The role of the customer journey for customer centricity.
In the last two articles, we learned what customer data can and should be collected and how to process this data into meaningful bits and pieces that everyone in the company can work with. All this in order to develop truly customer-centric solutions and services. One such component is the customer journey, as it shows each steps and interaction of the customer with the company. Starting with the first contact with your brand upto the (loyal) customer it divides the whole customer experience it into phases, In other words, it helps you to understand where the customer is at any moment in his journey and what he is responsive to. Through this, the role of the customer journey for customer centricity is a very special one.
Why is it important to know your customer’s customer journey?
In clonclusion, what is the role of the customer journey? The customer journey has a very important and special role to play in better understanding your customers!
Customer Journey versus Sales Funnel
What is the difference between customer journey and the sales funnel? Both instruments depict the customer through his various stages.
In the sales funnel, however, the maturity of the customer is viewed more linearly over time, i.e. starting with the first contact with the company/ brand and ending with the buying customer. Therefore, the sales funnel is often used in sales and is also used, for example, to evaluate customers in CRM systems. The steps of a sales funnel are typically: Contact/ Visitor, Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Ready Lead (SAL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), Customer.
In comparison, the Customer Journey, this path is deliberately not illustrated in a linear fashion and is in many cases – graphically depicted – quite a mess.
In addition, the Customer Journey also considers the part after the purchase (after-sales service, customer loyalty, and the customer as an advocate for the company). Last but not least, the Customer Journey takes into account the concrete digital and analog touchpoints from the first contact to the loyal customer. Therefore the Customer Journey is suitable for strategy development as well as a working basis for marketing, product development and sales. The role of the customer journey for customer centricity is therefore crucial.
What does a customer journey look like?
Typically, the customer journey is divided into five to six phases: AWARENESS, INTEREST, CONSIDERATION, DECISION, DELIVERY/ USE, RETENTION
A Customer Journey shows different information about the customer per phase:
- all touchpoints
- all relevant communication channels
- relevant topics and information
- relevant communication formats
- expectations
- typical actions
- typical feelings
- typical thoughts
In addition, the activities of the company at each touchpoint are also collected:
- Description of the activities
- Tracking of the interaction process/ feedback
- KPIs
The customer journey, including the definition of the phases, should always be optimized individually for your company and your target group and not be pressed into a „standard“. Therefore, templates should be seen as examples and only serve to provide a basic understanding of the topic. For example, a customer journey in B2C differs massively from that in B2B, but there can also be significant differen-ces between different customer groups. There are therefore several customer journeys to be developed for each company.
What is the difference between Customer Journey and User Journey?
The phases of a potential customer’s journey are partly divided into the user journey and the customer journey. The first part describes all steps up to the purchase and the second part the steps from the purchase to the loyal customer relationship.
Here is an example of the content of a Customer Journey (selection only!):
How do we visualize customer journey maps for our customer (groups)?
Once all the information is available, the next step is to visualize the customer journey(s). A first step can be the classic workshop with post-its on the whiteboard, where the various information is placed at the respective touchpoints. Of course, this can also be a process in which new information about the customer is collected over a longer period until the entire journey has been compiled.
There are also digital tools that help us to develop the customer journey map or, in the end, to cast it into a picture. On the one hand, general visualization tools are suitable (e.g. MS Visio, OmniGraffle, gliffy), on the other hand, there are also special providers for customer journey mapping (e.g. smaply, touchpoint). If only digital touchpoints are considered, there are also tools that automatically analyze and visualize the customer journey (e.g., auryc, pointillist). This is a useful addition to the other insights – such as expectations, thought processes, and feelings of the customer – which are obtained via qualitative methods.
Abbrevations:
| MQL: Marketing qualified lead | CSAT: Customer Satisfaction | CLV: Customer Lifetime Value |
| SAL: Sales available lead | NPS: Net Promoter Score | CR: Churn rate |
| SQL: Sales qualified lead | CES: Customer Effort Score | RR: Retention rate |
Would you like to learn more on how to retrieve the relevant insights from your customer? See http://customer-centricity.org/tag/customer-insights/
More benefits and advantages of customer-centric actions based on the most valuable customers and info on Customer Centricity:
http://customer-centricity.org/welcome-to-customer-centricity/what-is-customer-centricity/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSTUoaVS6jI
https://www.netpromotersystem.com/about/
Picture source: Eileen Pan, unsplash.com