Have you mapped your customer's journey?

These days most businesses understand that they need to understand more about their customers and the customer journey. That is the path that the customer takes to find you, try your service or product, buy and hopefully return as an avid fan. Mapping out these key customer touch points can provide great opportunities for small businesses to create a competitive advantage. Try this exercise with your staff:

Draw a line on a big peace of paper. On one end put customer raving fan and on the other end put customer unaware of you. Then hand post it notes to each employee and map what they believe is the current customer path. Once this is done break into two groups. Group A can now use sticky notes to map the best possible experience at each touch point. Group B can map the points where the customer coild be upset or dissappointed. Mapping the entire customer journey gives the whole team a chance to see how to make the customer experience better.