Customers have different behavior patterns before and after buying a product. Some buy immediately when they find them or a product, but others have to spend time researching the product before buying it. This behavior pattern must be understood by a seller so that the brand and its products can be accepted by customers who have various behavior patterns.

I will explain this pattern of behavior in the Customer Journey. If you are a sales marketing or business owner then you are advised to study the Customer Journey and apply it to your business. Sam Walton once said :

“There is only one boss. The customer.”

Understanding The Customer Journey

Customer journey is a consumer journey when interacting with your brand. Starting from when consumers first get to know your brand, browsing the products being sold, making purchases, to what they do after the transaction is complete. So, it can be said that understanding the customer journey means understanding the mindset of your consumers.

Have you thought that the consumer’s journey was limited to consumers seeing your ad somewhere and then deciding to buy it? Maybe this assumption was true decades ago. Today, however, the consumer journey is much more complex than you might think. We give an example below.

You sell “New Zeland rabbits,” and you have a potential buyer named David. One day, David finds your website for the first time while doing a Google search for “selling New Zeland Rabbits”. When you click on the result, it is taken to your website. Your website opens quickly and David is immediately greeted by a live chat customer service. He appreciated the live chat, but he didn’t need any help at this time, so closed it.

David then crawls your website. He browsed the New Zealand rabbit catalog, opened pages of information on payments, shipping, and insurance. He also had time to read your article about tips on caring for New Zealand rabbits.

At this point, David is satisfied with what your brand has to offer. Especially in the free shipping offer and litter bonuses that are given. But even so, he didn’t buy right away. Instead, it returns to the search results and clicks on another website below you.

The same process as when David was on your website over and over again. But the difference is, he did not find any free shipping and bonus offers. Also, when he tried to ask about shipping insurance on live chat, no one answered him until 10 minutes had passed. He then decides to return to the search results and return to your website.

Does that mean David is ready to make a New Zeland rabbit purchase on your website? Oh no. He decided to look at customer reviews first on social media. Only after seeing a majority of positive reviews does he finally buy from your website. Even after that, David also left positive reviews and recommended your website to his friends.

That is one example of a customer journey. At first glance, David’s behavior above is confusing. Why didn’t he just buy right away, why did he have to go back and forth in Google search results, and why bother looking at reviews on social media?

Yes, that’s why the customer journey is very complex. You can see in the example above how important a customer journey is for a business. David chose your website because the ride was more satisfying than his competitors.

In other words, without a good customer journey, David will fall into the arms of your competitors. And what happens if consumers always run to competitors? Yes, we have no sales.

Customer Journey Map

To understand consumers and implement a customer journey in business, you must create a Customer Journey Map. What is the Customer Journey Map ?

The Customer Journey Map (CJM) is a visual form of the customer journey. The Customer Journey Map (CJM) aims to map the steps users take when interacting with your product. This CJM is not 100% accurate because there is no way all your customers will behave exactly the same. But you can get the general picture more clearly.

Customer Journey Map Template

This Customer Journey Mapping is created by collecting various data from your customers and potential customers. Then, turn it into a visual that is easy for anyone to understand. You can get this data from asking consumers directly through surveys, research on social media, or using website analytics tools such as Google Analytics.

CJM ; Current State	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	Step 5
What is the customer thinking or feeling ?
What is the customer’s action ?
What is the customer’s touchpoint with the business ?
What do we want to change a bout this step ?
How and/or why will we make this change ?

Maybe you found CJM to be a hassle and a waste of time. However, in doing business you must be able to see in the long term. CJM is an investment that can keep your business getting new customers and maintaining customer retention when other competitors start to lose customers.

With the Customer Journey Map you can find out the mindset of consumers, their motivations, and what steps they are taking to achieve their goals. Or if consumers don’t achieve their goals, CJM can help them achieve them. Remember, the consumer is number one. Everything you do should have to do with helping consumers achieve their goals with your business.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

Here are the steps in making a customer jouney map for business. We’ve summarized it into seven steps

1. Create a Buyer Persona

The Customer Journey Map is a solution to deeply knowing the mindset of your consumers. Therefore, it is important to know who your customers are first. Well, the best way to find out about your customers is to create a buyer persona.

