Create a Meaningful Customer Journey

Chances are, your customers are already your top priority. But are you meeting or exceeding their expectations? Or is there a possibility that you may be falling short?

Connecting with customers and creating a positive customer experience before, during, and after they make a purchase with your company is more challenging than you may think. But if you don’t take care of your customers, they may take their business elsewhere—usually heading straight to your competitors.

One critical strategy to discover where you are succeeding in nurturing positive experiences with your customers—as well as where you might want to improve—is by taking a hard look at your customer journey. This will help you understand the best ways to craft a memorable, positive customer experience (CX) that will eliminate pain points and drive growth. After all, satisfied customers lead to outstanding business outcomes.

The truth is, fractured partner ecosystems and broken customer journeys make customers feel neglected and more likely to leave. Optimizing your customer journey is the key to keeping that from happening. Here’s what you should know about creating the kind of customer journey to draw customers in—and keep them coming back.

About the Customer Journey

From the first moment a potential customer inquires about your brand, their customer journey with your organization has begun. Each step of this journey is a critical chance for your organization to make a meaningful, positive impression.

Your customer journey actually starts long before a customer even contacts you. New research indicates that 60% of a buyer’s journey begins online with research into the problem and what the solutions might be. From this moment, your customers are in the comparison stage, researching yourallof the possible products and services that could help them address their issue, and potentially comparing your organization to your competitors. They are learning whatever they can about your brand—and forming an opinion about you in the process.

When a prospect finally contacts an organization, they are already more than half way through the funnel and come to you more engaged and knowledgeable due to their research. At this point, your sales team likely identifies this person as a prospect or a leadand begins to show them how your solution is the best fit.

Once they choose your company for theirpurchase, they reach next stage of the journey which can be an application, onboarding or activation of your product or service This is still a precarious phase because if something goes wrong, a handoff is missed or communication stalled, a prospect may still abandon your organization. Some data indicates 30% of customer’s churn before completing onboarding. It’s entirely avoidable however, when attention is paid to the making each touchpoint as well as the entire journey seamless for the customer.

As an organization, it’s essential to know what your customer experience is like at each stage of the journey including what your customer needs, wants, and thinks. From a business standpoint, we call this the buyer’s journey; but what if we flip the script to make it customer-centric? What if we think about it from the customer’s perspective?

Think of the customer journey from another point of view. The customer journey then becomes a question of solving a problem. Your customers are interacting with your company to (hopefully) achieve a goal; to find a solution. They are not thinking about prospects or purchases or conversions; they are thinking about what they need.

So, the best way to understand the customer journey experience and get an outsider’s perspective? To map the journey and take a closer look at each of the touchpoints within a customer’sexperience.

Mapping the Customer Journey for a Better CX

Your customer journey may seem simple within your organization. You provide a specific service or offer a particular product, and then customers discover you and make a purchase.

Your customer journey may seem simple within your organization. You provide a specific service or offer a particular product, and then customers discover you and make a purchase. But in truth, the customer journey is a lot more complicated. After all, 80 percent of today’s consumers report that the customer journey is as important as the product or service you offer. From the very moment a customer learns about you to the time they make a purchase, every interaction is part of the customer journey. During this time, your leads may encounter ads, talk with your team, correspond with a sales rep, or try to make apurchase. All of these touchpoints can be a purposeful, intentional part of the customer journey if you have a plan in place.

In complex industries like financial services and healthcare, there can be many internal teams as well as outside third-parties who all deliver part of the customer journey. They exist primarily in their own siloes and know only about the portion of the journey that they deliver, which makes it even tougher to manage and optimize CX.

Because there are so many different ways a customer can come to your brand and countless ways they may interact with you, the customer journey from Point A to Point B is a lot more complex than just a straight line. This means the customer journey can be hard to fully visualize. Creating a customer journey map can help you gain a deeper understanding of that whole journey.

What is included in a customer journey map? Here are a few key points to consider as you examine the journey customers take when interacting with your company.

