Customer Journey Mapping

The Science Behind Cave Paintings & Storytelling

One of the oldest forms of human communication is not language, but rather storytelling in the form of cave paintings. For years, scientists believed storytelling to be strictly entertainment. But, as more great minds studied the science of storytelling, they discovered it to be an instrumental aspect of human and technological development.

Listening to stories allows us to learn from other people’s failure and success, and even experience events we haven’t already experienced for ourselves. Take the above painting, for example; one can gather that this is a warning to the hunter, “Big prey can be dangerous, watch out for their horns.”

Storytelling is What Makes Customer Journey Mapping Invaluable. As a business, it is imperative that you take the time to step into your customer’s shoes and see the world through their eyes, experience their problems and feel their feelings — it’s a difficult perspective that can best be accomplished through the art of storytelling or in marketing, Customer Journey Mapping.

Customer Journey Mapping is the process of telling the story of your customer’s experience from Point A to Point B — in other words from the initial point of contact, through the transaction and finally to fostering a long and healthy business relationship.

You Need an Outside Perspective. This marketing and consumer behavior process is something that is practiced by the world’s largest brands and something you should consider utilizing within your own. But, in order to carry it out effectively, you should bring in an outside perspective that has no bias towards your customer base. At Glint, we have been conducting Customer Journey Mapping for years with brands interested in better understanding who they are selling to.

Our process of discovering the customer journey map is a story that consists of 4 parts:

1. Discovery.
Every relationship begins with an introduction of the plot and characters. There are two characters in this story — your brand and your customer. We work to deeply understand these two characters. Understanding you as a brand comes down to branding (which you can read more about here), but understanding your customer takes stepping into their shoes and seeing the world through their eyes.

2. Engagement.
After understanding the characters in the story, we need to understand how they interact and engage with one another. In other words, what is their relationship? And, how can we make this relationship better, more interesting and more valuable?

3. Conversion.
In a love story, often times relationships are unconditional. This is not the case in marketing and business, relationships are very conditional — your customers are paying you their hard earned money for value. They are paying you on the condition that you are providing value. During the conversion stage of our process, we discover what those conditions are. We then figure out ways to meet and exceed these conditions.

4. Reward.
If the reward section were in a story, it would be the finale, the end… the happily ever after. This is the section we sit down with you and answer one question — how can we make your relationship with your customer one that will last for years to come? Often, this is accomplished through ongoing value your brand provides in the form of rewards of some type.

Take Some Time to Better Understand Your Customer.

If you are interested in understanding your customer better, give us a call at (817) 616-0320 or send us a note here. If you haven’t take the time to step into your customer’s shoes, you need to… it’s what keeps you in business.