Harness that by using customer journey mapping to implement tracking of referrals and recommendations, not just Net Promoter Score (NPS). Why the distinction? Because NPS measures intent, not actual behaviour. You need to track the referrals themselves, for example by giving customers codes and incentives.
Incorporating these value-add loyalty programmes and referral bonuses can then have a great – and measurable – impact on ROI.
4. By reducing operational costs
Improving your customer journey has the potential to significantly reduce operational costs.
This comes from several areas.
One is reduced call volumes, due to lower friction and more user-friendly digital self-service. Another is more process automation, freeing (often expensive) human resource to focus on more value-added work. A third area is from AI-driven personalisation, which gives you economies of scale for more effective campaigns.
By getting a bird’s-eye view of touchpoints with customer journey mapping, you can spot evidence-based opportunities to increase efficiency more easily – driving better ROI.
Tools like the Engage Hub’s Customer Journey Tracker give you a holistic, real-time view of every interaction customers have with you. This then lets you make evidence-based decisions and adapt to ever-changing customer wants and needs in an agile way.
Want to know more about how customer journey mapping can help you?
Engage Hub has been recognised, for a second year running, in latest Journey Orchestration Platforms evaluation report by market research giant, Forrester – find out more here.
For more insights, download our whitepaper: Revolutionise Your Customer’s Journey.
