Data can only get you so far: true customer journey mapping means asking ‘why?’

This makes mapping complicated. Understanding why users behave as they do has become more complex too. However, it remains essential for brands to understand where their own strengths are, where users are most engaged, and when each potential touchpoint should be brought in to help your users in their journey – to support them and to drive conversion-based actions.

The problem of fragmented journey data

From digital interactions to physical stores and customer service interactions, each customer ‘touchpoint’ provides valuable data and insights. Not having a holistic view on touchpoints risks missing pivotal understanding into users’ behavior and requirements, leaving a gap which could either be a strength to double down on or a weakness to combat. These varying touchpoints often operate in silos, making it hard to create a cohesive view of the customer journey.

To do this, brands need to harness integrated data and analytics to tie these clear data points/events across all relevant areas. This is well-documented, and it opens the door to more meaningful techniques in machine learning and predictive modeling.

However, these data points often only give you one side of a coin. Knowing why users choose to call customer services, leave your site or just act the way they do is just as vital to making a journey meaningful. The opportunity is in a unified data approach that combines touchpoints and context, creating building blocks for seamless customer experiences.

Investing in the how and why

When looking just at the data you miss opportunities. Every brand can look at similarly structured data from similar touchpoints, albeit contextualized to your users. Touchpoint data used to be ‘special’ enough to differentiate yourself, and not to downplay its vital importance today, but alone it is not special. To paraphrase a quote from The Incredibles, “If everyone is special, then no one is”.

What is often missed is applying context (through investing sufficient resources) to ask fundamental questions around how and why users do what they do. In the “data everywhere” era, we’ve stopped daring to answer simple questions through dialogue with consumers. Through asking more questions during the mapping process you will start to branch out and find opportunities that truly make your journey unique. And unique is special.

Here's an example that shows an understanding of context and why a journey is the way it is. It includes a feature that subtly looks to persuade users to act differently, empathizing with and embracing user behavior but encouraging a return for purchase (i.e. conversion action). It’s from AO.com, and uses the brand’s analytics data showcasing what is happening. Users come in via x channel, perform y number of product searches, make z product description page (PDP) visits, and then leave. Data mapping can then tie that data into return visits.

That data mapping helped the brand to understand why. In the example of people leaving the product detail page, why people leave can be learned through moderated studies/interviews, session recordings and heatmaps - none of which are needlessly expensive in today's saturated insights market. For AO and others, the answer is led by users' price researching. A common occurrence.

After mapping this and understanding where in a journey users take this action, the brand looked to support users’ journeys through serving an overlay when selecting the model name/number in the header; “We price match,” it says. The brand understands why users are leaving the page and how to combat this behavior to a more favorable outcome.

Through understanding why the journey is happening, not just what is happening, you can have a direct to sales engagement and a measurement opportunity for countless users that have this behavior. Not to mention a finger on the pulse of market pricing.

Like with most things, data will get you a long way. But ask questions, engage with your customers and build something unique that supports a meaningful journey.