Customer journey mapping is crucial to understanding how your customers find your products and services and decide to purchase them. By plotting the customer journey, you can identify the channels they use and potential drop off points. It enables you to target them well, optimise your processes and improve their experiences.

However, it can be hard to accurately plot customer journeys. Different customers take different routes, and this can change over time. You also need to have sight of a lot of data to create accurate maps.

That’s not to mention how time consuming creating and maintaining maps can be, costing valuable marketing time.

Customer journey mapping software can make the process much easier. It’ll empower you to create efficient and accurate maps that cover all your customers, so you can focus on improving your marketing approach.

We explore customer journey mapping software in the more detail, including how it works and why it’s worth using.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is commonly done by marketing teams. It is essentially a visual representation of the different interactions a customer has until they decide to purchase from your business, and even beyond. It will cover many stages, including how they research their pain points and how they come across your brand.

By mapping out customer journeys, you will better define customer’s needs and pain points when seeking a solution to the problems you solve. It will also help you pinpoint which channels they interact with, when.

There are many purposes for doing customer journey mapping, including:

• Identify bottlenecks where customers get stuck or drop off, so you can optimise them.
• Understand your high-performing channels and touchpoints, so you can leverage them more.
• Make your team and wider organisation more familiar with the customer experience.
• Identify gaps in your marketing strategy, such as channels you are utilising that your leads use.

Customer journey mapping gives you deeper understanding of your customers’ experiences. This empowers you to improve how you target and serve prospects, leading to increased sales and loyalty.

Common challenges in customer journey mapping_

While customer journey mapping is incredibly valuable, it’s also difficult.

The main challenge is separating fact and assumption. The journey you would take isn’t necessarily the same as the ones your customers take. You need data to check that your map is accurate and factual.

If your mapping isn’t accurate, the decisions you make based on them are likely to be wrong and won’t drive the impact you need.

Another common difficulty is incorporating all potential touch points. People may require multiple steps as they move towards a purchase, and those steps may vary.

You need to cover every interaction to get full sight of the customer experience. This can result in long, complex maps.

Finally, journeys change over time and your maps need to reflect the changes. Again, data is crucial for staying on top of this and preventing your maps from becoming outdated. This will also enable you to track whether improvements have worked.

Due to these challenges, customer journey mapping takes time. It requires significant thinking power and strategising. Traditionally, teams have done it on paper, which can take many people many hours to complete.

When you add maintaining and updating your maps into this, it becomes a significant drain on marketing resource – especially if it’s not done accurately.

How customer journey mapping software helps_

Customer journey mapping software can resolve many of the challenges associated with traditional mapping. Here’s how.

Leverage real-time data_

Unlike paper mapping, customer journey mapping software can help you build live, digital journeys. You can integrate it with your channel data to get accurate journeys that reflect real-time behaviours.

It means you’ll be alerted to threats so you can take preventative action and quickly adjust your approach for increased conversions.

View the information that matters most_

With digital customer journey mapping, you can quickly scale, pivot and amend your journeys. It’s easy to update journeys, cutting down time spent on maintenance.

It also allows you to filter your journey maps to uncover the insight you need and answer internal questions.

Offer improved, personalised customer experiences_

Customer journey mapping software will enable you to easily organise journeys by segment. This means you can deliver personalised journeys, tailored to the specific behaviour associated with that segment. This will improve conversion and satisfaction rates.

You’ll also be able to identify the key areas that need improving for your different customer groups. You will then be able to continually improve the experience for optimum performance.

Make journey mapping simpler and faster_

Static customer journeys take time to prepare, which busy teams simply do not have. But customer journey mapping tools can help you to do it in minutes.

With an easy-to-use interface, you can quickly build and edit your journeys. Say goodbye to post-it notes and paper!

Share internally_

Accurate customer journeys can offer valuable insight to the whole organisation, not just marketing. However, it is often hard to reinforce the importance of the customer journey and get people to absorb long maps.

With digital software, you can easily share customer journey maps and give everyone access. They can also filter the maps to focus on relevant touchpoints and segments that support their work.

Journey mapping with Dynamics 365 Customer Insights_

When talking customer journey mapping software, there are few more powerful than Dynamics 365 Customer Insights.

Sitting under the Microsoft Dynamics 365 umbrella, the Customer Insights app gives teams access to customer data and empowers improved experience.

It connects to rest of your Microsoft tools, as well as third-party apps, to offer visibility across teams and channels. So, it’s easier than ever for your organisation to share data that strengthens your customer journeys maps.

Due to the integration of multiple data sources, you’ll also be able to get real-time data that increases the accuracy of your customer journeys. You can respond faster and watch your maps evolve over time.

You can also utilise A/B testing across your mapped journeys. Conducting A/B tests will enable you to experiment with different changes to understand what performs best. As a result, you can optimise experiences faster.

As your journeys are digital, you’ll also be able to easily highlight specific journeys. Refine by business goals or segments and you’ll see the relevant customer experiences. It’s easier to find exactly what you need, analyse deeply and take necessary action.

Finally, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is backed by Copilot, bringing AI power to your customer journey mapping software. It speeds up reporting and adaption on your customer journeys.

For example, you can leverage AI to create customer segments, with recommendations based on real-time data. Copilot can also predict future behaviours of your customers, enrich profiles and suggest messaging to improve journeys.

Getting a powerful customer journey mapping software for your team_

Understanding your customer journeys better will enable you to improve targeting, streamline marketing activity and enhance customer experiences.

However, to effectively get results, you need accurate mapping. Customer journey mapping software will allow you to achieve this with real-time data. You’ll get truthful insight and better optimise your experiences.

With its advanced integration and AI-powered capabilities, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is one of the best tools you can leverage. By using it, you’ll speed up your customer journey mapping while ensuring accuracy and valuable insight that everyone can learn from.

It also makes it easier to improve the experiences your customers receive, allowing you to drive sales, satisfaction and loyalty.

In our on-demand video series, Get to AI, we explore how the AI capabilities in Dynamics 365 can set you up for success and how to leverage them fully. Access it below.