Customer journey mapping is becoming (thankfully!) more and more common in B2C environments, as companies seek to understand the gaps, blockages, and processes that customers go through when navigating a website, seeking customer support, or purchasing in a store. However, in B2B environments, customer journey mapping is not nearly as common.
Which is interesting.
Because in business environments, there are multiple decision makers involved in the buying experience, layers to navigate, and complex steps that need to be taken before the sale.
Sounds ripe for a customer journey map, doesn’t it?
What does customer journey mapping in B2B uncover?
In B2B environments, customer journey mapping accomplishes multiple tasks that help swing the gates open for a sale. You’ll learn more about your B2B customers, which ultimately, helps you fill their needs with your products and solutions. Our customer journey mapping process in B2B is a multiple-step process: We conduct journey mapping with your internal teams, and then we speak to your customers and prospects and go through the journey mapping process with them. By taking the two-pronged approach, we’re able to have fuller visibility into your own organization, so that we can uncover new areas for growth and help you reach customers better. When we then tie in the customers’ journey, you’ll have a 360-degree view of your B2B selling process.
To break it down even further, customer journey mapping in B2B:
Gives you visibility to the customer experience: Customer journey mapping in B2B gives you a way to understand the “current” and “ideal” experiences your customers encounter when working with your company. Additionally, it gives your customer listening programs valuable intel to help ensure you are measuring and capturing key touchpoints in their experience.
Illuminates the most critical interactions: Customer journey mapping in B2B involves a process that pinpoints the path you go through when working with customers, and it identifies defining moments and best practices, which you can then use broadly across all customer interactions.
Gives your brand a personalized touch: During the customer journey mapping process, you’ll get firsthand knowledge about what your customers and employees think about your brand. Their perspective will add life to your branding, and help you identify what you’re really good at, which translates to how you communicate value.
Is a great tool for educating and training employees: In customer journey mapping for B2B environments, the first (and a crucial) component is going through the mapping process with your own employees. Through this process, you’ll gain a better understanding about how your onboarding and training process works in practice, which will help you define where and how you can make improvements.
Provides internal clarity: When your staff goes through the customer journey process, you’ll see silos break down. As we work with employees, going through questions and themes, we uncover how departments work, and employees gain a deeper understanding about their roles, and how their job affects not only the customer, but others in the organization. By going through the mapping process, everyone will have better visibility to customer pain points, and have a more complete view of other departments and their role in working with customers.
What have you got to lose?
Customers today in B2B buying environments expect a lot from the companies they purchase from. Their needs are complex, and they don’t want a one-size-fits-all approach. If you take the time to go through a customer journey mapping process with your B2B customers, you’ll have more clarity and visibility, which ultimately helps you serve them better, and it gives you a competitive edge. In fact, what you’ll learn from the customer journey mapping process is far more insightful than anything you’ll gain from your CRM.
