Customer Experience Mapping

Table of Contents

• Introduction to CX mapping

  • What’s a customer journey?

  • Why create customer journeys?

  • Seven stages in the journey

• Stage 1 - Checking you out

• Stage 2 - Purchase

• Stage 3 - Second thoughts

• Stage 4 - Unboxing

• Stage 5 - Relationship building

• Stage 6 - Value

• Stage 7 - Loyal fans

• The Journey Mapping Canvas Worksheet

Introduction to CX mapping

Alright, listen up! The real deal for any small biz isn’t just snagging new customers—it's making sure they stick around. Trust me, repeat customers are like gold. Need some evidence, here’s the proof:

• 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience

• Brands that provide a superior CX generate 5.7 times more revenue than rivals that fall short in this area

• 74% of shoppers are at least somewhat inclined to make a purchase based only on their experience

• Businesses that use tools like customer journey maps see revenues increase as much as 10-15% while also reducing cost of service by 15-20%
  

Basically, they buy more, spend more, and love to brag about you to their friends. Sweet, right?

So, in case you haven’t been able to tell already, this playbook isn’t so much about getting your first sale (although we do go over some of this in the first couple phases). Instead, it’s about seeing your business from your customer’s POV and aiming to turn every customer into a loyal fan who keeps coming back. This playbook? It’s here to show you how to map out your customer’s journey, not just to the sale, but way beyond it, all the way to undying loyalty.

By the end, you'll be stepping into your customers' shoes, creating experiences they can’t resist. Ready to rock this? Let’s get going!

What’s a customer journey?

Picture this: your customer’s journey is like an epic adventure. They start by noticing your product, then they consider it, buy it, and—if you play your cards right—they fall head over heels in love with it. Most businesses stop thinking about their customers right after the sale. Big mistake! The smart ones, like you, know that the real magic happens after the purchase.

We’ll break down this journey into seven stages and dive into each one. Buckle up!

Why create customer journeys?

Here’s the scoop: loyal customers are the lifeblood of small and medium businesses. We’re not like big fortune 500 companies with massive budgets and industrial sized acquisition funnels that can afford to neglect retention. We need to give them such an awesome experience that they can’t help but come back for more—and tell all their friends about us. But getting this kind of loyalty isn’t a walk in the park. It needs a solid game plan and the right tools to deliver a killer experience.

With customer journey mapping, you’ll get a visual snapshot of when and why your customers feel a certain way about your product. This insight helps you anticipate issues and capitalize on positive vibes, guiding your customers up the path to loyalty.

Seven stages in the journey

Let’s break it down into seven stages to see how your customers’ relationship with you evolves:

1. Checking you out

2. Purchase

3. Second thoughts

4. Unboxing

5. Relationship building

6. Value

7. Loyalty

Stage 1 - Checking you out

Experience upgrade tips:

Put yourself in their shoes. Here are the facts:
1) They have a need,
2) they’re on your website,
3) They probably aren’t 100% sure yet if you’re the store they want to whip out their credit card for.

What’s your move?

Now, there will be a subset of customers here who have such a strong need, and trust you enough, either through referrals or reviews, that they’ll buy. They don’t need any extra convincing.

For the more skeptical customers, you need to bring your A-game. It’s like the game you bring when meeting your girlfriend or boyfriend’s parents for the first time.

Create content like how-to videos, unboxing experiences, and load up on buyer reviews and testimonials. Show them you can be trusted and relied on with great post-sale customer support. An authentic “about us” section with your story, a behind the scenes look at how you work and operate - all of this builds trust - which is the name of the game between your brand and this customer segment.

Some examples:

Stage 2 - Purchase

Phew, they’ve made a purchase. Time to celebrate? Ok, maybe a little. But don’t forget this is just the beginning. Anyone can sell a product ($100 CAC for a $20 AOV, anyone?), but few can turn a sale into a lasting relationship.

Experience upgrade tips:

Keep the excitement alive! Send an on-brand, helpful “thank you” email. Confirm their purchase quickly and let them know when to expect their package. Send other helpful notes on the following days letting them know what to expect. If it’s a vacuum cleaner, send them an unboxing video. Make them feel ready to use and love their new toy.

