Complete the customer journey map

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A customer journey map is an externally focused map of your customer's experience throughout a specific journey. For example, a journey might begin with a buyer realizing a need and end with the purchase of a product, with steps for every interaction and experience in between.

The process of mapping a customer journey is an act of empathy; you must put yourself in the customer’s shoes and imagine their actions and feelings along the way. This doesn’t mean that the map simply sprang from your imagination; it still needs to be based on data . What it does mean is that by the end of the journey mapping process, you should have a deeper understanding of the gaps or shortcomings in the customer experience, as well as your customers’ motivations, desires, and feelings throughout.

Learn how to plan your customer journey mapping exercises and how to use the maps when you're finished.
4. Supplementation with external data
There are also ways to learn more about your customer using data outside of your company. Contextual data in business is based on facts from a broader environment, including social media, news, events, weather, market changes, demographic changes, or geography.

You can obtain contextual data from third-party companies exploring russia's business landscape or organizations, such as market research firms or vendors. There is also a wealth of publicly available data from government sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A variety of customer-facing software can also help you collect external data.

Learn how to incorporate contextual data into your customer service program.
5. Use a voice-over (VoC) program.
According to Gartner, VoC programs “collect, aggregate, and provide the means to analyze direct feedback from surveys and interviews, indirect feedback from social media and customer interactions, and inferred data such as web analytics and behavioral data.” ( The full article is available to Gartner clients.)

According to Gartner, data sources for a VoC program may include customer complaints, customer surveys, employee feedback, company reviews, interviews, and social media, among others. With rich and varied sources of customer feedback, voice programs help companies better understand customer experiences and sentiment.

Visit the Platforms directory to learn about customer experiences and an overview of software solutions to improve Voc programs.
Bring it all together with customer service software
Many customer engagement software solutions can address any or all of the above listening approaches, from survey management and multi-channel listening to customer journey visualization.

By consolidating customer experience information into a single dashboard or CX hub, your organization can conduct more effective analysis and see a more complete picture of your customers.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at the other two pillars of customer experience: how to shape the customer experience and how to create a customer-centric culture. Then we’ll talk about how you can bring it all together to form a holistic CX strategy. Stay tuned for the rest of this series!

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