The buyer persona itself is a representation of a typical target consumer of a business that is obtained from the results of in-depth research. In other words, you need to create customer profiles as if they were real.

2. Select a persona

Depending on your business, chances are there are many buyer personas. Therefore, CJM’s next step is to focus on just one or two personas.

Because, Customer Journey Mapping looks in detail at the journey of one type of consumer who goes through a special step when interacting with your brand. If you include a lot of personas, the CMJ will be very inaccurate and confusing.

So, in order to make it easier to create your first CMJ, choose the most common personas and represent the majority of your target market. Don’t bother with other personas for now, because you can make CMJs for other personas that are more unique and specific.

3. Describe All Touchpoints

Touchpoint is a point where consumers interact with your brand during their customer journey. An example of a touchpoint is when a potential customer first finds out about your brand from an ad. Or it could be when a customer contacts your customer service.

Describing all touchpoints is a crucial step because it can help you to provide a smooth journey at every step of the customer journey. For example, when a customer passes more touchpoints than planned, it is likely that your website is too complex and needs to change.

To determine this touchpoint, there are three steps you must take:

Action

List what your consumers act on during their interactions with the brand. For example doing a search on Google or clicking on an email you sent. This list can be overwhelming, but you can narrow it down later. For now, focus on making as many lists as possible.

Emotions and Motivation

Every action your customer takes is based on the emotion and motivation behind it. These emotions can also change depending on the extent of their journey.

Now, these fluctuations in emotions are usually caused by a problem along the way. Therefore, it is important for you to know what the problem is and provide solutions at the right time so that consumer emotions can be more stable.

Hurdle

It is imperative that you know the obstacles that are preventing the consumer from reaching their goals. One of the most common hurdles is price. For example, when a customer has fallen in love with your product, but it turns out that the shipping costs are so expensive that he immediately leaves.

Knowing the possible consumer barriers can help you to reduce them. Still using the example above, you could just create an information page about why shipping costs are expensive. Maybe because of insurance, wood packing or something. This way, consumers can be more understanding and don’t just leave you.

4. Decide what CJM wants to show you

There are four types of Customer Journey Mapping that you can choose depending on your needs and goals:

 Current State

This CJM is what business people often use. This type describes the actions, thoughts, and feelings that consumers now feel when interacting with your brand. CJM is perfect for increasing your customer journey slowly.

Day in the Life

This Customer Journey Mapping describes the actions, thoughts and feelings of consumers in all of their daily activities. So, it’s not limited to interacting with your brand.

This type of CJM gives you an overall picture of the consumer’s life. Including the obstacles and problems faced in his life. CJM is suitable to be used to find out what potential needs you fail to fulfill to consumers, even when the consumers themselves are not aware of it.

Future State

This type of CJM describes what you believe to be the future actions, thoughts and feelings of consumers interacting with your brand. This Customer Journey Map is suitable for explaining your brand’s vision and goals in the future.

Service Blueprint

This CJM contains a simplified version of the three types of CJM above. Then, explain the various factors that underlie the consumer experience. Starting from the people, policies, technology, to various processes that must be passed.

This type of Customer Journey Mapping is suitable to find out the core problems of the current customer journey. And to find out what steps must be taken in order to reach the desired customer journey in the future.

5. Try Live Your Own Customer Journey

How can you tell if a CJM is made for a purpose if you don’t try it? Now, instead of trying it directly on consumers, you should try it yourself first.

That way, you can analyze the results to see if changes need to be made or not. So, when consumers try it later, your CJM is perfect and can offer a solution. The effect, consumers can achieve the goals they want.

6. Make Necessary Changes

The five steps above will be useless if you don’t implement the changes suggested by CJM. Because that is the main goal of CJM: to change what needs to be changed so that it can satisfy consumers.

