What Is A Customer Journey?
A customer journey is the pathway your customer takes during interactions with your business, services and product. From contacting customer service to hearing about your business indirectly, these are both parts of the customer journey. This is the process the customer takes leading up to their purchase, and their experience with your business.
Customer Journey Stages
There are many different terms used within the customer journey stages, however, there are generally 5 stages that your customers experience when they engage with your business.
Awareness Stage
This stage is when your customers discover a problem and want to find a solution. To capture potential customer’s attention within this stage your business should provide value through educational content to relieve their pain points.
Consideration Stage
After your potential customers have identified their solution, they have researched enough to recognise they need either a product or service. This is when they begin comparing businesses, products and services. You might do this through reading reviews, analysing social media to see what others are saying and gathering information from your business and your competitors to find the best-fitting product or service.
Decision Stage
Your potential customer has finally decided they have found their solution and want to make a purchase. This is when your business needs to make the purchase process as simple as possible, capturing your customer's attention. This can be done through providing free demos and consultations, and promotions to encourage customers to choose your business.
Retention Stage
Your customer has purchased from your business and you want to ensure they purchase from you again. Within this stage, you need to provide a valuable onboarding experience as well as excellent customer service. To fine-tune your retention stage you can use data from customer surveys and questionnaires to continue to improve your customer’s experience.
Loyalty Stage
This can be your most valuable stage within the custom journey as customers decide whether to repurchase from your brand but can begin to influence friends, family and colleagues to choose your business. Loyal customers are more often to leave feedback which can help improve your customer journey.
Why Should You Map Your Customer Journey?
Customer journey mapping is a vital process every business needs to include within their strategy. The mapping process is the creation of a visual asset to represent your business’s customer journey. Created with your customer’s experience in mind, how they interact with your business, therefore creating a visual map. This process can also create an understanding of your customer's experience and any pain points which can be resolved.
In conclusion, each stage of the customer journey is crucial for understanding the customer journey for your customers and your business. Providing insights into how you can develop and improve how your business interacts with customers.
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