If they abandon their cart, don’t just send an automated email. Call or text them, especially if it’s a high-ticket item or subscription. Personal touch goes a long way.

In some cases, your customer may have almost made the sale. They may have added their products to their cart, entered their personal and billing details. But instead of clicking “buy” they closed their tab. Uh oh! What do we do?

Well - we need to understand why they abandoned. And there is a whole area of research we did here ages ago about surveying and getting on the phone with these people in the beginning to learn why.

The fact is, most of us just send that simple ol’ abandoned checkout recovery email, but it may only address one concern. Price MAY have been the concern for 15% of your abandoned checkouts (which is why your discount code in your emails is getting you a 15% abandon recovery rate) but what about the other 85%?

• Some may have a question on quality (offering a discount probably exacerbates that concern)

• Some may have done a last minute check on Amazon to see if something could arrive to them faster

• Some may have a super specific question like “will this thing even fit in my small drawers…?”

Store example:

• Big Brain Furniture: Selling furniture online isn’t easy, so they offer customers a free WhatsApp video call where sales associates in the showroom can walk around showing the items and provide 1:1 attention to the customer’s needs.

• Nadeef Bidets: After a purchase, they send an email asking customers to book a free phone support call for installation. Personal touches like these turn a one-time buyer into a loyal fan.

Stage 3 - Second thoughts

Experience upgrade tips:

Preempt these doubts with a “pre-emptive strike.” Make sure customers stay happy and negative thoughts don’t gain a foothold. Personal touches, like a call the evening after their purchase, can make a big difference.

The purpose is to ensure the customer remains in that happy state:

• Attach an email of a positive customer testimonial in their email receipt or confirmation email

• Offer up a delivery tracking link

• Ask them how they found you and what they’re most excited about. Use this info to personalize future interactions

Store example:

• KNIFE Toronto: KNIFE sells Japanese hand-crafted chef’s knives. Many of the crafts people come from generations of samurai katana making experts who pivoted to knifes, so the quality of these knives are considered top. Only lovers of cooking would spend these amounts on knives, so the store owner gets to know their customer’s favourite dishes to cook and sends them cook books to try out.

• Boutique dog food brands: Low margin products can also benefit from this tactic. Especially if they are recurring subscriptions like dog food. When a customer buys dog food from you, they are not buying just once - they are buying hundreds of times over their lifetime. Get to know them and their dog - what is their dog’s birthday? Their likes? Their personality? Use this information to suggest other products their dogs might like.

• Phone cases: Some are very low margin products, and not recurring. In this case - just send some positive customer reviews and testimonials to keep them excited.

Customer these days don’t expect brands to go out of their way for them - so when one does, it’s such a wow experience for them. Low expectations can be a good thing, because it means it should be easy to go above and beyond.

Stage 4 - Unboxing

Experience upgrade tips:

Unless you’ve shipped them the wrong item, your customer is feeling pretty good right now. This is your chance to create a memorable unboxing experience. Don’t just avoid disappointment—aim to delight.

The unboxing experience should feel like an “instagrammable moment.” If you can afford it, use high quality packing materials where possible. Print instructions, your brand’s story, referral cards, or other promotional flyers on high quality card, with sharp colors and professional looking graphics (highly recommend checking out Canva Print for these).

If you’re. a low-volume seller, consider leaving hand written thank you notes to make your customer feel special, and feel good for supporting a small business.

Use high-quality packing materials, print manuals on nice card stock, and include a handwritten thank you note. Make them feel special.

Also, try to think of it as creating an “Instagrammable moment.” If they feel awesome unboxing your product, they’re more likely to share it on social media.

The digram above shows the science behind the value of a great unboxing experience. Neuroscientist, Robert Sapolsky, professor at Stanford University published a study in 2011 about dopamine release in monkeys. The monkeys in the study figured out when the treat would be released through a light bulb signal. On the light turning on, the monkeys had to press a button 10 times to receive a treat, at which point the light would turn off.

The traditional thinking was that dopamine (the pleasure chemical released by the brain) was released when a treat was given. But actually what happened was the dopamine release took place during the pressing of the button (doing the work). It stopped once the work (pressing the button) was completed.

In our case, the package deliver on the front doorstep is the light turning off, and the steps of unboxing is the work the customer needs to do to get their treat.

