RevOps & Customer Journey Map Templates
There’s been a lot of marketing buzz about customer journey maps especially since the pandemic has upended buying behaviors. Often I find that my clients are convinced they need to create a customized map specifically based on their use cases. If you have plenty of resources and nothing else better to do, certainly go for it. I believe there’s an easier and more efficient way to approach the process of mapping your customers’ journey through the lead generation to purchase/renewals: build on already developed templates that are available. Yes, the interweb is a beautiful thing.
The following guide is meant to help you take advantage of premade templates and morph them into something useful. While I encourage you to read this comprehensive overview for actionable nuggets, you can also easily jump to topics of particular interest.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is a client journey map?
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s make sure we have a shared definition of what a client journey map is. Basically it’s a visual representation of all the touchpoints that customers have with your company from their first contact to purchase including repeat purchases. Other than being a cool-looking graphic, the map serves to align the organization so activities are customer-centric. Said another way, it’s looking through your customer’s eyes in order to make it easier (and hopefully less frustrating) for them to interact with your brand. Typically customer journey map templates have several components: touchpoints, sentiments, pain points, and actions.
Mapping Touchpoint
Touchpoints refer to any interaction via customer-facing channels. They can range from digital interactions to face-to-face conversations, phone calls, or 1:1 emails. These interactions can be self-serve -- such as downloading info or scheduling a demo -- to actions where they have to communicate with a salesperson or company representative.
Customer Sentiments
Customer sentiments refer to indicators of satisfaction. It may be used as a source for finding issues that need to be improved or changed to increase a customer’s satisfaction with your brand and their willingness to spend more with you. Often customer journey maps represent these sentiments through emoticons. Uncovering sentiments come through customer feedback (analyzing reviews, listening to sales calls, surveys). The goal here is to make sure your map is client-oriented as it plots your product/service buying journey.
Identify Pain Points
This step is pretty self explanatory. Pain points are customer-experience problems that hinder client satisfaction and their progress to a purchase event. Useful customer journey maps must identify these pain points in order to improve (and hopefully eradicate) them. Website heat mapping and visitor recordings, UX testing etc are all ways to gain insight on where pain lurks. Customer surveys may also be helpful, but sometimes client feedback can have user bias (e.g., really annoyed prospects drop off a call before completing a 1-minute feedback survey). Ultimately you want to gather accurate information that provides actionable insight. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Action
Great, you’ve gathered a bunch of info and mapped it out. Now what? It’s time to put that info into action so it actually improves customer experience, encourages operational efficiency, and drives revenue. Your action plan will depend on your organization’s size, operational structure, and appetite for change. Your customer journey map will serve as a visual guide, helping with internal conversations that align teams and departments. If you have nay-sayers in your organization about using your map, I suspect you have other pressing issues to resolve.
Why It Matters
Not to belabor the point, yet there are many reasons why creating and using a customer journey map makes good business sense. Mapping helps:
Everyone in the organization visualize the business through your customers’ perspective
Point out organizational misalignment and instances when you’re literally fighting with yourself
Uncover customer pathway(s) and roadblocks so they can be fixed, which then impacts win rates, retention rates, customer satisfaction rates
Builds more organizational empathy for the customer and for each other
Accelerate growth, improve profitability and create sustainability
Note: when I say “customer” you can also interpret that as prospective customers. Mapping can also help identify new market opportunities within your client base or find new ones.
Types of Maps
Obviously there’s no one-that-fits all customer journey map template. In the spirit of not reinventing the wheel, I think Hubspot has done a good job of defining the four major types of customer journey maps:
Current State: pretty self-explanatory by the name. This map details the current user experience as it is. Warts and all, it’s an accurate visualization of current customer interactions.
Day in a Life: again, the name pretty much says it all.This map provides a wider lens into your customers, their pain points, and addressing unmet needs.
Future State: This map type illustrates your vision and sets clear strategic goals. Using this type makes sense for start-ups or organizations that need comprehensive and fundamental retooling.
Service Blueprint: Using one of the above three map types, you overlay factors responsible for delivering customer experience (people, technology, processes, policies). If you’re not sure of the root causes for roadblocks and inefficiencies, this blueprint can help you identify the steps to attain your desired journey and outcomes.
How to Create A Customer Journey Map
There are a bunch of guides out there that go into step-by-step detail on how to create a customized customer journey map. If you’re anything like me, I shy away from too much theory and want to focus on stuff that works. The following is my take on steps you should have in place before choosing a ready-made template that you’ll modify.
1. Intention
“It’s easy to confuse ‘what is’ with ‘what ought to be,’ especially when ‘what is’ has worked out in your favor.” ~ Tyrion Lannister
Be clear as to what your intentions are. Are you ready to collect and analyze real data that may be contrary to popular opinion in your organization? If not, find a “close enough” customer map and call it a day. Otherwise, I suggest getting buy-in from leadership and solidifying a sponsor who will support you in the journey in mapping your journey. Huh, that’s a bit meta.
