“Evolved companies aren’t customer-centric. They’re customer experience-centric.” – (Source: Prophet)
Since the end of the pandemic in 2022, companies were relieved to see customers returning for their services. Due to the complete digitalization of the consumer journey in the past two-years millennials are craving experience-centric purchases. It’s not just the purchase of the product that satisfies them, it is the experience that comes with it. To re-evaluate the customer journey, it is vital to understand the customer journey before purchasing a product or service.
“81% of retailers increased their investment in CX over 2020-2022.” – (Source: Talkdesk)
Identifying Customer Journey
To reach the title of an ‘Experienced Brand’, an organization must focus on creating continual value with customers across the entire customer journey. By highlighting customer experience as the focus of marketing strategy, businesses can connect with consumer behaviour as well as create unique workflows.
Fig.1: Customer Journey Touch-Points
- Understanding Actual Customer Journeys
Not all customers undertake the same journey in purchasing a product, experiencing a service, or performing a transaction. Their paths vary, based on personal preferences, available channels, and the way processes are organized. Not all customers undertake the same journey in purchasing a product, experiencing a service, or performing a transaction. Their paths vary, based on personal preferences, available channels, and the way processes are organized.
For the orthodox customer journey, following are all the touch points for a traditional customer:
a.Awareness
Through the power of advertisement via print media, radio, television, social media, or digital videos, a product enters the marketplace where customers are either searching for a product, or they want a product, but they are not looking actively to purchase it.
b.Consideration
Upon encountering an advertisement, potential customers actively look for further information on the subject, and they are taken to different platforms where they can consider purchasing the product.
c.Intent and Purchase
With further consideration, the customer intends to purchase the product, and to complete the process, customers are sent to the product purchase page where they can select the quantity of the product. After selecting the desired quantity, customers are taken to selective payment gateways for the transfer of funds.
d.Loyalty
As the customer purchases a product, the company registers him as a potential lead for another purchase. Companies send loyalty advertisements through direct mail, e-mail, television, or digital ads. Running loyalty programs helps businesses to boost brand loyalty and retention.
e.Advocacy
Word-of-mouth marketing is the undefeated king of advertisement and is the highest revenue generator in marketing. Satisfied customers are highly likely to advocate their current purchase to family and friends, making it easier for businesses to grow better without spending capital on various advertisement mediums.
- Prioritizing Investments
Tying customer journeys to satisfaction scores allows companies to understand precisely which journeys mean the most to the bottom line and align the possible investments in technology, people, and incentives with expected returns. It also allows companies to understand all the other business factors that a journey affects and the total value at stake.
Revenues associated with the journey are also affected, for example, from cross-selling when a customer is taken on board. Finally, there may be other business impact, such as the ability to detect and prevent fraud. One outcome of the diagnostic is a business case at a journey level, which helps set priorities for capturing value from improving the customer experience.
- Identifying Frustrations and Happiness
A data-based diagnostic can be much more precise in identifying the events affecting customer frustration or happiness. In particular, it allows a company to link customer satisfaction to specific operational elements such as the time it takes to complete the journey, the number of steps that each channel requires, or the way the customer interacts with agents. From there it is possible to understand precisely the break points in the customer experience. It also makes it easier to track and set target goals for these journeys
Brands reliant on successful ways of past marketing strategies are not going to get the same results. Nowadays, delivering exceptional customer experiences, consistently is one of the main features sought out by leading brands. An innovative experience tailored to satisfy throughout the customer journey initiates better revenue, enhanced brand loyalty, and increased customer retention.
Challenges Faced in Implementing a Seamless Customer Experience
“75% of businesses believe that they are customer-centric, yet only 30% of customers agree, creating an experience gap.” – (Source: Capgemini)
Fig.2: Elements of Customer Experience Transformation
‘Experience Economy’ was first coined in 1998 by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, but now, it is getting noticed by brands across all sectors. Earlier, providing an experience was easy and more natural as physical ecosystems were present to deliver innovative and creative
customer experiences. With the attack of the Covid Pandemic, the physical aspect of marketing dwindled, and the new age of digital marketing began.
There are several key questions that underpin successful stories and strategies such as:
The advent of big data and advanced analytics has helped organizations parse the factors that drive not only what customers say about the things that satisfy them but also the actual customer behavior that creates economic value. Similarly, multiple sources reflecting the voice of the customer—including surveys, social media, and the real-time chronicling of the shopping experience—can illuminate the current performance of companies in managing their customers’ journeys. Once they have identified the most important journeys and defined their strengths and weaknesses, the process of redesigning and prototyping can begin.With continual integration of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and advanced data analytics, brands can automate their customer experience without paying or maintaining hefty infrastructure for customer experience. Internally, businesses are opting for agility, personalization, and encapsulation of data to improve workflows within a company.
- Define a Clear Purpose and Customer Experience Aspirations
- Fragment Touchpoints to Digitally Empower Execution
- Develop a Deep Understanding Customer Needs
- Empower the Front Line with Customer Journeys
- Behavioral Psychology to Manage the Customer’s Expectation
What is a company’s appetite for change in the near term?
Is the goal to change the customer experience fundamentally or simply to improve it at the margins?
What is the gap between the needs and wants of customers and what they actually experience?
How can the company gain a customer experience advantage against competitors?
At which point in the experience should the company concentrate to have a real impact?
How do the overall capabilities of the staff support the customer experience the company wants to provide?“Nearly two-thirds of consumers want brands to personally connect with them” – (Source: Sprout Social)New Age Customer Experience in the “Experience Economy” Transforming an organization’s processes and culture to focus on customer journeys requires both top-down, judgment-driven evaluation and bottom-up, data-driven analysis. In our experience, these approaches work best when companies pursue them in parallel. The top-down approach spurs leadership engagement, focuses organizational energy, and allows a company to move quickly on known issues—often fixing policies or capturing quick wins that can be pursued from headquartersCombining this connected interaction data with more traditional surveys and input representing the voice of the customer such as interaction recording, customer surveys, observations, and focus groups allows companies to surface new insights and conduct customer-experience programs more effectively.
Reinvent Customer Journeys via Digital technologies
Fig.3: Framework of Behavior Drivers
Conclusion:
Mastering the concept and execution of an exceptionally good customer experience is a daunting challenge, but an essential one in today’s rapidly changing business environment. Many companies begin customer-experience efforts with lofty ambitions but a poor grounding in linking programs to value. To improve the framework of customer experience, take the time to construct a self-funding business case and you will reap company-wide buy-in as your reward. That will anchor your customer-experience program and pay dividends long after the up-front months needed to do it right have passed into history.