How do you update and maintain your customer journey maps over time?

Best Customer journey system can make positive impact on brand and helps to reach business goals in short time. How ? 1. Determining the customer journey thinking minute things 2. Braking barrier between departments so that customer wont be disturbed asking same survey or question when problem arise. 3. Every step giving customer concerned person contact details or status update quick on his screen. 4. Considering feedback and resolving them brings customer in again.

We need to 1st clarify what is a Customer Journey Map: it is a set of milestones, actions, transitions for a specific customer inside the company defined Customer Lifecycle. This map should be updated as your customer is progressing from one step to another inside their lifecycle. How do we know where the customer is at? Data is your friend. In a healthy relationship with your customer you should be able to evaluate if they still need onboarding, or if they have moved to an adoption phase. Surveys like NPS, CSAT and so will not help a lot, it is better to use a Customer Health Scorecard, were other datapoints (like software usage, transactions, training evolution, etc.) are combined to give a good status of where your customer is at.

Updating and maintaining customer journey maps is an ongoing process that requires diligence and adaptability. Beyond the listed steps, it's crucial to embrace feedback loops with customers and frontline staff. Regularly engaging with them offers invaluable insights to refine touchpoints, ensuring your maps stay relevant and reflective of evolving customer needs and market dynamics.

Frequent surveys and interviews help you to update and preserve customer journey maps by means of customer interaction analysis and metric tracking. Plan regular evaluations to spot shifts in consumer tastes and behaviour. Also, work with people from different departments to make sure that your insights are integrated. Apart from this, use analytics tools to see how data is changing over time, and then make changes as needed. Maintaining the dynamic nature and alignment of the maps with corporate objectives guarantees their relevance and efficiency for enhancing consumer experiences.

When updating your customer journey maps, start by meticulously reviewing your data sources. Ensure accuracy, reliability, and up-to-date information by leveraging customer feedback, surveys, interviews, analytics, and observations. Identify gaps or inconsistencies in your data and strategically address them to comprehensively cover all aspects of your customers' journeys. This foundational step ensures that your insights are robust and your strategies are aligned with the evolving needs of your customers.

The biggest mistake people make is to think they only have to create the Customer Journey once. Train various departments to make sure they provide any feedback on the customer journey: what are the trends they are noticing that can help you improve your customer journey? Did they/you get any feedback from your customers on the surveys, testimonials requests etc? What are the trends in your industry and theirs that you can leverage? Is your Customer Journey still aligned with your business's mission? All of these questions should be constant ways for you to update your Customer Journey on a quarterly basis.

In the dynamic landscape of customer interactions, it's crucial to regularly audit and update data sources for journey mapping. Leveraging a mix of quantitative (like web analytics and transaction data) and qualitative (like customer interviews and feedback) ensures a holistic view. As an expert, I emphasize integrating real-time data and advanced analytics to capture evolving customer behaviours and preferences. This approach can uncover hidden friction points and opportunities for enhancing the customer experience, ultimately leading to higher satisfaction and loyalty.

According to a customer journey mapping report, nearly 90% of the professionals who use journey maps experience benefits, with increased customer satisfaction being the most common. So, keeping your customer journey maps fresh is crucial to maintaining the positive impact they bring. Regularly review data sources, revisit customer personas, and refresh touchpoints to ensure your map reflects current realities. This allows you to continually identify and address pain points, capitalize on opportunities, and keep your customers happy.

A high-quality Customer Journey system can rapidly elevate brand impact and achieve business goals. By meticulously considering every detail of the customer journey, breaking down departmental barriers to prevent redundancy, providing immediate access to relevant contacts or updates, and promptly addressing feedback, businesses can cultivate customer satisfaction and loyalty.

If we are talking about the Customer Lifecycle (where we map the course of our customer journey), the personas should only be updated if your product is changing, or if your sales dynamics to position it evolve to other areas. When this happens, the update is deeper on the full Customer Success strategy, as each persona has a different interest, looking for different outcomes from the relationship with your company. From one year to another, you should not change the personas that much if your product and sales dynamics do not change.

Collecting Feedbacks Regularly collect feedback from customers through surveys, interviews, and other feedback channels. Use this information to understand changing customer expectations, pain points, and preferences.

