Customer Journey Mapping

 

Comprehensive Study Notes & Personal Reflections

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1. Customer Journey Mapping

Study Notes:

• Customer Journey Map (CJM) visually represents the steps a customer takes in interacting with a company, from awareness through purchase and post-purchase.

• It highlights touchpoints where the customer interacts with the brand and identifies emotions, pain points, and moments of delight.

• CJMs help companies understand the customer experience (CX) holistically and identify areas for improvement or innovation.

• Workshops and templates (e.g., HubSpot’s CJM guide) recommend starting from the customer’s perspective and layering internal processes behind each touchpoint.

• Emotional mapping along the journey identifies moments of frustration or joy, critical for service design.

Personal Reflection:

Mapping the customer journey shifts the organizational mindset from siloed functions to a unified customer experience focus. For marketers, it encourages empathy and strategic problem-solving. However, effectively capturing real emotions and expectations requires deep qualitative research and ongoing validation with actual customers.

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2. Service Blueprinting

Study Notes:

• Service blueprints extend CJMs by including frontstage (visible) and backstage (invisible) activities, showing the interaction between customer actions, employee actions, and support processes.

• It visually separates:

  • Physical Evidence

  • Customer Actions

  • Onstage Contact Employee Actions

  • Backstage Contact Employee Actions

  • Support Processes

• The blueprint includes three horizontal lines:

  • Line of Interaction (customer and contact employee)

  • Line of Visibility (what customer can see vs. what is backstage)

  • Line of Internal Interaction (contact employee and support processes)

• It helps identify bottlenecks, failure points, and areas where automation or redesign can improve efficiency and satisfaction.

Personal Reflection:

Service blueprinting is an invaluable tool for integrating marketing, operations, and HR perspectives. It exposes process weaknesses and creates a shared language across departments. However, its complexity can be a challenge, demanding cross-functional collaboration and continuous updates as services evolve.

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3. Usability Testing in Online Channels

Study Notes:

• Usability testing evaluates websites/apps based on:

  1. Task Support: Can users achieve their goals effectively?

  2. Usability: Is the interface easy, efficient, and error-free?

  3. Aesthetics: Is the interface visually appealing and intuitive?

• Poor usability leads to customer frustration, abandonment, and switching to competitors.

• Questions organizations must ask include:

  • Do customers understand the benefits of using digital channels?

  • How are customers involved in design?

  • What motivates customers to use digital services?

  • How will failures be handled to regain trust?

• Real-world case studies highlight frequent usability failures and their impact on customer loyalty.

Personal Reflection:

Usability testing is fundamental for digital marketing success. Marketers must champion the customer voice in tech development to ensure the digital experience aligns with brand promises. Usability isn’t just technical but psychological—meeting user expectations reduces friction and enhances brand trust.

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4. Customer Frustrations with Websites

Study Notes:

• Common frustrations include:

  • Difficult navigation and poor search functionality

  • Lack of transparency in pricing or fees

  • Complicated or lengthy checkout processes

  • Poor mobile responsiveness

  • Lack of real-time support

• Example: Flymya.com - issues like unclear booking flows or hidden fees undermine trust.

• Example: Manga websites - cluttered layouts and slow load times decrease engagement.

Personal Reflection:

In e-commerce and service websites, clarity and speed are king. Marketing professionals must work closely with UX designers to ensure seamless journeys that mirror customer mental models. Hidden fees or unexpected delays severely damage brand equity.

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5. SERVQUAL Model and Service Quality Gaps

Study Notes:

• Service Quality is an evaluation of how well an organization meets customer expectations during service interactions.

• SERVQUAL dimensions:

  • Reliability: Delivering the promised service dependably and accurately

  • Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to inspire trust

  • Tangibles: Physical facilities, equipment, personnel appearance

  • Empathy: Caring and individualized attention to customers

  • Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

• The Gaps Model explains failures through four provider gaps:

  • Gap 1: Understanding customer expectations

  • Gap 2: Setting service quality standards

  • Gap 3: Delivering service according to standards

  • Gap 4: Communicating accurately about service delivery

• Closing gaps involves marketing research, internal communication, training, standard setting, and honest communication.

Personal Reflection:

SERVQUAL and the Gaps Model provide a diagnostic framework for marketers and managers to pinpoint where service breakdowns occur. The focus on employee-customer interaction underlines the importance of internal marketing and HR in service delivery, making service quality a holistic organizational challenge.

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6. Service Guarantees and Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

Study Notes:

• Service Guarantees: Explicit promises to customers ensuring a certain service level, often accompanied by compensation if unmet (e.g., Ibis Hotels’ 15-minute resolution guarantee).

• Service-Level Agreements: Contractual commitments between businesses defining service processes, standards, and consequences of non-compliance.

• Guarantees and SLAs serve to:

  • Set clear customer expectations

  • Motivate employees to meet standards

  • Build customer trust and reduce perceived risk

• Negotiating SLAs with outsourcing suppliers requires careful definition of expectations, metrics, and penalties.

Personal Reflection:

Service guarantees and SLAs are powerful trust-building tools. For marketers, they are also communication devices that frame customer expectations realistically. They signal confidence and accountability, key to differentiating service brands.

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7. Self-Service Technologies (SSTs) and Customer Co-Production

Study Notes:

• SSTs enable customers to perform service tasks independently via kiosks, apps, websites, and automated systems.

• Benefits: cost savings, speed, consistency, and customer empowerment.

• Challenges: self-service anxiety, lack of recovery options when technology fails, exclusion of less tech-savvy customers, and potential negative impact if customers feel forced into SST.

• Effective SST implementation requires balancing automation with human support options and educating customers on benefits.

• IKEA exemplifies co-production with customers assembling furniture themselves, which some appreciate as engaging, others find burdensome.

Personal Reflection:

SSTs represent a paradigm shift in service delivery, with marketing’s role expanding into customer education and behavioral change management. Understanding customer segments’ willingness and ability to co-produce is essential for successful SST adoption.

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8. Case Application: IKEA Customer Co-Production Critique

Study Notes & Reflection:

• IKEA demands extensive customer effort (selection, transport, assembly), increasing customer burden.

• This high co-production can cause self-service anxiety, excluding some customer segments.

• Risks include service failure from customer errors and limited recovery options.

• While cost-efficient, this model may compromise service quality dimensions (empathy, responsiveness) and damage brand loyalty for some customers.

• Marketers should consider customer heterogeneity and offer flexible service options to balance co-production with convenience.

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Final Reflection

This comprehensive exploration across customer journeys, service quality frameworks, technology integration, and co-production models underscores the complexity of delivering excellent service in today’s multi-channel environment. As an MSc Marketing student, it is clear that achieving customer satisfaction and loyalty requires an integrated approach: combining operational excellence, human-centered design, technological innovation, and strategic communication.

Marketing is no longer just about promotion but about orchestrating the entire customer experience, understanding internal processes, managing employee roles, and continuously adapting to evolving customer needs and behaviors. Mastering these concepts equips marketers to be strategic leaders in delivering differentiated, value-creating service experiences.