Journey Mapping Definitions: Key Terms to Know
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- March 5, 2021
Get to know key journey mapping terms and their definitions to develop and/or enhance your Cx strategy your company needs to know to support your team throughout the Cx process.
Customer experience (Cx) is not just a buzzword; it can be the most important competitive differentiator for a B2B company worried about customer retention. Technology adoption has changed our expectations for what a buying experience should be in both our private and professional lives. As you consider whether your company needs to reassess the customer experience it offers and start learning about Cx, the new terminology can be confusing. This glossary of Cx terms and journey mapping definitions can help you nail down what you need and get buy-in from your team to move forward.
Customer Experience (Cx) – Customer experience is the perception of how your company meets (or not) customer expectations from each interaction between the customer and your business. It is the value that accumulates while relationships are built through communications, trust, loyalty, and recommendations. Cx is how your brand fulfills its promise.
Customer Service – The help and advice provided by a company to customers who have purchased or use its products or services.
User Experience – The overall experience of a person in terms of ease, effectiveness, and satisfaction when completing goals and objectives while using a product, such as a website.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) – An index score used to measure the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others, and an overall proxy for customer satisfaction with a product or service, and the customer’s loyalty to the brand.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – A measurement that highlights how happy customers are with a company’s products, services and capabilities, which helps to determine how to best make improvements or changes.
Customer Effort Score (CES) – Measures how much effort a customer must exert to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, a product purchased or returned, or a question answered. Because customer churn is a key business driver, CES is an indicator of loyalty, and measuring “ease of doing business” is critical.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) – The total worth to a business of a customer over the whole period of their relationship.
Customer Sentiment – The emotion customers feel overall toward a brand, product or service and can vary (positive, negative, neutral). It includes the emotions of others who can influence purchase decisions.
Persona – Tools that enable a company to empathize with its customers as human beings and to identify with them as they try to navigate an organization’s processes, tools, and interaction with its employees.
Journey Map – The visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal with a business, product, technology, or service.
Improving your company’s buyer’s journey can be a complicated process. After familiarizing yourself with these terms, check out our Cx playbook, “The B2B Journey Mapping Playbook,” to learn what steps you can take to improve customer retention.
