Understanding what your customer feels or expects from your brand is essential for your company to be able to offer them something personalized, and that makes sense according to each stage of the customer journey .
According to Accenture , 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that knows their name, their purchase history, and/or recommends items based on their purchase history.
Most managers often ask themselves this question: "How can we get our customers to do exactly what we want them to do?" Well, if you've found yourself agreeing with this question, I must say that this question is misleading.
What managers should ask themselves is: "How can I help my customers achieve their goals with my product/service, and at the same time, achieve my business goals?" Approaching from this perspective is the right starting point for building the most assertive customer journey possible .
Because to create an effective customer journey, it's crucial to see yourself through your customer's eyes and take the same steps they do to fully understand their challenges.
In this article, we'll discuss the 4 stages of the customer journey buying process , and how you can create improvements across your customer touchpoints to deliver an even better experience!
What is the customer journey?
The customer journey is a visual tool for understanding the steps your customer goes through to reach a goal with your product or service.
Mapping this journey helps companies put themselves in the customer's shoes and see the business from their point of view.
Additionally, this tool helps companies gain insights into customer pain points, how to improve the experience, and define what customers need to achieve this goal.
Another essential factor is transforming the customer journey map into something practical, simple, and visual. This means you can ignore the details that initially seem exceptional and focus on the clearest patterns of behavior to effectively address them.
It's also important to remember that the customer journey shouldn't be confused with a company's internal processes. The correct perspective for mapping the journey isn't about what you aspire to be/do, but rather what the company is like.
The focus of the activity is to understand the steps the customer takes with your company, and not how your employee should act or do in this situation.
For example, imagine that during the customer's store visit stage, there's a "serving the customer with enthusiasm" step in the journey. This isn't wrong, but the focus is on the employee, not the customer. The right approach is to map the customer's feelings upon visiting the store, not on internal processes.
Check out our Customer Journey
Why map the customer journey?
Journey mapping helps you and your team put yourself in the customer's shoes and understand how you position yourself from their perspective. After mapping, you'll be able to identify:
- Valuable insights into the touchpoints you have with your customer and identify those that require greater attention;
- Possible gaps in your current operation;
- How and where your customer interacts with your brand;
- Variations in the sentiment curve (expectation vs reality);
- Opportunities and pain points.
This allows you to improve your customer's experience and identify the most and least difficult steps they face when using your product or service.
I understand the consumer decision process
Today, more than ever, people form impressions of brands through touchpoints such as advertisements, news, conversations with family and friends, or experiences with products/services.
These impressions accumulated over time become crucial because they shape the customer's perception , that is, each interaction the consumer has with your company will be interpreted in different ways, until the brand is, in fact, perceived and chosen by them as the best option on the market.
Each of these interactions makes up what we call the purchasing decision process and is relevant to the work of the marketing team, which ends up keeping many companies committed to finding the best time to offer their product/service.
The 4 decision stages of the customer journey:
The four stages of the customer journey can be divided into two types: pre-sale and post-sale phases. Learn more about each:
#1 Learning and discovery
In this first stage of the journey, your potential customer is highly likely not even aware of the problem they hope to solve with your product/service, so it's unlikely they'll be looking for solutions at this point.
On the other hand, he may have some clue as to what he needs or has started to feel a certain need that motivates him to search for information.
Let's take the example of a magazine store with kitchen utensils as its niche.
The discovery phase isn't the ideal time to talk about your brand or product, but rather to educate your potential customer about the benefits and advantages of your product line. At this stage, it's time to showcase your brand's value proposition and how you can help this potential customer make the best decision.
#2 Consideration of the decision
In the consideration stage, your potential customer already knows they have a problem, and your focus is on understanding that problem in its entirety and ways to solve it.
With this in mind, you're probably eager to talk about your product, but your potential customer isn't yet at the buying stage, but rather wondering how it will solve their problem .
The best thing to do at this stage is to address the various questions they may have at this point. In other words, the focus of your actions remains education , but you should also make more in-depth materials accessible to them, with more technical content and comprehensive explanations.
#3 Purchase decision
Your potential customer has already come a long way, learned a lot from the materials you provided, and has certainly already formed an understanding of your company.
Note that up to this stage: your brand is being recognized in the market, your business has gained authority, and your audience is engaged.
So this is the time to reveal the details of your product or service and make it clear to your persona why your solution is best for them.
#4 Loyalty
Your potential customer chose your company and closed the sale. Mission accomplished, right? Not yet.
If your brand has remained attentive and present throughout the customer journey, the biggest mistake you could make is to simply disappear after the purchase. This attitude not only arouses distrust but also wastes all the relationship building you've built previously.
When loyal, your customers can become strong advocates and promoters of your brand – a fundamental strategy for your company to remain competitive for many years.
Conclusion
The way your customers interact with your business isn't a linear process, no matter how much you want it to be.
Getting people from point A to point B without jumping ship or missing a step isn't always easy when it comes to the customer journey, but taking the time to understand as much as possible about your customers' goals can go a long way toward keeping them happy.
Interested in mapping and improving your customer experience? Meet Harmo – the first and only platform that integrates online reputation management with NPS®, CES, and CSAT surveys.
📌IMPORTANT REMINDER!
Check out our super complete and updated article : Customer Journey: What is it and how to map yours? We've answered all our audience's main questions and it's packed with rich supplementary materials for you to download for free! 😀🤘
