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You know that developing a customer journey map is vital in today's customer-centric world, but let's revisit what a customer journey map really means for your business.

It means that you understand your customers' interactions with your business. It means you know their preferred touchpoints and channels across the entire experience, from first contact through usage to potential repurchase or a new purchase.

It means that you can clearly depict, from a customer-centric perspective, the steps your customers take when engaging with your company.

Clearly, developing a customer journey map is beneficial to your business. So you do the work. You successfully complete your customer journey map. Congratulations!

But how do you ensure that all of your work in mapping the customer journey will be properly implemented within your organization? You make the construct of your map's intangible attributes come to life through operationalization.

What does it mean to operationalize your map?

To operationalize something means to set down exact definitions for each variable and to also establish clear definitions for your processes. In addition, it requires you devise appropriate methods of measure so you can capture meaningful data that's needed to continue to increase the quality of your results.

This work entails what is known as standardization. You need a standard workflow to support a systematic approach to your measurements. That is the only way to ensure that you can consistently report on your customer journey process's (for that matter, any process's) ability to meet business priorities.

The key to success is to be clear about why you created the process in the first place. Why did you map your customers' journey? Did you create the map to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your demand-generation efforts? Or maybe you created it to reduce your sales cycle, improve customer retention, increase renewal rates, and/or increase your share of wallet or attach rates?

Whatever your reasons, your operationalization efforts must exist within the context of creating and measuring the changes in your workflow associated with the business outcome you are addressing.

How do you make intangible results tangible?

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How to Operationalize Your Customer Journey Map

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Laura Patterson

Laura Patterson is the president of VisionEdge Marketing. A pioneer in Marketing Performance Management, Laura has published four books and she has been recognized for her thought leadership, winning numerous industry awards.