I’ve previously discussed the inclusion of a dormant state and a return loop when reflecting on the fact that the Customer Journey Never Ends.

Traffic Smileys by The Wolf under CC BY 2.0

You can include a further extension of the customer journey maps by showing proximity or emotional state.

Focus on the Emotional State

Typical customer journey maps (or diagrams) depict activities and results, maybe important events as well. These commonly use the terminology of the organisation rather the customer. By shifting that focus onto how engaged the customer feels at each stage, we see the journey from a different perspective; that of the customer.

Sales Funnels

Companies often use a sales funnel to monitor their sales process. Analysing the performance against the states in the sales funnels allows a company to redesign its sales process or to develop additional collateral. Some of the funnels focus on emotional state mixed with likelihood of buying. The customer journey map that displays emotional states can fit very well with the states defined in sales funnels. For example, the tables at the end of the superb Lean Entrepreneur book take the reader through the different levels of engagement that a customer experiences as they progress through the sales funnel:

• Aware
• Intrigued
• Trusting
• Convinced
• Hopeful
• Satisfied
• Passionate

Extend the States

These funnel states would need to be extended to include less positive states commonly found as customers move away from your organisation, e.g.:

• Apathetic
• Disgruntled
• Adversarial

There may be more states, but that will depend on your customers and what you understand about them.

How Can You Do This?

1. Compile a complete list of emotional states for your customers
2. Filter this list to create a simple, single list that reflects the combined understanding from marketing, sales and service/retention departments
3. Develop the customer journey maps
   1. Take the list of states and apply them as an overlay to your existing customer journey maps or
   2. Take the list of states and create a new customer journey map

My preference would be to start afresh as thinking based on the emotional state is likely to produce a different picture of the journey than the model based on activities and results.

Customer Input

You may have noticed that I didn’t include asking the customer for their emotional state. I nearly always advocate gaining input from customers in the most appropriate manner. I only omitted it above for the fact that it’s often a step too far for a lot of organisations. However, if your organisation has the means to engage with customers at the right level, then collate the emotional content from your customers and use that to build your customer journey map.