When it comes to building customer loyalty, it is essential to know what their buying process is like within our company, identifying the strong points and those that need to be improved. For this reason, in this monographic we tell you what is the Customer Journey and what are the keys to implement it effectively.
The Customer Journey represents the complete process that a customer goes through from the first contact with the company to the post-sale. It encompasses all customer interactions and touch points with the brand, including website visits, customer service, and any other related experiences. Visualizing the Customer Journey allows you to understand how customers interact with the brand, what their needs and emotions are at that moment and what factors influence their decision making.
In this sense, the Customer Journey encompasses different stages, touch points and customer emotions. Among the stages are awareness, research, consideration, decision and finally, post-sale. However, these stages are divided into different moments that are relevant. On the one hand, the moments of truth, where the company cannot fail, because these are the most important moments in the relationship with the customer, and it is important to cover the basics and live up to the customer's expectations. On the other hand, the wow moments, which are prepared to surprise (positively) the customer, exceeding their expectations, building customer loyalty and also so that the customer can recommend the experience. Touchpoints are the moments in which the customer interacts with the company throughout his Customer Journey. These touchpoints can be physical, digital, or even telephone or email interactions. Finally, there are the customer's emotions: each interaction with the company can generate different emotions in the customer, such as satisfaction, frustration, trust or distrust. Understanding the emotions customers experience at each stage of the customer journey is essential to delivering a more positive and engaging experience.
In the Customer Journey it is also critical to consider customer archetyping. This is the process of creating representations of different types of customers based on common data and characteristics. Properly archetyping customers can help the SME to better segment its customers, personalize its messages, optimize the Customer Journey and/or create new relevant experiences.
In summary, when it comes to improving the Customer Journey and optimizing the customer experience, it is essential to start by researching and analyzing data about customers as they interact with the web, defining customer archetypes, setting clear objectives, designing a consistent experience, implementing improvements at each stage, monitoring and measuring results, and obtaining feedback for continuous improvement.
For all this, there are several tools on the market that can help us. For example, Customer Journey Mapping tools such as Canva or Miro; tools to carry out surveys and forms such as Google Forms, Surveymonkey or Typeform. You can also use web analytics tools such as Google Analytics; chatbots and virtual assistants such as Tidio; social networks; and marketing automation platforms such as MailChimp.
In conclusion, the Customer Journey is an essential tool for SMEs today, as it allows them to understand and optimize the customer experience throughout their journey with the company.