This is a business tip I shared a couple of years ago, but today I want to chat – briefly about a customer journey!
Part of how you build your reputation is through the customer’s experience. Now we all know or at least, I hope we do, that customer service matters, but that isn’t what I’m talking about.
A customer journey is the steps you take a customer through from first contact to post-sale follow-up. These steps and how you and your team interact with your customers speak directly to your reputation. Why? Because this is how they are experiencing your company. Believe me, they will share with others who then form an impression of your company without ever experiencing it.
To give you a basic idea of what I mean here’s an example of a typical customer journey for a service-based business:
Discovery Call> Choose to Purchase > Onboarding Consult > Deposit > Services Rendered > Final Invoice > Service Follow-Up
For a product-based business, a typical journey would look something more like:
Ask Questions > Choose Product > Add to Cart > Purchase > Receive Product > Product Follow-Up
Strong brands Craft everything including their customer’s journey and experience with their company to maximize their unique advantage/secret sauce and there are a few crucial things to remember when crafting yours
You need to be consistent with it. Every person gets the same journey and experience from start to finish. This helps build trust and loyalty with your business and makes you someone a customer feels comfortable recommending. If you have a staff or family that help you with your business you need to train them to provide the same journey and experience you do.
It needs to be smooth. No one likes traveling on a bumpy road and that goes for your customer journey too. Each step in the journey is called a touchpoint—the transition from one touchpoint to the following needs to feel natural. You want them thinking “Of course this is the next thing I do”. People love things that feel easy and if you can make a customer journey that feels easy, they’re more likely to work with you again.
Lastly, always be willing to improve it. No matter how carefully or lovingly you create a customer journey there’s always going to be room for improvement. Ask for feedback and then actually implement it.
Alright, that’s all I’ve got! I’ll talk to you soon! Now go be amazing!
Oh, almost forgot…if you’re stuck on crafting your perfect customer journey and need help figuring out who your customers even are just let me know because my 25 for 25 troubleshooting system provides you with a full brand analysis and is great for figuring that out. If you’re ready to stop being a best-kept secret…this is the place to start! Bye for now!