What makes a good customer journey?

Mi­cha­el Ruet­ti | 13. Octo­ber 2022 | 5 min read­ing time

User First - this is the prin­ciple we work by at Crafft. This is why a suc­cess­ful cus­tom­er jour­ney is cru­cial for us.

Cus­tom­er Jour­ney - ever heard of it, but ac­tu­ally have no idea what it means? Put a map in front of you. On it, draw a start and an end point, then map out the route, mark pos­sible hurdles and bot­tle­necks, and then men­tally pre­pare your­self for this jour­ney. We do something sim­il­ar at Crafft when we plan a cus­tom­er jour­ney.

Every in­ter­ac­tion, every touch­point, every ele­ment that presents it­self to a cus­tom­er is an im­port­ant mo­ment in the cus­tom­er jour­ney. From the first en­counter, the de­cision to use a par­tic­u­lar ser­vice, to nav­ig­at­ing the web­site, to fol­low through with the ser­vice in­clud­ing de­liv­ery and on to the post-pur­chase ev­al­u­ation. When we plan a cus­tom­er jour­ney, we il­lus­trate this jour­ney as pre­cisely as pos­sible and di­vide it in­to in­di­vidu­al sec­tions. In this way, we can de­term­ine an­swers to some of the typ­ic­al ques­tions: How does the cus­tom­er pro­ceed?, how is the cus­tom­er think­ing?, what ex­per­i­en­ce does she have while claim­ing a ser­vice or buy­ing a product? And where does she pos­sibly stumble?

Why is a cus­tom­er jour­ney so im­port­ant? 

You are prob­ably fa­mil­i­ar with this scen­ario: You call cus­tom­er ser­vice and feel like you've been on hold for 100 years. This is an­noy­ing and a neg­at­ive user ex­per­i­en­ce. Wheth­er a web­site crashes or con­tact de­tails are nowhere to be found, it can quickly lead to the per­son re­ject­ing the com­pany and nev­er re­turn­ing.

A cus­tom­er jour­ney is there­fore an ef­fect­ive ana­lys­is tool that al­lows us to un­der­stand the cus­tom­er's per­spect­ive. By look­ing in­to the minds of users, we can tail­or plat­forms, products and ser­vices to them. User first! The goal: The jour­ney should be as pleas­ing and smooth as pos­sible, so that the user as­so­ci­ates fond memor­ies when she thinks of the brand. 

4 steps

1. Know and un­der­stand the user

The first step is to define who the user is, that is, whose ex­per­i­en­ce is be­ing fo­cused on. It's about a fic­tion­al per­son who rep­res­ents a spe­cif­ic tar­get group or seg­ment. Through data, ana­lyt­ics and dir­ect con­tact, we build as ac­cur­ate a pic­ture of the cus­tom­er as pos­sible. We rely here on the per­so­nas we have defined. 

2. De­fin­ing the touch­points

What touch­points does the user have with the com­pany and what chan­nels are used to com­mu­nic­ate? Email, sup­port ser­vice, so­cial me­dia? What in­ter­ac­tions and ex­per­i­en­ces are cap­tured in the map­ping? The cus­tom­er jour­ney should fo­cus primar­ily on mo­ments that are crit­ic­al to the busi­ness suc­cess of the par­tic­u­lar ser­vice while aid­ing cus­tom­er re­ten­tion. For ex­ample, the ini­tial con­tact, the pay­ment pro­cess, the de­liv­ery, and the re­fund re­quest. Whatever  in­ter­faces should be par­tic­u­larly high­lighted will be de­cided on a case-by-case basis and with­in the team.

3. Map­ping the cus­tom­er jour­ney 

This is where the meta­phor­ic­al map takes play out. An ef­fect­ive means of cus­tom­er jour­ney map­ping is to draw a story­board or lay out the steps in the form of post-its. Each step the user takes should be out­lined in as much de­tail as pos­sible. A sketch of each step helps to visu­al­ize and think through the cor­res­pond­ing situ­ation and un­cov­er any prob­lem­at­ic se­quences. It is im­port­ant to ask: What is the cus­tom­er's goal in each step? and what needs must be met? 

4. De­rive meas­ures based on pain and gain points

Once the map­ping is com­plete, the in­di­vidu­al touch­points are ana­lyzed. Pain and gain points can then be defined: where in the jour­ney does the user have prob­lems?, and where can the com­pany score points with the cus­tom­er? We can hereby define key mo­ments and design cor­rect­ive meas­ures or ad­di­tion­al in­cent­ives that may be needed. The fi­nal step is to write an ac­tion plan. This re­quires list­ing which fea­tures and con­tent ele­ments will be in­cor­por­ated when and how. Ideally, these are later tested and veri­fied in user test­ing.

Be­low are a few ex­amples of how we have used cus­tom­er jour­neys in prac­tice: 
 

Crafft Case 1: Kun­sthaus

Crafft was com­mi­s­ioned to im­ple­ment an on­line tick­et store for the Kun­sthaus Zürich. The main idea was that the cus­tom­er should be led through a tun­nel - without ob­struc­tions or dif­fi­culties - to­ward the com­ple­tion of the de­sired pur­chase. By cov­er­ing all pos­sible am­bi­gu­it­ies in ad­vance with tool­tips or mes­sage boxes, the user was to be guided away from can­cel­ing the pur­chase pre­ma­turely. As a rule, cus­tom­ers want to re­veal as little as pos­sible about them­selves. However if the re­quired in­form­a­tion for the pur­chase is not suf­fi­cient, a mes­sage box ap­pears. The mes­sage boxes ex­plains, for ex­ample, why the in­form­a­tion is ne­ces­sary. 
 

Wherever ques­tions may arise dur­ing the pro­cess, a tool­tip was provided. In this way, the user learns where and un­der what con­di­tions she can gain ac­cess to ex­hib­i­tions. The tool­tips can be con­sul­ted vol­un­tar­ily.

The user in­ter­face of the tick­et store is geared to­wards the ef­fi­cient com­ple­tion of sales. Tool­tips and mes­sage boxes are used to guide the cus­tom­er along the pur­chase jour­ney. 
 

Crafft Case 2: Sensiri­on

Crafft was com­mis­sioned to de­ve­loped a web­site for Sensiri­on, which, as the name sug­gests, spe­cial­izes in sensors. Here, too, we re­lied on user jour­neys. Our goal was to sim­pli­fy the product se­lec­tion for the en­gin­eers who work with the sensors. En­gin­eers are Sensiri­on's main cus­tom­er group, they of­ten have very spe­cif­ic needs in mind. With this back­ground know­ledge, we cre­ated a struc­tur­al concept of the func­tions and con­tent of the web­site pages. With the help of user test­ing, we were able to veri­fy these user jour­neys at Sensiri­on. How? We cre­ated a click dummy (based on the struc­tur­al concept) and tested the pages with the en­gin­eers as test users. Our find­ings were then used to fur­ther im­prove the struc­ture and con­tent or­gan­isa­tion of the web­site.

For Sensiri­on, we also worked with the pain and gain points men­tioned above. From these, we de­rived con­crete fea­tures and con­tent ele­ments for the web­site: For the pain point, we fo­cused on op­tim­iz­ing the product data­base, where­as for the gain points, we en­abled dir­ect links to the de­ve­loper plat­form Git­Hub.