No matter how simple or complex, virtually every customer journey can be distilled into four classic elements.
- Awareness
- Search
- Evaluation
- Commitment
The paths differ, the touchpoints differ, and individual journeys are shaded with all the erratic, incongruous, and inconsistent behavior consumers consistently demonstrate.
From the staggering amount of customer journey data collected, what have we learned so far?
“We’ve learned that journeys are not linear, and that customers are ruthless,” says Ben Harris, CEO at Decibel.
“Online, businesses rarely get second chances. They have to get it right the first time. If a customer has a bad experience on your website or app – with all the alternatives out there – chances are they’ll never come back.”
Where Does The Customer Journey Go From Here?
What should marketers focus on to derive greater value from their investments creating and cultivating customer journeys?
“The biggest opportunity here is in the post purchase domain,” says Puneet Manchanda, Isadore and Leon Winkelman Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
“By continually engaging with customers in a way that provides value in the consumption of the product or service, marketers can deepen the relationship, leading to higher loyalty and potential for positive word of mouth.”
A Better Way To Leverage Data For The Customer Journey
Wherever the fine tuning of the customer journey leads a marketer, best practices for implementation and execution are holistic.
Tom Libretto, CMO at Pegasystems, sees this holistic process taking place with what he refers to “a centralized brain.”
“A ‘centralized brain’ that uses AI modeling and machine learning to analyze all customer data sources available – including sales, marketing, and customer service interactions – to understand the context in which an individual customer is engaging and create a tailored experience to ensure a successful experience.
“This ‘brain’ should be able to determine the next best action to take with that customer given where they are in their own journey, and either execute that action automatically or suggest the right action be taken by a sales or service agent.
Sharpening The Focus On What Customers Expect
Just as a superb salesperson understands, and in some cases, accurately anticipates the needs of a customer, the design of the customer journey should be similarly intuitive.
The promises of personalization, and the ability of AI and big data to provide accurate contours for productive customer journeys are debatable.
But...
- On a fundamental level, customers expect to be understood.
- When they want to be known, they expect to be recognized.
- When they want to remain anonymous, they expect anonymity.
- They expect accurate answers to their questions.
By virtually every benchmark, customers are raising the bar. The role of changing customer expectations is “crucial” says Decibel’s Ben Harris.
“The best experience a customer ever receives online becomes their new benchmark for all digital experiences going forward. This means that, while price and product will always be important, businesses now truly compete on the experience they provide to their customers.
“Those equipped to build rich, effortless journeys around customer needs and expectations are the businesses with websites and apps that users want to go to, and that differentiate themselves from the competition.”
