Indeed, we are now in a Customer Experience economy, so standing out from the competition is essential. That is why strongly connecting with customers to foster customer engagement and loyalty is now the name of the game.
So let’s see how creating a Customer Journey helps improve Customer Experience.
Improving Customer Experience
If we want to understand our customers, we need to understand this: customers today are driven by their emotional connection with a brand when deciding to purchase a product or service. So Customer Experience is all about emotions. It relates to behavior and preferences, so companies need to work on establishing buyer personas in order to meet and cater to their customers’ needs and expectations.
So gaining a competitive edge for a brand necessarily means providing its customers with a memorable Customer Experience. Therefore a company has to be on top of its Customer Journey in order to improve the sales process and increase revenue.
After all, customers are empowered to decide where and how they spend their money, so any brand’s strategy must be totally focused on the Customer Experience they provide, aiming to foster customer loyalty while also attracting new customers.
The Customer Journey Itinerary
Customer Experience is usually a 4-step itinerary that could be customized, allowing each customer to find the information they are looking for and need within each step of the Customer Journey. The steps of the itinerary are as follows:
- Discovery: This step introduces the brand to the buyer persona with exposure to the brand so that the persona considers the brand when they decide to purchase. This is when the customer is either looking for a solution to a problem or a has a specific need and uses digital channels to find what they are looking for (Google, RRSS, comparators, etc.). If we can provide what they are looking for, then it is brand recognition and customer loyalty kicking in at the onset of their Customer Journey. Working on SEO and SEM content is now called for to reach out to the customer.
- Consideration: Once the customer has identified the product or service that meets their needs, the consideration process in which they compare different brands and choose the one that they consider the best option starts. In this instance, the customer is looking for feedback and opinions from other users on the product. The brand will need to generate trust and help drive the customer to buy the product by providing information (product testing, success stories, etc…) that will reassure the customer and convince them to make that purchase.
- Decision: Once the customer has identified several options, they need additional information to make that final purchasing decision. At this point, the customer on the verge of purchasing a product, needs information on price, on the purchasing process, customer service and so on before clicking on the PURCHASE button. Giving discounts or offers can be a great help here.
- Loyalty: This final step in the itinerary is when the customer has purchased a product. Here the idea is to foster loyalty to the brand and even turning the customer into a brand advocate. Not only are we looking at getting the customer to come back and purchase some more but also for them to promote and recommend the brand to his entourage.
How to create a Customer Journey?
To create an efficient Customer Journey, you need tools that can turn information into actionable insights. The brand can then leverage that data to enhance the Customer Experience it provides its customers. If you haven’t got the data, then you can’t get that data to “talk” and therefore can’t make the right decisions. That’s why every year, companies invest a large part of their budget in tools that help them collect customer data and convert that data into a decision-making asset.