Personas do help to classify account key stakeholders in various buckets. Roles evolve, companies get more complex. From time to time, it is important to take stock of personas and tweak them

Personas should only be updated if your product is changing. What you should keep in mind is whether or not the interests/outcomes of your personas are changing based off trends (ie: for financial tools, how is the current economy impacting the interests/outcomes your different personas have?).

Updating personas is a critical step in maintaining the accuracy of customer journey maps. As customer behaviours and market dynamics evolve, personas must be refreshed to mirror the current customer base. This includes integrating new consumer data, technological trends, and societal changes that could influence customer decision-making and preferences. By regularly revisiting and refining personas, businesses can better anticipate customer needs and tailor their strategies for improved satisfaction and loyalty.

When considering the Customer Lifecycle and mapping the customer journey, updating personas is only necessary when product changes or shifts in sales dynamics occur. These updates should align with the broader Customer Success strategy, as each persona seeks distinct outcomes from the company relationship. If product and sales dynamics remain stable from year to year, minimal changes to personas are needed to ensure alignment with customer needs and expectations.

Bei der Erstellung von Personas geht man wie folgt vor: Zunächst werden Ziele und Zweck der Persona festgelegt. Dann sammelt man quantitative (z.B. demografische Daten) und qualitative Daten (Interviews, Umfragen) über die Zielgruppe. Diese Daten werden analysiert, um Gemeinsamkeiten zu identifizieren. Auf Basis dieser Erkenntnisse erstellt man ein Profil, das demografische Daten, Ziele, Herausforderungen, Verhaltensweisen und Motivationen der Persona umfasst. Wichtig ist die Validierung und regelmäßige Aktualisierung der Persona. Schließlich werden Personas in der Produktentwicklung, im Marketing und bei der Content-Erstellung gezielt eingesetzt, um die Zielgruppe besser anzusprechen.

As your product/company evolves, the stages that customers go through in their Customer Lifecycle evolve. Additionally, the emerging new technologies like #IA will be affecting the different phases as well (i.e., Adoption can be achieved faster if we automate some activities). Once we identify some enhancements in the lifecycle, they need to be applied according to your Customer Success strategy (what you want to do to make your customers achieve their outcomes). This may include timings, extra/less checks or interactions, or even considering extra phases you did not consider before.

Make sure to add new features in the Customr Journey. What are some features that should be enabled that are key to the success of your customers? As your product and company evolve, make sure the feedback you have received from your customer-facing teams is added to the Customer Journey. Don't forget to digitalise it for your low-touch customers to allow your Account Managers/Customer Success Managers to have the time to be more strategic with their accounts!

Refreshing stages and touchpoints are crucial as customer behaviours and technologies evolve. For example, the rise of mobile commerce has introduced new touchpoints, requiring updates to journey maps. During the pandemic, customers' increased preference for contactless interactions would necessitate revising touchpoints to include virtual consultations or chatbots. It's essential to continuously analyze customer feedback and behaviour data to ensure that journey maps accurately reflect the current customer experience and anticipate future changes.

One of the way is to constantly be proactive around your pain points. And make sure you are constantly looking for them on both the business and the customers' side. In order to be proactive around each of your touchpoint, you can look for: ✅ Your customer perspective and needs ✅ Your clientele’s satisfaction from the values and service they receive ✅ The inaccurate / missing information ✅ The issues you / your client may be facing ✅ Your additional sales opportunities ✅ For each touch point, your opportunities of improvement based on the above And then turn these opportunities of improvement into specific actions (i.e. improving internal processes).

Continuous Customer Feedback Integration: Gather Voice of Customer (VoC) Data: Regularly collect customer feedback through surveys, interviews, social media listening, and support tickets. Look for patterns and trends that indicate changes in customer needs, pain points, and preferred touchpoints. Incorporate Customer Journey Analytics: Leverage website analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) data, and marketing automation tools to understand customer behavior at each touchpoint. Identify areas of friction or drop-off points in the journey. Regular Reviews and Updates: Schedule Reviews: Set a regular cadence (quarterly or bi-annually) to review your customer journey maps with cross-functional teams.