● Take the perspective of the customer: Really step into how customers experience your brand, not just how you may perceive those experiences.
● Think about different customer segments: Not all of your customers are alike; they come from different backgrounds and cultures and will experience your brand—as well as your products and services—differently as a result.
● Include every touchpoint: Don’t sell yourself short by leaving something out. Your customer journey map should include any possible ways your customers may interact with your brand, including your website as well as email, text, chatbots, social media platforms, and more. Consider all the possible sequences and paths that will bring customers your way, too.
● Then... Take advantage of analytical toolsto act on the journey mapping: A strong customer experience management (CXM) tool will help you manage and optimize how clients move through your organization so it is more cohesive and seamless.

But what if you already have your customer journey fully mapped? How can you examine where improvements can be made? Here’s a look at what factors you should consider if you are reviewing your customer journey:

● The Buying Journey: The customer journey includes the buying journey, but it’s important to recognize that the buying journey begins before a customer even approaches a company for information or to make a purchase. While you can’t map out parts you cannot see, it’s right to assume they’ve been doing their own research and beginning to form a competitive set of companies that may solve their problem.
● User Steps and Actions: A customer journey map should also outline all the steps each customer takes at every different part of the buying process. Must they complete a demo on your website or fill out a form? Do they have to use their credit card to make a purchase? Fill out an application? Will they interact with a partner or third-party provider? How is that handoff handled?  Examine all the routes your customers can take to complete their goals.
● The Emotional Journey: No matter what problem your customers are trying to solve, you want your product or service to be the solution. Regardless, the fact remains that when they have a problem to solve, they likely are feeling some kind of emotion. Are they relieved when they find the solution? Worried? Hesitant? Tracking their emotions along the customer journey map will help you ease pain points and make the customer experience more pleasant, so they don’t form negative opinions about your company.
● Pain Points: Speaking of pain paints, whenever there is a negative opinion, it’s usually because of a pain point in the journey to solve their problem—or in their experience with your company. Detailing these pain points on your customer journey map will help you better understand where your customer may be feeling negative emotions, and identify what can be done about it.
● Solutions: At this point in your customer journey map, you and your organization can discover possible ways to make the buying experience better, with fewer pain points and more positive emotions while interacting with your brand.  

Why the Journey Matters: Examining the Importance of the Customer Experience

These days, a superior customer experience isn’t just a perk or a bonus for consumers; it’s a necessity that needs to be an imperative for every organization, regardless of how big or small they are and no matter their industry.

In fact, creating a meaningful, positive customer journey can work wonders for your organization. Organizations that put CX first achieve 1.8 times higher revenue growth—and 89 percent of companies that put customer experience at the top of their priority list outperform their competitors financially. Solidifying the importance of customer experience, it should also be noted that high-growth companies are 2.5 times more likely to focus their efforts on improving the customer journey and resolving customer issues compared to their competitors.

The customer experience is so important that 90 percent of business-to-business (B2B) buyers will choose a competitor if they find dissatisfaction during the customer journey. CX is so important that 87 percent of B2B buyers are willing to pay more for things like an easy-to-use digital commerce portal.

Transform the Customer Journey

Perhaps one of the best ways to analyze and improve your customer journey is to see how it is impacting your customers in real-time. OvationCXM is the first tool of its kind to refine the CX process, aligning everyone so your entire organization can take charge of CX and maximize the potential of the customer journey. Journey mapping, data, analytics, communication, knowledge? It’s all taken care of within OvationCXM.

Without impacting your legacy systems, the OvationCXM platform will help you offer a better CX by uniting your technology, partner ecosystem, and customer interactions at every step of the customer journey.

Customer experience is more important than ever. Let us help you craft a better customer experience in the moments that matter.

We connect your existing ecosystem into one place for you to track and guide your customer’s journey and prevent problems before they happen. We are the first CXM platform purposely designed to guide and fix customer experiences in the moment so you can celebrate customer success while driving significant financial benefit to your business. To discover how our solutions will transform your customer journey for the better, connect with our team of CX professionals today.