These changes can be big or small. Starting from writing a longer product description so that the meaning is clearer to overhauling the entire website design to make it simpler and more responsive.

Remember, nothing changes based on the Customer Journey Map is in vain. Because everything is directly related to your customers. So, don’t be afraid to make changes. The world and people change every day.

Customer Journey Map Example

Here we provide examples of CJM that you can inspire. The example below seems to have a business called “Rabbit Home” and sells various new zeland rabbit. Oh yes, we only gave two examples because that is what is commonly used.

1. CJM Types of Present Conditions (Current State)

CJM ; Current State	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	Step 5
What is the customer thinking or feeling ?	Want the new zeland rabbit	Just ordinary (still looking at options)	Start considering options.	Still in doubt	Sure to buy.
What is the customer’s action ?	Find info on new zeland rabbit seller on Google.	Click the website that appears on the first page of Google.	Thoroughly browse clicked websites. Browse offers, promos, etc	Look at reviews on social media and Google Review	Make transactions on the website.
What is the customer’s touchpoint with the business ?	Not available	Search results on Google	Visit the website	Social Media and Google Reviews	Website
What do we want to change a bout this step ?	Increase brand awareness and better advertise	The position of the website on Google, the title, and the more attractive meta tags.	Display, headlines, and promo notifications on the home page	Show buyer testimonials	Make transactions easier
How and/or why will we make this change ?	Implementing content marketing and social media marketing	Perform SEO optimization.	A / B testing.	Create a special testimonial page on the website and make regular posts about testimonials on social media	Better UI and provides more payment options.

2. CJM Types of Everyday Conditions

CJM ; Everyday Conditions	Morning	Noon	Afternoon	Night	Before Going
What is the customer thinking or feeling ?	Sleepy	Focus on work	Want to go home	When I returned to the boarding house I felt lonely. So want a pet	Sleepy
What is the customer’s action ?	Drinking coffee	Anything that helps him focus on his job	Complete his activities	Start looking for information about pets that match their tastes and lifestyle	Sleep, However, because he has determined that he will raise new zeland rabbit, he began researching new zeland rabbit sellers
What is the customer’s touchpoint with the business ?	There is no	There is no	There is no	Because consumers have not specifically looked for rabbits	Google search
What do we want to change a bout this step ?	Trying to get out of bed	Sleepiness and boredom	Getting out of focus because of fatigue	Confusion to determine what pet	Hesitation to buy expensive new zeland rabbits online
How and/or why will we make this change ?	Make consumers more aware with Rabbit Home in the morning.	Make consumers more aware with Rabbit Home during the day	Make consumers more aware with Rabbit Home in the afternoon	Make consumers aware of Rabbit Home even though it is not related to rabbits	Maybe it could be installing PPC “pet.” Provide testimonials, guarantees, and promos so that consumers are sure to make transactions when visiting the Rabbit Home website

3. CJM Types of Conditions in the Future

CJM ; In the Future	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	Step 5
What is the customer thinking or feeling ?
What is the customer’s action ?
What is the customer’s touchpoint with the business ?
What do we want to change a bout this step ?
How and/or why will we make this change ?

4. CJM Type of Service Framework

CJM; Service Framework	Factor 1	Factor 2	Factor 3	Factor 4	Factor 5
What is the customer thinking or feeling ?
What is the customer’s action ?
What is the customer’s touchpoint with the business ?
What do we want to change a bout this step ?
How and/or why will we make this change ?

Conclusion Customer Journey

That is the meaning, maps, templates, examples and how to make a customer journey. Try to study it one more time until you really understand. Then apply it to your business. By doing so, you can find out where your potential customers come from and why your prospect fails to buy the product you are selling.

Not only that, you can also plan how to get new customers easily and retain old customers easily too.

Maybe your competitors have already done this, so what are you waiting for. Before you fall far behind, do it. If you have things that you don’t understand about the customer journey, write them in the comments column. We will discuss together. You can also learn about digital business and marketing in Digital Marketing Magazine