Der dritte Schritt zur Aktualisierung Ihrer Customer Journey Maps besteht darin, die Phasen und Touchpoints zu überarbeiten. Phasen sind die zentralen Schritte, die Kunden auf ihrer Reise durchlaufen, wie Bewusstsein, Überlegung, Kauf, Kundenbindung und Advocacy. Touchpoints sind die konkreten Interaktionen in jeder Phase, z. B. Website-Besuche, E-Mails, Social Media oder Bewertungen. Überprüfen Sie, ob diese Phasen und Touchpoints den aktuellen Bedürfnissen und Erwartungen Ihrer Kunden entsprechen. Passen Sie sie bei Bedarf an, indem Sie neue Phasen oder Touchpoints hinzufügen oder veraltete entfernen, um eine relevante und effiziente Customer Journey zu gewährleisten.

How can we tell that our new approach is working? We need to get data of the impact of our change. Same happens when updating your Customer Journey Map. This can be done through surveys, interactions, or more precisely with Customer Health Scorecards. These dashboards usually merge data from licenses utilization, adoption, issues, risks, and even inputs from Customer Success teams. I ❤️ the way it is put in this question as "emotions", as some data points may directly come from how customers react to these updates.

In the evolution of customer journey maps, the fourth crucial step is to refine emotions and actions. Assess customer feelings like happiness, frustration, satisfaction, or disappointment at each stage, aligning them with your data sources and personas. Similarly, scrutinize customer behaviors such as searching, comparing, buying, or recommending to ensure consistency. To stay ahead, continuously update emotions and actions with fresh insights and feedback from your customers, fostering a dynamic and customer-centric approach

Emotions play a pivotal role in shaping the overall customer experience: review them against the data collected from various sources, including customer feedback, surveys, and analytics, and ensure that the emotional landscape depicted in the journey maps accurately reflects the sentiments of your target audience. Maintain consistency between emotions + actions. A seamless and logical flow between what customers feel and what they do at each stage contributes to a more realistic and reliable representation. This consistency check involves cross-referencing emotions and actions to identify any discrepancies. For instance, if a customer expresses frustration at a particular touchpoint, the corresponding actions should reflect this sentiment.

Revising emotions and actions in customer journey maps is crucial in understanding customer behaviour and sentiment at each touchpoint. However, customer emotions and actions are not static; they evolve due to various factors, such as customer preferences, market trends, or product/service improvements. Therefore, regular updates based on customer feedback and data analysis are necessary to ensure that the journey map accurately reflects the current customer experience.

Um die Customer Journey Map zu aktualisieren, sollten Sie die Emotionen und Handlungen Ihrer Kunden überarbeiten. Emotionen sind die Gefühle, die Kunden in jeder Phase der Journey und an jedem Touchpoint empfinden, wie Freude, Frustration oder Zufriedenheit. Handlungen beziehen sich auf das Verhalten der Kunden, z. B. Suchen, Vergleichen, Kaufen oder Empfehlen. Überprüfen Sie, ob diese Emotionen und Handlungen mit Ihren Personas und Datenquellen übereinstimmen. Berücksichtigen Sie neues Kundenfeedback und passen Sie die Map an, um sicherzustellen, dass sie die aktuelle Kundenrealität widerspiegelt und deren Bedürfnisse erfüllt.

Customer feedback and market insights are dynamic, evolving entities. Regularly update your customer journey maps with any new feedback or insights received from your customers. This could involve conducting additional surveys, analyzing social media sentiment, or gathering insights from customer service interactions. Integrating these fresh perspectives ensures that your journey maps stay current and accurately mirror the changing landscape of customer preferences.

During Customer Lifecycle reviews, getting data is crucial to understand if your strategy to map customer journeys is working or not. Those areas that are not working as expected are great opportunities to evolve the strategy to something that aligns better with your overall Customer Success strategy. One easy way to improve would be to see what your competitors are doing. By checking what is working or not for them you will be able to tell how to differenciate. Another good approach is to listen to what your customers are saying though feedback tools or in your interactions with them. Think that everything you put in a plan with them should help achieve their goals (with your product, of course).

