In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, many companies still use traditional linear customer journey maps as their guiding light for understanding and optimizing customer experiences. But customers and their journeys are rarely so straightforward and, in a world of more and more individualized customer experiences, these traditional journey maps can lead businesses to make the wrong decisions.
The Myth of the Linear Journey
For years, businesses have relied on linear customer journey maps, often depicting a straightforward path from awareness to purchase and loyalty. However, recent research and my own real-world experiences find that this approach is increasingly out of touch with how customers actually interact with brands.
According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, consumers now use, on average, eight different channels to engage with companies. This multi-channel behaviour often results in non-linear, unpredictable journeys that traditional maps struggle to capture.
The Reality of Non-Linear Experiences
Today’s customers don’t follow a predictable, linear path. They jump between channels, devices, and touchpoints in ways that can seem chaotic from the outside. They often hit one touchpoint, skip another, jump back, and move around in a more cyclical, messy way that, while intrinsically human, doesn’t map well to a traditional linear journey. This complexity is made even worse by the fact that customer expectations are constantly evolving, meaning those touchpoints they’re jumping around to and the channels they’re coming from are rarely set in stone.
Another concern around traditional journey maps is that they are written from the perspective of the business rather than from the customer. In fact, McKinsey research found that customer journeys are significantly more strongly correlated with business outcomes than are touchpoints. Given so many businesses are trying to be customer-focused and putting the customer first, this approach isn’t an accurate reflection of what the customers experience in their journeys.
The High Cost of Outdated Journey Maps
Relying on obsolete journey maps can have serious consequences:
- Missed Opportunities: By focusing on a predetermined path, companies may overlook critical moments of truth or emerging channels where customers actually need support.
- Resource Misallocation: Investing in optimizing touchpoints that may not be as crucial as they once were can lead to wasted resources.
- Decreased Loyalty: Failing to address the actual pain points in a customer’s non-linear journey can lead to increased effort and frustration, which directly impacts loyalty.
The Salesforce report reveals that 80% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. So if your journey map doesn’t accurately reflect the experience the customers are going through, how can you expect to deliver the experience they want?
Embracing Dynamic, Adaptive Approaches
So, how can businesses move beyond static journey maps and truly understand their customers’ experiences? Here are three strategies to consider:
- Adopt Real-Time Journey Analytics: Instead of relying on static maps, use journey analytics tools to capture and analyze customer behaviour across channels in real-time. This approach can help identify patterns and predict needs, allowing for more proactive and personalized experiences.
- Focus on Customer Intent: Rather than mapping predefined steps, organize your understanding around customer goals and intents. This approach allows for more flexibility in how those intents are fulfilled.
- Implement Agile Journey Mapping: Develop a flexible framework that can be quickly updated based on new data and changing customer behaviours. This might involve creating multiple, persona-specific maps that are regularly reviewed and revised.
Research from Forrester supports this need for agility, emphasizing that customer journey mapping needs to be an ongoing process that will evolve with your business, just as your customers evolve continuously. Businesses who adopt a journey-centric approach can realise revenue increases of 10% to 20%, cost reductions of between 15% and 25%, and 20- to 40-percentage-point improvements in customer advocacy as a result.
The Power of Emotion in Journey Mapping
Unsurprisingly, research shows that emotion is the strongest driver of customer loyalty across industries. What is surprising though is that many traditional journey maps often focus solely on functional steps and engagements, neglecting the emotional aspect of the customer experience. From my own experience speaking to customers, whenever they show strong emotions, either in their voice or body language, it is always an indicator to pry a little deeper and understand more as clearly that experience resonated with them in a way that they felt more strongly about. These emotion points are often where some of the most valuable insights can come from.
In her article on mapping emotion in the customer journey, Alex Allwood argues that “Customer experiences are inherently human. Experiences are how we feel and what we remember; they are the key moments in our lives and the basis for the stories we share”.
By incorporating emotional mapping into your journey analysis and identifying the feelings and motivations that drive customer behaviour at each stage of their journey, you’re able to create a more holistic and human-centric customer experience. This lets you remove barriers and challenges that result in negative emotions and introduce elements and efficiencies that leave your customers with more positive emotions.
The Path Forward
As CX professionals, it’s time to challenge our assumptions about customer journeys. Instead of trying to force customers into a predefined path that suits our business needs, we need to embrace the complexity and dynamism of real-world customer experiences and adapt our business around it.
This means:
- Continuously gathering and analyzing data from all touchpoints
- Being prepared to rapidly adapt to changing customer behaviours and preferences
- Focusing on understanding and addressing customer emotions throughout the journey
- Designing flexible experiences that accommodate various paths to customer goals
Forrester emphasizes the importance of understanding the emotional makeup of journeys, including the baseline emotion customers arrive with, the emotional arc of the journey, and the “punch” – the story customers tell themselves about their experience.
By adopting these approaches, businesses can move beyond obsolete linear journey maps and create truly customer-centric experiences that drive loyalty and business success. The future of customer experience lies in understanding and adapting to the non-linear, emotionally-driven journeys that customers actually take. As we’ve seen, this shift can lead to significant improvements in revenue, cost reduction, and customer advocacy. The question now is: Are you ready to rethink your approach to customer journey mapping? The future of your customer relationships – and your business – may depend on it.