ACHIEVING 3 TIMES GREATER ROI THROUGH CUSTOMER JOURNEY MANAGEMENT
Customer Journey is the complete path of sequential steps that potential consumers follow during the process of buying a product or using a service. It portrays how a prospective customer comes into the realization of a certain need and ends up being a buyer. The Customer Journey poses the extent of consumers staying loyal to that certain purchase and/or the brand.
“Managing the journey of your customers is like using a map. Without it, you don’t know where you’re going and don’t know if you’re moving in the right direction.”
THE FUNNEL
According to a 2016 study, it is seen that there was only 16% of return on marketing investments without customer journey management, whereas it is about 55% with it. This reflects how significant understanding your customer journey is.
The scope and length of the customer journey may vary based on the degree of brand familiarity. Although different models exist, we at Human Data Associates recognise 6 stages that consumers go through.
1. Awareness: The funnel starts with the identification of a certain need towards a service/product. However, sometimes the customers may not be aware of that particular need. In this case, the exposure of various brands directs the customers to get conscious about potential purchases. Advertising and branding play a big role to increase the awareness among customers.
2. Interest: This stage begins with customers being triggered by a certain element that will lead them to start thinking of making a purchase. This trigger has a broad spectrum with an advertising campaign, a recommendation from a friend or simply the need of that particular service. Afterwards, the customer starts to do research on the purchase by comparing alternatives and trying to find the most suitable options. Since more than 70% of prospects turn to online search engines to research about their purchase, the success of SEO has a prominent effect on the shopping behavior.
Where a Prospect Turns Into the Purchaser
3.Desire: In this stage, the customer narrows down his choices to the best option observed. He favors one over other alternatives based on the attributes of the purchase. The key element here is the extent of the purchase meeting his preferences, needs and requirements. Therefore, the price-performance ratio plays a big role at this point.
4. Action: This is the stage where a prospective buyer becomes a customer. It implies that the triggers evoked were strong enough for the customer to not only consider the purchase but to get into action. This yields them to trying out and ultimately making a decision on a certain purchase.
Looking Ahead
“More than 90% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. That’s where the importance of post-behavior comes in.”
5. Post-Purchase: At this point, the customer experiences the service/product purchased. The customer shapes his opinions and feelings about that particular. These will evoke the value of the acquired purchase for the customer. It is important to note that the customers are assessing their satisfaction on the overall journey and not on the individual touchpoints. According to McKinsey’s article, the top three journeys for the customers account for more than the quarter of the overall customer satisfaction.
6.Loyalty: After the complete experience gained from the purchase, the customer constructs an internal analysis. The value of the purchase and the extent of the pleasure are being measured. These will determine if the customer will remain loyal to that certain purchase which can potentially lead brand retention. As a further step, the customer might advocate the product/service via several methods like word of mouth on both online and offline platforms.
With mapping a customer journey, you can understand the needs, attitudes and obstacles of your customers better. This gives you an analysis on predictive insights and the underlying motivations about their behaviours. Hence, you can identify the key moments in customer interactions, which results in optimizing the whole customer experience.
