A customer journey map is designed to help you and your company/organisation to become intimate with your customer/audience journey at all brand touchpoints so that you can weed out any pain points, create a smoother interaction for greater retention, and discover key information to help you innovate.

Square Holes routinely create customer journey maps for our clients, working with both brands and government clients like Detmold Group, HomeStart Finance, Revenue SA, Ambulance Victoria and the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to gain a deeper insight into customer experiences when engaging with their products, membership schemes and customer service portals.

Jason Dunstone, Square Holes Managing Director, says that the process of customer journey mapping has been a core part of the research that Square Holes has governed in our 18+ years.

“From understanding why people do what they do in focus groups to unearthing any pain points, information needs or where the provider is getting it wrong, to surveys measuring satisfaction across the journey – journey mapping has been key to many of our major studies over the years,” says Dunstone.

“It can help identify behaviour change opportunities or provide the insights necessary to move potential customers on from the sticky procrastination phase in a big purchase decision (e.g car or home) or reveal an innovation that makes the process easier.”

We have also covered the topic extensively through articles featured in Think! including this one by Research Analyst Dylan Jacob. In his article Dylan writes that that the customer journey map is a vital tool for businesses and organisations to refine and improve the customer experience. He adds that this is particularly pertinent given “insights from a 2021 study that found 80% of customers have switched brands because of poor customer experience and 43% were at least somewhat likely to switch brands after only a single negative customer service interaction.”

In her article on navigating the path to purchase, Linley Bertram cautions that in order to establish the critical elements of customer satisfaction, “it is important to look beyond basic customer satisfaction measures towards a more holistic customer experience journey, the pain points, moments of delight and those moments of truth that will influence shoppers along the path, and to identify and prioritise the specific areas that drive customer retention and advocacy and ultimately sales, and repeat sales.”

For Ambulance Victoria, their aim in enlisting Square Holes to build a member journey map was to end up with an output with “visual punch” that provided a holistic view of their current customer offering through the AV Membership Scheme.

Spearheaded by Mark Howard, Senior Manager, Membership Services, the research involved not only the AV Membership customer base, but also the call centre team and external stakeholders for a comprehensive and holistic bird’s eye view of the process.

“I’m fairly hands on, so having that collaborative approach to how we did the journey mapping was important to me. Getting the option of feedback from our internal stakeholders, our call centre team as well as the customer base – Square Holes offered the whole solution for us,” said Howard.

Square Holes has worked with the EPA over a number of years to connect with communities, stakeholders and staff with the focus shifting in 2022 to stakeholder consultation and customer journey, with the EPA hoping to refine their offerings and make their services more accessible to the general public.

Sally McInnes, Senior Advisor Customer Experience, EPA says that the organisation undertook the research to get a better understanding of the experiences and perspectives of the people and businesses that interact with the EPA.

“It’s benchmark data. We want to know where to focus some of our effort, because as a regulator, we are not a one size fits all operation,” says McInnes.

“The research is helping us to justify why we need to pull focus in some areas within the agency. Could we do something a little bit extra that will actually have a broader benefit externally as well as reduce that workload here?”

Want to learn more about customer journey mapping and how it can help your business/organisation? Head here.