5.2 The customer journey

Figure 1: The more touch points there are, the more complex the customer journey becomes

Customers tend to consider a product or a service several times before making a purchase, in a process that involves much back and forth along the way. For instance, if you were considering staying at the Lobster Land Hotel,  you may:

• Perform a Google search for “lobster land hotel reviews” and hotels near Lobster Land
• Watch several Youtube videos to get a feel of the rooms and facilities at various types of accommodation at or near Lobster Land
• Compare prices and distances to key attractions
• Make a booking

On the other hand, your friend who is determined to secure a Larry the Lobster-themed hotel room for his/her child may head straight towards the theme park’s official website to secure a room without doing any prior ‘homework.’ While these examples illustrate the variety of ways people approach a problem, sales and marketing people can still use frameworks to develop their general understanding of how customers react to various stimuli along the way.  

Enter the customer journey map.

Companies create this visualization to demonstrate the journey that customers go through while interacting with the brand. Figure 1 illustrates a typical process for brands involved in a B2C business. While the map depicts the journey as a 4-step process, there is no hard-and-fast rule about how many steps there are; it should be seen more as a general outline than as a literal sequence of steps. Some B2C marketers describe it as a 5-step process and attach slightly different labels to certain parts of the journey, but when you take a closer look, you will see the maps have one thing in common – all of them reflect the need to proactively engage the customer before and after the sale.