You may think that the phrase "customer journey" is another of those meaningless phrases dreamed up by management consultants like "in flight" or numerous others - but it isn't!

Customer journeys are simply the different touchpoints and routes between them that a customer (or prospective customer) can follow in your business - whether they are considering becoming a customer, buying from you again, making a complaint etc etc.

There are 5 stages to every customer journey:

1. Awareness - the start point. This could be when they first become aware of your business or when, as an existing customer, they want or need to do something they haven't done before.

2. Consideration - when they get the information they need to decide what to do next and how to do it.

3. Interaction - for a prospective customer this could be your sales and onboarding process. For an existing customer this could be when they want to buy from you again or to get a query resolved for example.

4. Ongoing relationship - all the different touchpoints you create to keep in touch with them, keep them engaged and happy!

5. Exit - this could be when they want to stop being a customer (how you treat them then is just as important as how you treat a prospective customer) or when they've had a complaint that has been sorted so their complaint journey is ending - what have you learned from that?

Journey mapping shows all these touchpoints as a picture - because 67% of people get information more quickly from a picture than they do from words so it's easier to see where there are issues. 

Next time I'll show an example of a customer journey map and how it can be used to identify issues that need fixing!

Watch the accompanying video here:  https://youtu.be/jweUtnTI4U8