2. Use personas (or create them)
It's important to know your customers and what they want from you. Yet it takes more than just asking them. Find out how they feel doing business with your organization company by having direct conversations about their experience of working together. Look for potential issues or problems that may have been overlooked during research time (i.e., sales process, customer success, billing renewals).
User Interviews, an organization that’s collected 144 customer journey map templates, recommends creating an empathy map. If you need a refresher on empathy mapping like I did, the global research-based company Nielsen Norman Group has a great primer on how to translate and categorize qualitative research.
Tap your customer success team as they will have a wealth of customer-related intel. They can help bridge the gaps between what clients need and how your organization interacts and operates.
3. Identify all (and potential) touchpoints
Most likely there are three types of customer touchpoints: before, during, and after they buy from you. These moments can happen offline or online. They can begin with a marketing-related interaction (e.g., an ad, organic search listing, an article, a social share, automated chatbot message) or via a direct interaction (e.g., store visit, phone call, live chat session). Note all the possible entry and exit points as well as everything in between.
4. Choose elements your map will highlight
Remember your customer journey map will be an internal communication tool. Choose the elements you want to highlight so it’s useful in strategy sessions and problem-solving discussions. For research-heavy organizations, the map can quickly get complex that requires unnecessary mental gymnastics. As with most things, it’s best to start with a simple framework and build from there. Here are some ideas:
Information needs from awareness, general information gathering, benefits & feature comparisons, purchase and renewal processes
Persona thoughts and feelings, customer actions, touchpoints, scenarios, proposed changes
Typical time horizons, customer visible touchpoints and behind-the-scene processes (e.g., technologies, departmental routing/exchange)
Essentially you want to choose a map style that helps visualize the individual components as well as the big picture. Ask questions like "what does this tell me about how people interact with my brand? My product/service?" Add a section to chronicle what needs improvement. Solicit cross-functional feedback so all groups have the opportunity to provide input. The more buy-in the less resistance you’ll have to work through when it comes time to clear those roadblocks and reimagine internal processes.
5. Go on the customer journey yourself
Lastly, follow the actual journey and record the outcomes. Fill out forms. Call into your call center. Schedule a demo. Use the chatbot. Often there are obvious (and easy fixes) that go unnoticed.
6. Resources, Changes & Updates
Now that you’re armed with customer research and data, internal process feedback, and other building blocks to retool your customer journey, it’s time to get to work. Like any initiative you’ll need to make sure you have the right people/teams in place. At this point, I highly recommend you have someone who understands RevOps to lead the project. Bear with me, this isn’t a shameless plug for my RevOps services. If you’ve reached the point of paralysis of analysis and are unable to move forward, it’s time for some professional help. I can help you pare down your choices and build momentum.
A RevOps framework aligns all organizational functions -- marketing, sales, customer success, and finance. When fixing your customer journey, you need that perspective and expertise. Otherwise you risk flailing about.
One final point for this step: your journey will change and evolve. Competitive landscapes get disrupted. New markets emerge. Acts of God are unleashed (our current plague, erupting volcanoes, insert latest natural disaster du jour here). Creating a customer journey map shouldn’t be a create-it-and-forget endeavor. Like many strategic business elements, it lives and breathes.
Premade Customer Journey Templates
As I mentioned earlier, User Interviews has a comprehensive guide about journey mapping. They have fifteen pre-made maps available for download. Hubspot also has free, editable map templates. My advice is to choose one that best matches the elements you want to highlight and revise it. You can also scan the others for additional ideas and methodologies. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out process. Just get going.
Here are some maps that can provide inspiration.
RevOps & Journey Mapping
Since you’re going to be critically evaluating and modifying your organization’s processes from your customers’ point of view, this is an opportune time to overlay a RevOps framework. Here’s the even better news. RevOps strategies provide structure to:
Efficiently coordinate marketing channels, assets, and campaigns to drive highly qualified leads into a replicable funnel
Seamlessly pass hot leads to Sales while reducing duplicative and unnecessary paperwork to close deals faster and more profitably
Continuously improve customer experience and success by reducing implementation friction and eliminating renewal risks
What’s not to love?
If you’re not looking to grow revenue, by all means embark on retooling your processes without RevOps. Oh, you ARE looking to grow your topline and bottomline. Well, then… adding Quote-to-Cash to the equation makes absolute sense.
If you’re not familiar with the term, quote-to-cash or CPQ (configure, price and quote) is a process that encompasses the entire customer journey from the initial request for a price quote through to the cash received from the buyer. The goal of CPQ is to improve customer satisfaction and increase cash flow by reducing the time it takes to turn quotes into sales and then a payment.
Proof that RevOps, Mapping & CPQ Works
Alternative Partners has been in the RevOps space for years. We’ve helped companies solve problems with overlapping technology, messy process workarounds, and spotty company-wide metrics. Here’s one real-life example where Hustle, a tech-based messaging platform, curbed expenses and realized sustainable revenue growth.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. We can help you plan for growth now.