The Value of Customer Journey Mapping
In the retail industry today, it's easy to get the impression that the quest for omnichannel excellence is mainly both a new and huge technology initiative. While correct, it's important to remember there's something greater at play — the perennial challenge of understanding and influencing human behavior.
By 2017, e-commerce is expected to account for one in 10 retail purchases in the U.S. The increase in online spend is largely attributed to increasing online share of wallet — rather than new online shoppers. Online customers are moving from low-engagement, easy-consideration categories (e.g., small consumer electronics, music, etc.) to high-touch, high-consideration purchases (e.g., furniture and large household items).
Customers equipped with mobile devices are savvier about online research and are happier to mix and match the physical and online experience. Many are following more elaborate and nonlinear shopping journeys, especially as they make more thoughtful purchases.
It's estimated that 26 percent of in-store purchases involve research online. That figure is projected to increase to 60 percent by 2017. To succeed in today's marketplace, retailers must have a clear understanding of which segments of consumers shop, what are their specific parts of the journey and across which channels.
This omnichannel nonlinear purchase path creates more ways to delight and develop engagement in ways that result in increased sales, referrals and loyalty. The flip side is that more personalized journeys and higher customer expectations also create the opportunity to disappoint — losing this sale and the next.
In order to take advantage of this opportunity, retailers should take two critical actions:
- Develop a fuller understanding of the customer, ideally through customer journey mapping.
- Use that understanding to strengthen the infrastructure supporting the most important journeys, and by alleviating customer pain points.
Customer journey mapping is the plotting out, visually, of the specific steps a customer follows from the time they become aware of the need for a product or service through the phase of researching potential choices to the time they engage in the purchase transaction to the subsequent interaction after the purchase (i.e., delivery, installation, use, returns, etc.).
Customer journey mapping will help you accomplish the following:
- understand where there are friction points in the purchase path that increase the likelihood of an abandoned cart;
- understand where customers may consult with your competitors, resulting in lost opportunities;
- identify and remedy the dissatisfiers in the purchase path, resulting in increased loyalty and repeat purchases; and
- provide another method of segmenting customers by their behavior to enable more relevant marketing.
To start, select a representative sample of customers and channels. Talk to your customers about their most recent purchases and work backwards as this helps the customer to more accurately recall each step. Don't forget abandoned journeys!
The key points to "map" are those touchpoints where the customer has some other kind of interactivity with people and/or information within the experience being mapped (e.g., shopping, returning merchandise, etc.). In your interviews, seek to understand how customers felt during and at the end of the interaction within each touchpoint. This is how you understand whether that touchpoint is great, just ok or needs attention.
As always, developing understanding makes you wiser, but it only makes you richer when you use that understanding to positively impact the customer experience.
For example, one omnichannel retailer used customer journey mapping to identify and improve a portion of the customer experience, which it didn't realize was problematic. After conducting 85 individual customer interviews, the retailer became aware of specific touchpoints which were causing customers to re-evaluate their potential purchase. The company's next step was to lay the 85 journey maps together to identify patterns. It grouped similar journeys and created segments, and then developed personas for each of the segments to create deeper empathy for the customer and their respective journey.
From this effort, the retailer discovered that there were portions of the current experience which were negatively impacting their customers. The company was able to address those pain points and adjust its internal operations. It not only achieved differentiation, but was also able to remediate friction points.
Customer journey mapping gives you insights into those areas within your customers' experience that are both contributing to repeat visits and eroding customer loyalty. Once visible, you can work to ease friction points or to replicate successes and ensure you capture the maximum potential share of wallet.
Toby Hawkes is principal, retail and consumer goods, at North Highland, a global consulting firm, and Michael Baum is director, Sparks Grove, a division of North Highland.
- Places:
- U.S.