Evaluating opportunities and pain points is crucial in refining customer journey maps. It's not just about identifying these areas but also prioritizing them based on their impact on customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the dynamic nature of markets necessitates regular updates to these evaluations. Leveraging data and market trends is important to staying ahead of competitors and continuously improving the customer experience.

Firstly, you need to constantly be proactive around your pain points by making sure you are constantly looking for them on both the business and the customers' side. Once you have done that, you need to update your internal processes in terms of: ✅ Enquiring process ✅ Decision process ✅ Booking process ✅ Service delivery / product purchase ✅ Issues, difficulties and complaints ✅ End of service and offboarding ✅ Follow-up post offer

Um Ihre Customer Journey Map zu aktualisieren, sollten Sie Ihre Chancen und Probleme bewerten. Chancen sind Bereiche, in denen Sie das Kundenerlebnis verbessern können, etwa durch das Schaffen von Mehrwert, das Lösen von Problemen oder das Erzeugen von Freude. Probleme sind die Schmerzpunkte, die Frustration, Unzufriedenheit oder Verwirrung bei Ihren Kunden auslösen. Analysieren und priorisieren Sie diese Bereiche und stellen Sie sicher, dass sie umsetzbar sind. Aktualisieren Sie Ihre Chancen und Probleme regelmäßig mit neuen Daten oder Trends aus dem Markt und von Mitbewerbern, um wettbewerbsfähig zu bleiben und Ihre Kunden zufriedenzustellen.

I like using the word "Joint" when creating documents with customers. This shows the true spirit of collaboration when depicting what should be the steps to take (Success Plan) and the evaluation where they are (Journey Map). As any other documentation, it should be stored in a common place, updated regularly, and communicated to external and internal stakeholders.

One of the thing you can do is bring changes to anything related to your strategies and the way you scale up. And you need to do so by making sure your customers are included in these strategies/processes: ✅ Your business goals ✅ Your terms and conditions / policies ✅ Your CRM tools / strategies ✅ The business decisions / scaled business growth When it comes to feedback, you need to make sure that you have an effective around it. For instance, asking ranking questions (from 1 to 10) with a comment section below is a great way to get genuine feedback. To increase quantity, it is also good to make the form not too long, easy to fill with no mandatory questions.

Set aside regular time to really dive into what your team and clients are saying. It's not just about spotting problems, but also about celebrating the wins. By doing this, you're not just putting out fires; you're building something that lasts. Remember, it's better to do a few things really well than a lot of things just okay. Quality is what keeps you in the game for the long haul. Cheers! Nat KoKo Keep On Keeping On

The emphasis on communication and collaboration in maintaining customer journey maps is crucial. It's not just about creating a map but actively using it as a tool for continuous improvement. This involves all stakeholders, from top management to frontline employees, as everyone shapes the customer experience. Moreover, seeking feedback from these stakeholders can provide valuable insights, as they may have different perspectives on customer interactions and pain points.

Update the Map: Based on customer feedback and data analysis, update the map to reflect changes in the customer journey. This could involve adding new touchpoints, revising pain points and emotions, or adjusting the customer's goals at each stage.

Maintaining Engagement with the Map: Keep it Accessible: Store your customer journey maps in a central location that's easily accessible to all relevant teams. Utilize collaborative tools to allow for ongoing input and updates. Promote Ongoing Use: Encourage teams to use the customer journey maps as a reference point for decision-making and identify areas for improvement in the customer experience. Train and Educate: Provide training sessions to ensure everyone understands the purpose of the customer journey map and how to use it effectively.

In my experience, I've found success in updating and maintaining customer journey maps by staying agile. Regularly engaging with customers, leveraging data analytics, and collaborating cross-functionally, we ensure our maps evolve with changing needs. This proactive approach not only enhances customer experiences but also contributes to the longevity of our client relationships.

Updating and maintaining customer journey maps is a continuous process that requires regular review and adjustments. It's crucial to remember that customer preferences and behaviors can change over time, influenced by various factors like market trends, technological advancements, or even global events. Therefore, it's essential to keep your journey maps dynamic and reflect the current state of your customer's journey. This includes regularly revisiting your data sources, personas, stages, touchpoints, emotions, actions, and opportunities.