Connect Summer 2017 | Page 15

How Journey Mapping Brings Your Customer’s Experience to Life In the age of big data, businesses amass huge amounts of information on their customers, but numbers and trends tell only half the story. Customer journey mapping connects raw information to real people, helping companies visualize the entire lifecycle of their customers and illustrate how every interaction with a brand can work together to drive sales and build loyalty. EXPERTS PREDICT customer experience will exceed tradi- tional brand differentiators, like price and product, within the next three years, making it more important than ever for companies to understand how to design customer experiences around the thoughts and motives of their user segments. Encounters with your brand must capture the customer’s imagination, help navigate a problem or need, and become an ongoing part of everyday life. Collectively, those encounters should work together to deliver an experience so delightful, it compels the customer to tell others and become "raving fans." Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool that allows businesses to make value-driven changes based not on the operations or sales goals but on the customer. Much like an infographic, the journey map illustrates the steps and scenarios in which you interact with your customer and explores the motivations and obstacles for each of those engagements. Connecting the dots between segments and interactions will reveal pain points in the customer expe- rience and help uncover opportunities for improvement. Organizations that master the art of customer experience will emerge winners among their competitors, and journey mapping is a great place to start. Building Your Map Every journey map is different, and there’s no one right way to build one. To begin the process, start with colored sticky notes and a dry erase board and follow the next five steps.  RANKED BY FORBES’ 2017 “AMERICA’S 100 BEST BANKS” // CONNECT INNOVATION SUMMER 2017 // SNB.COM | 15