While discussing upcoming customer touch point projects (such as email marketing or off-site remarketing), the need to have an overview of how those touch points relate to each other became clear. There wasn't a common language between the different departments for where in the customer journey each project belonged. There wasn't an overview of what areas of the customer journey were over- or under-saturated. There wasn't a high-level understanding of the steps our ecommerce customers took on their way to checkout.
Because we were an ecommerce site (Altrec.com), our customer journey discussions usually focused on the shopping process.
... but equally important was the process of ideation - the initial spark that got the process started...
... and searching
The first step was to assign our current touchpoints to one of the three sections of the loop. Often a particular point could easily fit within more than one section, but precision is not as important as the overview. In addition, a touchpoint could happen off-site, or even completely off-line.
As a marketing manager, I want a better way to visualize the customer journey, because I need to make sure I have all my connnection points covered
Ideation is the spark that starts the search for a new item to buy. It could be a recommendation from a friend or that guy on the corner spinning a SALE! sign.
Searching is making the effort to find the one item you're focused on, reaching out for recommendations from friends, comparing prices, or just browsing through a rack.
Shopping is the equivalent of pushing the old-school cart around the store and getting through checkout. You know what you want and you're gathering it together.
The next step was to create a series of project templates to build consistency and to help the different departments to reinforce the focus on the customer lifecycle.
To fully complete the implementation of the Customer Journey loop, we need to review and update our customer touch points to include elements of all 3 phases:
