Knowing your customers’ needs will help you reach them on a deeper, more engaging level. When it comes to customer journey mapping, there are dozens of tools you can use to improve performance. Which measurements are crucial to your business success? It depends on your industry, business model and specific target audience. 

What Metrics to Consider When Mapping the Customer Journey

Gone are the days when people interacted with sales clerks or business owners face-to-face. Today's customer journey looks more like a winding road with detours, hills and valleys. 

The average customer might read reviews online, visit your website, engage on social media and come into your brick-and-mortar store to make a purchase or initiate a return. 

With so many different touch points, it’s critical to focus on the ones that make the most difference in your company’s success. 

The 5 Most Important Metrics for Buyer Journey Mapping

Although each business is unique, nearly every brand benefits from key analytics that can drive growth in tangible and intangible ways. When building your customer journey map, consider the touch points that allow you to measure various aspects.

1. Customer Experience 

Forrester's Customer Experience Benchmark Survey for 2024 shows yet more decline in customer experience (CX). Over 98,000 consumers responded, and researchers found brands struggled to connect with them. The numbers fell for the third year in a row, hitting only 64% effectiveness.

CX matters because it drives brand loyalty, referrals and churn rates. However, only a few companies truly cultivate excellent customer relationships. Anything you can do to measure how happy your audience is and improve your numbers will result in better reputation and customer retention. Post-sale surveys are your best source of data for how happy people are.

2. Conversion Rate 

The only way to know if your efforts at moving buyers through the sales funnel are successful is by tracking your average conversion rate (CR). Ideally, people interact with your brand, sign up for your newsletter, and eventually purchase the product or service.

CR is never 100%, but the higher you can push it, the more revenue you’ll bring in. You’ll also know you’re hitting all the right notes for your audience when you see CR increasing. 

Tracking CR on your website or social media is fairly simple due to the abundance of analytical data you can collect digitally. Experts estimate that 80% of data-driven initiatives will be considered basic business functions by 2025. However, computing CR through brick-and-mortar interactions is a bit more complex. You’ll need an idea of how many people come into your storefront versus how many make a purchase to effectively measure conversions. 

3. Touch Point Times

Pay attention to how long customers spend at each tough point. If the time seems extensive, they may also be frustrated and trying to figure out what to do next. One example might be a website where the call to action (CTA) button doesn’t link anywhere. People click on it for details or to place an order and nothing happens. 

If you notice users land on a page, stay there a long time and then bounce away, take a few minutes to go through each step of the process. Can anything be streamlined? Are all links and buttons working as they should? Consider anything that might aggravate people and drive them from your website. 

Improve every line of your copy to increase engagement and drive users where you want them to go. Only 20%-28% of people read all the content on a website — the rest are scanning for words that match their specific concerns. Even the layout of your journey map can impact your bottom line. 

4. First Contact Resolution

Do you want to keep customers, encourage them to tell others and increase the amount they purchase over time? First contact resolution (FCR) is an excellent metric to track for the part of their journey after they buy.

FCR’s goal is to solve problems the first time a client brings them to customer service. Don’t make them wait for an email, call multiple times or wonder what you’re going to do. Solve their issue instantly, and you’ll build brand loyalty and a good reputation. 

Strive for near-perfect FCR numbers. Of course, there will be instances where you need a bit of time to find a resolution. The goal with FCR is to resolve on first contact as frequently as possible. 

5. Customer Acquisition Cost

Consider the length of the customer journey map, how much it costs to add touch points and how it translates into the client acquisition cost. Your map is not helpful if you spend more to acquire shoppers than you can earn off them now and in the future.

Start by looking at the hard cost of capturing a new lead. Perhaps you have ads on social media. What is the average you’re paying for a click? How many clicks before you make a sale? You should also look at costs such as maintaining a website, customer service calls, marketing and if people tend to reorder your product in the future. 

Acquisition costs directly impact whether your brand is profitable. Strive for low expenses and high conversion rates. 

Finding the Right Tool for Mapping

Whether you incorporate key performance indicators or turn to other metrics for data, you’ll want to choose a tool that includes the measures you need. The more information you have, the better. For company growth and health, you must know where you are and have a plan for how to improve weaknesses. Customer journey mapping gives you a handle on customer experience and whether you’re meeting the needs of your audience.