How to Develop Your Customer Journey
This week I’m sharing a guest post by Business Doctor, Steve Ennis, all about how to develop your customer journey. He has a wealth of knowledge and I’m so excited to be able to share his tips with you. Over to Steve!
Steve Ennis
Business Doctor
The customer journey
One area of opportunity to improve any business is to periodically review your customer journey.
By customer journey we mean examining what the experience is like for your customers at each touchpoint they have with your business, whether this is the actual product or service they receive, or the engagement they have with you that may be via social media, email, your website, the telephone or any of your marketing literature.
As a business owner it is important to examine not just how a customer thinks and feels when purchasing, but to get a strong sense of how your business is perceived from the moment a prospect becomes aware of you, throughout the journey, to hopefully becoming a loyal customer.
A customer journey map - Steve Ennis
As the business owner it may pay to ask yourself these six questions:
How do my prospects/customers feel and think when they engage with us?
Do we create value for them in all of our touchpoints?
Which aspects of our customer journey do our customers like/dislike?
What parts of our customer journey do our competitors perform better at?
Does our customer journey allow us to really understand our customers’ needs?
With my teams’ input, can we design a better journey for our customers that makes it easier and more enjoyable an experience to engage and shop with us?
The touchpoints of your customer’s journey depend on your approach to marketing, sales, product and customer service. They might include things like:
Marketing collateral, like posters, stickers, billboards, flyers, commercials or display adverts.
Physical properties, including your storefront or office space.
Digital properties, including your website and social media pages.
Interactions with your staff, such as sales assistants, customer service reps and sales reps.
Purchase experience, including the price and checkout process.
Any post-purchase follow-up from your company, like an email or phone call.
Ongoing customer support.
Renewal or cancellation of your product or service.
5 competitive objectives
If this is the first time you’ve ever considered this question it may help to think about the 5 competitive objectives that contribute to customers’ decision making over whether to shop with you or a competitor.
Quality, Speed, Dependability, Flexibility, Cost
The question to ask is what do your customers really value, is it the quality of your product or service, is it the speed at which you deliver it, your dependability, your flexibility, or the prices you ask?
The chances are it is a blend of these things, so to help audit your current customer journey you could ask valued customers for their feedback on the experience they receive presently and seek to understand which of these attributes they value most and which they might value even further if you were to improve them.
The 5 competitive objectives - Steve Ennis
But can I ask my customers for feedback?
100% yes!
You’ll be amazed at the goodwill you can generate by asking your customers for feedback. You can design surveys, questionnaire’s, get professional NPS (net promoter score surveys), face to face surveys or telephone surveys that may be as simple as asking a couple of questions at the end of a service call.
Creating your customer journey
Most businesses spend the bulk of their marketing budget on acquiring new customers. However, if you can retain customers’ they’re proven to spend more with you than new customers, they’re more likely to recommend you to others and are significantly cheaper to service.
So, be bold! Take that step and set your stall out to create a world class customer journey for all your customers through these 6 steps:
1. Decide what to measure.
Get clear on your goals, so you know what to look for as you plot your customer journey.
2. Create your customer persona.
Start with knowing which buyer you’re focused on and what their general needs and wants are. You might create your persona by evaluating a picture of who your most valuable customers are.
3. Define your customer buying phases.
What are the stages your customer goes through between discovering their problem and deciding to purchase your product or service? Which stages happen after purchase?
4. Plot your touchpoints.
Within each phase, where does your customer interact with your brand?
5. Add customer thoughts, actions and emotions.
At each touchpoint, what is the customer prompted to think, do and feel?
6. Note your opportunities.
Based on your goals and what you discover through your customer journey map, which changes can you make at each touchpoint or within each phase to improve the customer experience?
Need any help?
I hope this taster has whetted your appetite to look at the customer journey of your business. If you would like help in reframing or starting anew in plotting your customer journey then feel free to give me a call and I’ll be happy to meet with you and support your business in creating a world-class customer experience for all your customers.
The journey starts here……good luck!
