13 Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

Updated February 3, 2023

An infographic showing a person adding a note to an empathy map on a whiteboard. The sections of the empathy map include think and feel, see, say and do, and hear, as well as sections for pains and gains.

Customer journey mapping allows companies to view the sales process from the customer perspective to find out what they're doing well and how they can improve their sales model. If you're interested in using a new strategy to review your sales process, increase customer engagement and boost sales, you may want to consider implementing customer journey mapping.

In this article, we explain the technique and share 13 benefits of using this strategy.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is a system that outlines the different stages a customer goes through to purchase a product or service. The five most common stages a customer undergoes during this process are:

Awareness: This refers to when a potential consumer becomes aware of your product for the first time through a variety of advertisements or word-of-mouth.
Search: After noticing your products, a customer searches for your business to find more information about what you can offer them.
Evaluate: Using customer testimonials, blog posts and social media, consumers decide if your product is better than other similar products and if they'd like to purchase what they need through your company.
Purchase: Finally, they decide whether to purchase from your business or to use another company's products based on their research.
Experience: After purchasing a product, businesses like customers to post reviews or refer other people to their products so that the customer journey cycle continues.

You can represent all five stages, or other similar ones, on a map that you can use as a visual representation of the buying process during various points of contact, such as social media, your website or even a phone call. It displays customers' interactions and pain points throughout the entire customer journey so that a business can get more insight into what it's doing well to gain customers and what it can do to improve.

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13 benefits of customer journey mapping

Here is a list of 13 benefits to consider when deciding if you'd like to implement customer journey mapping into your business:

1. Empathize with your customers

Using a customer journey map allows you to change perspectives and observe what the sales experience is like from the customer's viewpoint rather than from a sales perspective. You can understand their point of view more clearly and see what led them to choose your product or why they chose a different brand. Consider using this data to improve the consumer's experience in the future and adapt your sales and marketing methods as needed.

2. Get a uniform view of their journey

Sometimes departments have different information regarding a customer's experience. A customer's journey map provides all departments with uniform information about the consumer's journey with your business. This allows sales, marketing and all teams who take part in the sales process to get a clear view of the interactions a buyer has with your company and provides them with the same information, which can help them work together toward the common goal of producing more sales.

3. Identify gaps in service or communications

You can more easily detect service gaps in your current marketing and sales systems when you use a journey map. For example, you may learn that you don't have a way to instantly communicate with potential consumers on your website and that caused some to look elsewhere. This may prompt you to make changes to your website to include an instant messaging tool that allows prospects to speak with you regarding questions they may have. This small addition to your sales strategy creates an added convenience for some customers and may convince them to purchase from your company.

4. Predict customer behavior

Journey maps can predict customer behavior as they move through the different stages of the sales funnel. You can use these patterns to predict what type of prospect is more likely to convert. Knowing your audience can help you decide what you can do to further them along in the sales process. Some customers would like to speak with a representative. Others might prefer a less direct approach and appreciate newsletters or blog posts related to your products. Consider using maps to effectively predict what your customers need during their stage in the process and strive to provide those solutions.

5. Improve the customer journey

Using the map allows you to understand whether customers have a pleasant experience interacting with your business. You can determine specific aspects of your current sales process customers seem to like and what processes you can improve so that their experience is more enjoyable. Learning these insights can help you modify their journey positively and make it easier to engage with your brand.

6. Provide a visual aid for stakeholders

A visual aid, such as a customer journey map, can be helpful for conveying your current sales process to company stakeholders. You can present them using presentations, handouts or journey mapping software. Concepts, such as the customer's journey, can be much easier to interpret with a visual like the map, and stakeholders may be more willing to provide monetary means to help implement solutions to improve your current processes.

7. Remove silos from departments

An organizational silo refers to different departments within a business that operate independently and don't generally share information with one another. This inhibits departments from having all the needed knowledge to improve the customers' experience. Establishing customer journey maps allows you to see how departments work together.

For example, you may find that some prospects were more engaged when they first noticed your product, and then had less engagement when they began researching competitor brands. This shows that the marketing team and sales team could have been working together more proactively to find strategies to successfully nurture their leads in order to move them along the sales funnel. You can use journey mapping information to collaborate between teams and address the needs of the customers using the knowledge and abilities of multiple departments.

8. See the experience from the customer's perspective

It's important to understand the perspective of the customer because you can gather more insight into their emotional experience while they're going through the stages of the sales process. You can use the data to correlate how they felt during their experience and then take measures to alter key points in the journey to make it more pleasant for future consumers. For example, you can determine which visual aids on your website led to more conversions and add similar content and alter or remove the content that wasn't contributing to the satisfaction of the customers' journey.

9. Enhance your content marketing strategy

Because most customers' experiences are different depending on their interests, values and motivations, it's important to create personalized marketing content for each demographic. By mapping out the progression of each customer's journey, you can understand what marketing strategies some customers preferred over others. Based on that information, you can choose different marketing strategies for each demographic.

For example, prospective clients who enjoy using social media during their customer journey may prefer to purchase products using a data-driven visual commerce platform, which allows you to add shopping tags to pictures on different social media platforms. Users click on an image and can instantly purchase that product. In contrast, some clients may prefer to speak with a representative over the phone before deciding to purchase anything. Customer journey mapping gives you the opportunity to identify each customer's needs so you can adapt the marketing experience for each one.

10. Create a smoother experience

Another benefit of customer journey mapping is that you can locate areas where you may want more touch points. A touch point is any interaction your customer may have with your product, such as a testimonial, a review on a blog post or a paid advertisement. If you understand how customers are navigating the sales journey with the use of touch points, you may be able to determine where you can add or get rid of some to make the overall experience smoother for the consumer. Areas you may want to include more interactions with customers include nurturing emails or pay-per-click advertisements.

11. Increase customer engagement

You can use a journey map to understand the many different scenarios customers have had with your brand, including any reasons they may have had a challenging experience. For example, they might not have been able to talk to a salesperson right before a purchase, which led to them being unsure about the sale. With that information, you learn you can improve the consumer's experience with better customer service, which can increase positive customer engagement in the future. Consider using the customer journey map to find ways to increase effective engagement between your business and your consumers.

12. Attract loyal customers

If you're able to make improvements to the customer journey map, you might notice an increase in sales over time. Meeting the customers' expectations can also naturally increase customer loyalty because of their positive experiences with your company. You can continue to nurture your customer relationships, hoping to create brand loyalty after they've completed the customer sales journey by offering reward incentives to keep them interested in the brand and products.

13. Boost employee satisfaction

Companies that invest in journey mapping are more likely to use cross-functional collaboration, which is when people from different departments work together toward a common goal. Using this strategy may result in higher employee satisfaction. Various teams may obtain a better understanding of what other departments do every day and can appreciate the work each team does in order to improve the customer sales journey.