Mastering Customer Journey Mapping: Strategies for Modern Retailers

The ways in which shoppers engage with brands today is endlessly nuanced and dynamic. Research by Upland BlueVenn reveals that the average consumer today engages with brands through 20 different online and offline channels, including in-store visits, mobile browsers, social media, radio, and television. But while it’s well documented that consumers are more empowered than ever before, how can retailers keep up?

Customer journey mapping is imperative. We need to deeply understand how people are engaging with products and services before, during and after purchase. It’s important to understand the most common pathways in order to prioritize efforts; to quantify the tensions and triggers that consumers may feel along their journeys; and to ensure that insights lead to ongoing impact.

Analyzing Pathways and Interactions

Many retailers may have existing customer journey mapping programs in place, but they may not be well-suited to today’s ever-changing consumer landscape. Research methods can be static or point-in-time; or use episodic, ad hoc projects to patch together learnings. This leads to silos and gaps in understanding. Traditional online surveys still dominate, yet these aren't completed during the key moments of the journey and often fail to communicate emotional drivers and other critical data points.

Given today’s advancements in mobile technology, these issues are avoidable. To be more effective, customer journey mapping research needs to engage people where they are, using approaches that make sense in their everyday lives. And, for the majority of people, mobile phone-based chat is a highly familiar part of their day. In fact, an estimated 3.09 billion mobile phone users used messaging apps to communicate in 2021, and this number is expected to grow to 3.51 billion users in 2025. Tapping into this medium and common interactions to gather data using a mobile chat-based, conversational research methodology can help us connect with people more naturally while they're in the purchase journey. In-the-moment messaging notifications, again something which people are used to receiving, can help to offer a frictionless experience which lends itself to iterative, ongoing learning.

The data is surprisingly robust. A conversational research approach can blend qualitative, quantitative, video, and artificial intelligence to capture emotional and contextual insights efficiently — all in a chat-powered ecosystem. The insights shed light on all the dimensions involved in the path to purchase, revealing behaviors, emotions and context in one consumer touchpoint.

With all that said, let’s consider the four key pillars to an effective customer journey mapping program, no matter your industry or category:

1. Identify key drivers.

Understanding why people are entering this journey to begin with is foundational for effective customer journey research. What's the underlying driver? What was the initial need or catalyst for entering the journey? Being mindful of the complexity of this stage is critical, and it' important to have an intentional blend of methodologies, such as quantitative, qualitative and observational. By layering these approaches, you can better identify the size of the need, as well as understand the emotions and context driving that need: emotions that can be identified by the type of inputs in a chat and video interface such as tone, volume, speed of speaking, and even facial signals, just to name a few. The right mobile chat-based research platform can capture this robust data so researchers can hear directly from consumers, putting a face to the data to show their particular need or where they are — e.g., in a retail location, at home or having just experienced a life-changing event. Our research-on-research has found that with a video selfie vs. a traditional laptop or desktop-based open end question, we can capture seven times the content, driving much greater depth and richness. With mobile chat-based technology, people tend to open up because they’re participating in a fun interface where they share their authentic feelings. It’s a powerful way to understand the emotions and the context for entering the purchase journey.

2. Understand common pathways to prioritize efforts.

When identifying the most common consideration pathways, you can prioritize efforts to reach consumers at critical points. Retailers need to streamline the entire process with a focus on enabling shoppers to find the right information that will ultimately help to drive conversion. Examining the path to purchase in this way allows companies to understand customer behaviors and preferences at different stages. A key goal is to quantify and prioritize consumer interactions and touchpoints — the ones that are most important along the journey. In-the-moment text messaging notifications can be used in a frictionless way to trigger research exercises at every stage for iterative, ongoing learning and to leverage System 1 thinking (fast, automatic, and intuitive) and behavioral science philosophies. Consider a mixture of quantitative surveys, qualitative exercises, video selfies, passive digital behavioral tracking and even screen recordings to really get under the hood of what’s going on. Engaging with shoppers while they’re out and about empowers us with a full picture of what’s happening, arming brand and retail teams with invaluable data.

3. Identify tensions and pain points to improve the experience.

Triggers and potential blockers on the path to purchase may be subtle but, by quantifying these, action plans can be developed to alleviate specific pain points and improve the overall consumer experience and the factors that influence decision-making. For example, when working to optimize the e-commerce consumer journey for a CPG leader, specifically eliminating tensions around finding the right products, assembling the shopping basket, and ultimately converting to purchase, we looked at different points throughout the journey. Using screen share and video recording enabled the identification of key blockers when using a specific retailer’s mobile app. When these findings were brought to the attention of the retailer, changes were made which resulted in a 20 percent increase in sales within six months. Clearly, alleviating tensions and triggers along the journey can drive tangible business results at speed. Therefore, one of the key goals is to identify these and to develop specific actions and tactics to alleviate these pain points and move consumers along the journey more seamlessly.

4. Ensure actionable deliverables.

It’s important to ensure activation of insights and to measure the ongoing impact. Effective communication of the results of a journey mapping program in different ways for different functional teams within an organization  is too often forgotten. Innovation teams likely have different insights needs than user experience teams, just as brand managers have different needs than the C-suite. Tailoring for each audience is critical. Think about creating a suite of deliverables that are custom-designed for specific stakeholders based on objectives and business questions to be answered. For instance, sharing video feedback from respondents can help to humanize the journey, including identifying tensions and triggers. Sharing insights is perhaps the most important aspect of customer journey mapping; it must lead to actionable deliverables that inspire teams to take action.

Lastly, a word of warning: to create a comprehensive journey mapping program, we need to think beyond the purchase and consider the entire journey, including post-purchase behaviors such as word-of-mouth and online reviews. The work is never done, but engaging and re-engaging your audience via a recognizable medium like mobile chat can help you build authentic, ongoing understanding.

Matt Kleinschmit is founder and CEO of Reach3 Insights, a full-service market research consultancy that develops scalable, conversational insight solutions for global brands.