Five Questions To Ask Yourself When Building A Customer Journey

Building a Customer Journey for the first time or revamping your existing Customer Journeys can be an intimidating task for any business. Sometimes it can be challenging to know where to start. Here are some questions to ask yourself to identify points along your Customer Journey and a few ideas of collectors you could use for gathering feedback and monitor experience.

1. How Do Your Customer’s Learn About Your Business?

Focus on the ways that your customer finds out more information about you. How do people find out about your products or services? You might find that the answer is methods like social media, search engine results or through walking down the street and seeing your storefront. Try to think of all the ways people start their path on your Customer Journey just before they make the choice to consider purchasing from you.

Possible Collector For social media, it’s a good idea to listen to what people are saying. This can give a sentiment and topic analysis of the discussions. If you think your website is a key first step, how about a slider to capture what people are thinking. For a storefront, you could display a QR code to give people an opportunity to let you know what caught their eye.

2. How Do Your Customers Visit Your Business?

These interactions may be visits to your website, store or having a sales meeting with your team. It’s important to know what the “entrances” to your business are, even if they are virtual ones. Keep in mind that you should note how customer’s “exit” your business as well.

Possible Collector Having a Smiley terminal by your store’s entrance and exit can be a great way to get their impressions as they visit your store.

3. What Are Your Product/Service Payment Points?

These monetary points may be the simplest for you to think of. Make sure you identify all the different ways that a customer goes through the payment process from in-person transactions to online payments. Also, keep in mind that if your product or service is subscription-based you’ll want to make a note of that in your Customer Journey.

Possible Collector If you use a POS system, make it easy for the customer and build feedback directly into that system. If your sales happen in an app, gathering your customer feedback can happen there too.

4. Do You Have Points Where You Follow Up or Deliver Your Service Separate To Payment Transactions?

You may need to complete an activity after a sale like delivering a service or installing a product. Make sure you have listed those fully since they are another interaction point in the Customer Journey.

Possible Collector These days we use email to communicate daily so it’s a great way to get feedback about how your installation service went. Or maybe your customers prefer SMS messages, which can all be used to gather feedback. Alternatively, a simple card with a QR code in the package delivered to the customer lets them share their feedback.

5. What Are Your Customer Service Interactions?

Everyone needs help sometimes with a purchase they’ve made whether its technical support to use a product properly or help to resolve an unexpected issue. Even though not all your customers may use your customer service channels, you should still include them on your Customer Journeys to highlight a possible interaction point.

Possible Collector After customer service team has excelled at what they do, gathering feedback through quick post call IVR survey can be the perfect way to make sure your customer is satisfied.

Where to Start When You Have Too Many Touchpoints

Work through those five questions and you'll often end up with a long list of possible touchpoints — more than you can (or should) instrument at once. Trying to measure everything on day one usually means measuring nothing well. A better approach is to start with the touchpoints that matter most, then expand.

Prioritize by two simple factors: volume and impact. A touchpoint that nearly every customer passes through (checkout, entrance, the booking page) gives you a large, reliable sample quickly. A touchpoint that strongly shapes whether a customer returns (a support interaction, the first ten minutes of a stay, the delivery experience) is where a bad moment costs you the most. The touchpoints that are high on both — high traffic and high stakes — are where you begin. Get those producing clean, in-context feedback, prove the value to your team, then layer in the smaller or more specialized touchpoints over time.

The point isn't to build the perfect map on the first try. It's to start listening where it counts, learn from what customers tell you, and let the journey — and your measurement of it — evolve together.

These questions will get you started with building your Customer Journeys, but remember it’s a journey, so it may change over time as your business evolves and you interact with customers in new and different ways. No matter the Customer Journey you build, it’s important to gather feedback about the customer experience at each stop along the path.

Mapped out your five questions and ready to start collecting? Book a demo to see the right Collector for every touchpoint on your journey. You can also follow our LinkedIn page for more customer experience tips.