Every touchpoint you have with a customer is an opportunity for true engagement or a potential misstep. Mapping each interaction together into a holistic customer journey will shine a light on where a business is succeeding and where the critical areas of improvement are.

Customer journey mapping has been around for the better part of a decade and has really taken hold in recent years as companies have become more intentional about how they're interacting with their customers. Call it user- or human-centered design; however you think of it, there's a trend in putting your customer (or user) at the center of the conversation of how you should interact with them.

There are ostensibly two sides to customer journey mapping. The first is architecting and designing what the optimal journey through a website, mobile app, ecommerce experience should be. The second is getting a holistic view into how users are interacting with your brand now. GRAYBOX believes getting insight into the second is critical in being able to create a great experience in the future.

For GRAYBOX, a customer journey map is something tangible: a visual map organized by phases of the buying journey that includes individual touch points across channels, what's working/not working for each touchpoint, direct customer insights, and granular recommendations for improvement.

Getting at that customer journey is easier said than done. Conversations with our client-partners typically start with, "we've been trying to get at this for awhile; what are we missing?" It comes down to a combination of listening, interactive workshopping, and process. GRAYBOX facilitates the entire thing.

It starts with getting people together and oftentimes groups who aren't normally in the same room: branding, marketing, ecommerce, finance, customer support, etc. Everyone lives in silos in their day-to-day work environment and just having everyone in the same room sets the stage for potential success.

Then comes the fun part: GRAYBOX guides companies through a series of structured exercises to get insight into who your customers are, what the general phases of the buying journey are, and identification of as many individual touch points in each phase of the journey. This is a collaborative process that involves thousands of sticky notes, a lot of active movement, and lively discussion across everyone in the room. At the end of the day, everyone is exhausted and a rough outline of the map starts to form.

What follows is targeted discussions with customer service reps or direct interviews with customers to be able to add context and color commentary on key areas of the customer journey, in parallel with sketches that translate the sticky notes to something more visual.

As we gather more information, the fidelity of the final journey map increases and our team starts layering in specific recommendations that help prioritize and categorize efforts that best-align with your goals and what will have the most significant impact for your users. The end result presents a visual landscape that can be the core of strategic planning for years to come, as well as a rallying cry across your teams.