“Maximising satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20% but also lift revenue up by 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%”
– McKinsey, The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction
What is the customer journey?
The Customer Journey refers to the series of interactions and touchpoints a customer has with your company across all stages of contact.
The customer journeys through the various stages; starting with the means by which you attract and inform customers, how you convince them to purchase from you, and what you do to ensure they have a great experience with your product and service – particularly by interacting with the staff. All this with the objective of creating a loyal customer who buys again and becomes a promoter, or advocate, of the business.
Along the journey the customer has a series of touchpoints where they interact with your company – and each touchpoint must be as smooth and efficient from the customer’s viewpoint.
This covers three key areas:
- Pre-Sales
- Sale/Purchase
- Post Sale
Pre-sales
This covers two areas:
- Awareness
This is where the customer first becomes aware of your business through brochures, advertising, your website, social media or, importantly, word-of -mouth
- Consideration
The customer considers the offer. This may include comparisons with others, research on social media or Trip Advisor, or personal recommendations
Sales/Purchase
This is where the customer decides to purchase your offer
Post Sale
This is where the customer decides on the merits of the purchase, and the initial objective is retention, leading to advocacy
- Retention
To retain the customer a number of boxes must be ticked:
- Did the process measure up to the brand promise in terms of product, service, price, quality, efficiency and follow-up?
- Did it leave a lasting positive impact of a pleasant experience worth repeating?
Key point:
- Retained customers become loyal customers – loyal customers become advocates
- Advocacy
The business reward for all this work is creating advocates who are loyal customers and who will actively support and promote your business. This happens because they trust you to constantly provide them with the experience they expect with each journey, and are happy to recommend you to others.
Key point:
- 81% of US and UK consumerstrust product advice from friends and family over brand messaging – HubSpot
- It’s up to five times more expensiveto attract a new customer than it is to keep an existing customer – Harvard Business Review / Bain & Company
The Customer Journey is an opportunity to review all the options the customer has to interact with your company as they journey from initial contact to becoming loyal advocates of your business.
For you as the operator, the important feature is listening to the customer at every stage of the journey, and responding to comments or suggestions for each of these touchpoints to find things that could be improved to make it a more seamless experience.
The clear objective is to create loyal customers that become advocates of your business, because loyal customers have a higher CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) — they stay longer and generate more revenue over time.