What this means for us is if we can create such a pleasurable unboxing experience, it would be one of the reasons why people will buy from your brand, and not another.

Store example:

• Omsom

• Barkbox

Stage 5 - Relationship building

You'll know you've hit this stage in the customer's journey when they start reaching out to you. When your customer makes the first move and engages with you, it’s a sign they’re invested. This is when they go from just a customer to a true "client." Whether they’re asking about a product issue or curious about your Christmas promos, the fact that they thought of you and took the time to connect means they’re buying into your process. And that’s exactly what you want.

Experience upgrade tips:

Make it easy for customers to initiate a conversation. Whether it’s through iMessage, WhatsApp, email, or phone, make sure they know how to reach you. If a customer is more extroverted, they might prefer to call you - and so be cheerful and engaging and bring a positive energy on the phone. The phone call is your opportunity for an undivided 5 minutes of attention with a potential long-term customer.

Store example:

• Venom Motorsports: They placed a “request callback” button on every page of their website and on their packaging, ensuring customers could easily reach out if they needed help.

• Nadeef Bidets: Noticed that customers who they spoke with over the phone had a higher than average LTV, which is saying something!

Stage 6 - Value

The most important thing here is that your product has value - that it solves a read problem. If it doesn’t, you probably can end your customer experience exercise right here.

Experience upgrade tips:

Besides making sure your product actually does what you say it does, there’s not much else you can do here. If you claim your clothes are fashionable, but they fade after two washes, you've missed the mark. If you say your bed frame is easy to assemble, but it requires an engineering degree, you’ve failed to deliver value.

What you can do is identify situations where customers might not get the value quickly and create a process to tackle those issues before they become a problem. For example, if you know assembling a bed frame needs some instructions, it’s smart to follow up with a call after a week. Check in to see if they've looked at the manual and if they need any help.

Store example:

• Furniture stores: They followed up with customers to ensure they could easily assemble their furniture. If customers struggled, they offered help over the phone or arranged for a local handyman to assist.

Stage 7 - Loyal fans

If your product is something customers use daily, even better—more chances for conversations! If it's seasonal, like a snow blower or winter jacket, make the most of that time. At this stage, customers appreciate your product and the joy or ease it brings them.

When they need another product, they’ll think of you first. And if a friend asks for a recommendation, they’ll proudly refer you.

Experience upgrade tips:

A reason a happy customer didn’t come back for more could be because you weren’t on their radar when they were ready to buy again. So, if your repeat purchase rate is low, it might not be your product's fault—it just might be a communication issue.

For example, I can’t even tell you which brand of mattress I own. I don’t remember where I bought it, so in five years, when I need a new one, I’ll be shopping around again. That’s a missed opportunity for the mattress company because the product itself is fine and has been reliable.

Now, imagine if that mattress store sent me an email every six months. Nothing too crazy—just tips on keeping my mattress in good shape - cleaning advice, or fun facts about the history of mattresses. Oh, I would LOVE a rotation reminder. Did you know we’re supposed to rotate our mattress every 6 months to keep it form becoming lumpy and depressed from our body wieght hittingt the same spot? I didn’t up until recently, I would have loved for this to be sent in an email because I always forget to! The point is to remind me, “Hey, remember you bought your mattress from us? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back even if you don’t think about us.”

It’s this kind of thought that grows business - after all, if you’re going to pay $$$ to acquire a customer once, why pay again and again to keep acquiring them? A little bit of creativity with a dash of persistence, will create a life-long customer!

Assuming you’ve reached this far in the post, all that’s left is for you to map out your own experience and your opportunity to improve.

The Journey Mapping Canvas Worksheet

Create the Journey Map

Contact Our Journey Mapping Experts

Need a hand creating your customer journey map? We’re here to help. Drop us a message, and we’ll guide you through it.
Email: [email protected]
Website: goroar.co

About Roar Co.

We're about crafting kickass ecommerce customer experiences. No gimmicks, no "10x your sales" B.S., and definitely no get-rich-quick schemes. We don’t know enough about Facebook Ad scaling, or sketchy SEO backlink hacks. We believe in investing in epic customer experiences. Will your sales explode? Who knows. Will your customers love you? Heck yeah.

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