Understand the Concept of the Customer Journey to Keep Your Business Existing. Understanding a customer’s mind can be very challenging.
There are times when sellers feel they have taken their wants and needs into account, but then new technologies, preferences, and new trends emerge.
Every process of buying something that is done by a customer does not just happen, but there is a process of travel or experience in such a way.
According to the Baymard Institute, by 2021 nearly 70% of people who shop online leave their carts.
Why do so many people spend hours choosing a product only to abandon it?
That’s why it is very important for every business owner to understand the customer journey, especially in the digital era like now.
What is a Customer Journey?
The customer journey is all about understanding consumers or buyers, how they behave when they visit your website, and what you can do to keep them interested, so they keep coming back to buy from you.
So how important is the customer journey to a business? In this article, the following points will be explained.
- Helping business owners to understand consumer tastes.
- Get to know more about the pattern of purchases made by customers.
- Make it easier for customers who make online purchase transactions.
- Build loyalty and increase customer satisfaction.
- Helping companies to identify problems, particularly related to effective marketing and selling.
In fact, you can have the best marketing team, but if the customer is not happy, then the sale will not work optimally.
Therefore, let’s apply the customer journey strategy together, and also know about the process in stages.
Process Customer Journey
Here is a brief explanation of what the process a consumer goes through, who eventually becomes a customer.
The customer journey spans several points, from the awareness phase to the final transaction and subscription.
1. Awareness
The first stage a potential customer goes through is the awareness phase.
At this stage, the person is aware of the existence of the company or business brand through social media advertising, email broadcasts, or other forms of advertising.
Brand owners will try to share related information such as company values related to the products and services offered.
Social media can play an important role in helping raise awareness.
Included in this is word-of-mouth promotion which is very important for small businesses.
2. Engagement
After getting the attention of many people as potential customers, what is the next step to take?
At this point, you can offer a product or service that has found an interaction with potential customers.
The interaction or communication between the two parties between the seller and the prospective customer is known as the engagement process.
In the process of the customer journey, the prospective customer does not necessarily buy, but is already familiar with the products or services offered.
They can already be involved in a number of ways, such as visiting a store, signing up for a subscription bulletin on the website, or at least interacting on social media.
Indeed, this engagement phase does not always lead to a transaction of any kind.
However, when many people on social media pages like, comment, and share your business content, then you have implemented the customer journey process.
3. Transaction
In the end, someone who is really interested in your product or service, then they will continue the transaction.
For example, in online application service providers.
The company found new customers who signed up for the monthly service.
Meanwhile, businesses that sell gadget products can sell several units in offline stores and online stores.
At this point, the interest of your target market has changed, from being just knowing and curious to being a customer who is willing to pay.
Once you’ve acquired a customer and made a sale, there’s one final step left to ensure that they stay or become repeat customers.
4. Customer Retention
When your business gets new customers, it’s a joy.
But if they just disappear after buying one time, then you need to do more new strategies.
That’s why, from the start, it’s important for business owners to focus on paying attention to their customers. They can benefit, not only in the form of purchases, but also post-transaction reviews.
To improve the customer journey, you can send special notes or messages on special days, for example during holidays.
Some businesses can even wish customers a happy birthday.
Apart from pleasing customers more, it can also increase brand loyalty and create long-term relationships.
Overview of Customer Journey Mapping
Regardless of the changing business trends that you pioneer, the attention of the customer journey is still a big influence.
To better understand how it is implemented, there is an example of a customer journey mapping from a company that has been successful.
Customer Journey Mapping is not made by wishful thinking or imagination.
However, based on data from consumers and potential customers. After getting consumer data, the mapping is then converted into a visual that is easily understood by anyone.
Simply put, you can get consumer data from asking directly to consumers through surveys and research on social media.
In addition, you can also take advantage of the analytical tools provided by Google, namely Google Analytics.
Making a mapping like this may seem to some businesses a hassle and a waste of time and effort.
But remember, if your business wants to exist, you have to think about a strategy in the long term.
One of the results from this mapping can later make the business you are starting to get new customers to maintain retention from competitors.
Not only that, this mapping can create user journeys for user experience needs, to brand development for content marketing needs.
“How do you map this customer journey?”
Well, the steps will be explained in the next section.
Important Components of Customer Journey Mapping
To create a customer journey mapping, make sure you understand what components will be used.
In making mapping, there are 5 components that you must know.
Here are the components in making the mapping:
Buyer Persona
Buyer persona is one of the strategies used by many business marketing teams.
Usually the marketing team to identify consumer wants and needs.
Why do I need to identify? Every business that is started is based on the identity of the business brand, but must also follow the wishes of consumers.
This is done so that business targets can be achieved appropriately.
Without clear business goals or targets, it will be difficult to get a lot of consumers.
Now, through a buyer persona, it will be easier for you to identify customers.
So that it can make the business exist and continue to grow.
Timeline
In building a customer journey, time is also important.
For example, you have a Muslim clothing brand.
Of course, if you sell Muslim clothes in the month of Ramadan, you will certainly get more profits compared to ordinary days.
That’s why timing is also important.
Emotion
In addition to the buyer persona and timeline, the other mapping component is emotion.
Are you aware that actually interacting with potential customers requires an emotion?
In interacting with potential customers, try to build good emotions, such as in a relaxed tone, avoiding tired faces or always smiling.
The emotions you build will later influence potential buyers so that they are interested in your business products.
The point is to be kind when interacting with buyers.
Touchpoint
Easy touchpoint is almost the same as first impression.
How potential buyers saw your business product for the first time, what attracted buyers to your business for the first time, and so on.
Interaction Media
Currently, the interaction media between buyers and sellers can be done digitally or offline.
Tips for Creating a Customer Journey Mapping
The following are tips that you can do in mapping the customer experience.
Set goals in business
Maybe when you started doing business, you had branching goals.
This is a natural thing because the beginning of doing business is looking for business patterns.
After the business starts to grow, you can start determining the main goals in doing business.
For example, do you want to improve your buying experience or launch a new product.
Determining this main goal is done so that your business starts to focus on the appropriate scope.
Conduct various surveys on customers
What you know about the customer experience and what they actually experience can be two very different things.
To find out, you can directly ask related customers about the business or products offered.
How good is the product offered, what needs to be improved from the existing product. So that you clearly know the wants and needs of customers.
Create and define a Buyer Persona
As previously explained, buyer personas are one of the most common methods used by business marketing teams to identify consumer wants and needs.
Starting from identity, demographics, behavior, personality, to how they make decisions when buying a product.
Update and review the Customer Journey of each product
Every time you release a new product or service, it will certainly result in a changing customer journey.
For this reason, it will be maximized if the marketing team always updates and reviews the customer journey process on every product or service, whether new or developing.
Still Lazy To Do Mapping?
The adage “The buyer is king” is true.
Without buyers, the business will not run successfully, let alone until it exists in the next few years.
So, however, as a businessman, you are required to always study and know what the customer wants.
For that, don’t be lazy to always do customer journey mapping,