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Understand your potential customer’s decision-making processes when purchasing products and learn how to lead them to you.
Published 23 May 2023
A customer journey is a diagram of the experiences consumers undergo when interacting with a particular company or brand. The map starts when they identify a need and ends when they continue to purchase and advocate for the product. Converting these insights and expectations into an understandable visual representation is valuable as it improves the company’s engagement with its targeted audience and drives them to deliver high-quality products or services.
There are many ways to market your company’s value to the public, and most of those strategies are effective to a certain extent. However, many marketing experts predict customer experience (CX) will transform the whole business landscape. In fact, it probably has already. Here are some of the benefits with actual figures proving its importance:
Before creating any marketing strategy, companies should have a broad grasp of the different phases in the customer journey. Similar to the stages in a sales funnel, each step is crucial in marketing your goods and in upholding your company’s commitment to high-quality customer experience.
This is when the consumer comes in contact with the brand for the first time. Traditional tri-media advertising, social media posts, and word-of-mouth are possible means of exposure.
Aside from making sure that the advertisement reaches the targeted audience, in-depth research must be made. This includes countless surveys, buyer persona creation, and analysis of the time spent on a webpage, to name a few.
In this stage, targeted individuals realize that they require the product or service and do further research. This is also the part where they make comparisons with competitors.
While businesses can wax poetic about their character and philosophy, most consumers look for the personal experiences of other users and the opinions of their most trusted peers. In this phase, genuine content from real people matters.
The customers determine that the advertised product or service fits their needs and purchase or sign up for it.
Numerous factors could affect the final decision to purchase or abandon the item in the cart. Being transparent about costs and simplifying the checkout process help ensure profitable outcomes.
Here, the consumer tries the commodity and sees if it works. Sometimes, the customer would ask the provider questions about it or request for support.
With that in mind, companies need to make sure they have people ready to provide answers and assistance when requested. Frustration with the brand usually stems from lack of front-line staff that can deliver these.
The final stage is when the individual raises awareness about the product or service. Nowadays, spreading the word in virtual communities and networks is much easier. And this could either be a blessing or a burden to businesses.
Whether the brand gets a raving review or negative feedback, management must assess the situation well, react positively, and figure out ways to resolve the issue immediately.
Now that you have a basic understanding of the customer journey, here are some practical measures that will help your company manage customer relations and build better customer experience.
The buyer persona is a company’s embodiment of its targeted audience. When creating this, businesses should gather information about customers (e.g., age, gender, location, work), their motivation, and their goals, to name a few.
Mapping your customers’ journey is an ongoing process so this should be done quarterly or bi-annually. However, certain situations warrant new mapping like expansions or plans to target a new demographic.
This greatly depends on the depth of research the company wants to undertake. If your company wants to do a comprehensive survey, this could take up to 12 weeks inclusive of data analysis and KPI evaluations. When companies aim to solve a single problem based on an existing map, they can opt for a quick-fire approach that lasts an hour or two.
Everyone involved in the daily operations (e.g., marketing, sales, and customer service departments) should be part of this task. Senior management should also join in for two reasons: they are authorized to make changes and they will benefit from understanding their customers.
The customer journey is integral to the success of any company’s marketing strategy. When you understand each phase of the journey, you can design programs to increase customer satisfaction. That, in turn, drives conversions and ensures brand loyalty. SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) can help you stay ahead of the game:
Eunice Arcilla Caburao
Eunice is a content contributor for SafetyCulture. A registered nurse, theater stage manager, Ultimate Frisbee athlete, and mother, Eunice has written a multitude of topics for over a decade now.
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