2. Finding the Customer Journey

In this lesson, we will explore how to find and design the customer journey for youo your product, the focus here is on how you can identify and create your own customer journey based on your specific context.

The Two Axes of Customer Journey Mapping

When designing a customer journey, there are two basic axes to consider:

1. Customer Maturity: This axis measures how advanced a customer is in understanding and using your product.
2. Habit or Lock-In: This axis measures the depth of the customer’s engagement with your product. You can use terms like "habit," "lock-in," or "depth of use" to describe how frequently or deeply the customer engages with various functionalities of your product.

Let’s break these down further.

Customer Maturity

Customer maturity refers to the level of knowledge and expertise a customer has in using your product. For instance, a person who has just started a fitness journey won’t understand advanced concepts like nutrition and training the way an amateur athlete might.

Your product needs to guide customers through different stages of maturity:

• Beginner: The customer may not fully understand the product's advanced features yet.
• Intermediate: With time, the customer gains more knowledge and starts seeing value in more complex functionalities.
• Advanced: The customer understands the product well and can take full advantage of its advanced features.

Habit or Lock-In

This axis measures how frequently a customer uses your product or how deeply your product becomes integrated into their daily life or business operations. For example:

• Habit Formation: If your product is something that requires daily or regular use (like a fitness app), it’s crucial to encourage and reinforce habits. Books like Atomic Habits and Hooked are excellent resources for understanding habit formation.
• Lock-In (B2B Focus): In a B2B context, lock-in refers to how essential your product becomes in a company’s operations. As your product integrates with other systems and processes, it becomes more difficult for the client to switch to a competitor. This creates a "lock-in" effect.

Designing the Customer Journey

If your product is new or in the early stages of development, your customer journey design will likely be conceptual. You may not have enough data to define it accurately, but you can start with an informed hypothesis. As you gather more data and observe customer behavior, you can refine the journey.

The process typically follows these steps:

1. Identify Initial Maturity and Engagement Levels:
   • Understand the initial level of motivation and knowledge customers have when they start using your product. You can interview new customers or consult your sales team to gauge this.
2. Identify Key Phases in the Customer’s Journey:
   • Analyze how customers progress in their understanding and use of the product over time. For B2B products, consult your customer success or account management teams to learn about the challenges and milestones customers face.
3. Determine Milestones for Each Phase:
   • Define clear milestones that mark the transition from one phase of the journey to the next. For example, in a fitness app, the milestone might be a customer using the app three times a week, indicating they have formed a habit. These milestones help track progress along the journey.

Refining the Customer Journey with Qualitative Research

Once you have a conceptual framework for the customer journey, it’s time to refine it using qualitative research:

• Customer Interviews: Conduct interviews to understand the motivations, experiences, and challenges customers face at different stages. Aim to interview a range of customers in different phases of the journey.
• Group Customers by Similarity: After gathering qualitative data, group customers by similar experiences and challenges. This helps identify patterns and refine the journey further.
• Interview Customers Who Canceled: Learn why customers left and whether certain phases of the journey contribute to churn. This can help you identify weaknesses or gaps in the journey.

Defining Metrics and Transition Triggers

To make the customer journey actionable, define metrics that indicate progress from one phase to the next:

• Metrics for Maturity: These might include the use of advanced features or increased usage frequency. For example, if a customer regularly uses a specific feature that requires deeper knowledge, it may indicate they are moving to a more advanced stage.
• Metrics for Habit Formation: These are behaviors that indicate the customer has integrated your product into their routine, such as daily or weekly use.
• Retention Metrics: Look for features or behaviors strongly correlated with long-term retention. For instance, in a SaaS product, customers who use certain complex features might be more likely to stay.

Analyzing Quantitative Data

After defining the conceptual framework, use quantitative data to validate and adjust your assumptions:

• Look for Correlations: Find correlations between customer behaviors and retention, engagement, or other key outcomes. However, be careful to distinguish between correlation and causation.
• Refine Based on Insights: Use insights from your data to fine-tune the journey. Sometimes, correlations will reveal new opportunities or challenges.

Example: RD Station Customer Journey

A practical example comes from RD Station, a marketing automation platform. Their customer journey was divided into four phases:

1. Proof of Channel: The customer tests whether digital marketing works for their business.
2. Replicable Model: Once they see success, they aim to create a repeatable marketing process.
3. Automation and Scale: As their process grows, they seek to automate and scale their efforts.
4. Optimization: Finally, they focus on optimizing campaigns for maximum results.

Each phase had clear triggers and milestones, such as generating leads, using email marketing features, and achieving first sales. The product team designed different strategies and product features for customers at each stage, ensuring that the journey matched the customer's needs.

Conclusion

Designing the customer journey is an iterative process. It starts conceptually, evolves through qualitative and quantitative research, and is continuously refined. The ultimate goal is to guide customers from initial engagement to full maturity and engagement with your product, delivering increasing value at each stage. By understanding your customer’s journey, you can create better experiences, improve retention, and drive long-term success.