Customer Journey THINKING

https://www.engati.com/cx-community/customer-journey-mapping

Following are some of the highlights. This is not a transcript.

What are the most effective ways of connecting with the most valuable prospects and generating qualified sales opportunities?

Goalpost #1 – understand who and where our prospects and customers are. The largest segment is the entire planet. The smallest segment is a single person. Our market is somewhere between the planet and a person. Do we know precisely where our prospects and customers are on this very broad spectrum? How do we define them? Prospects will be multi-dimensional, in a certain industry or place, at a certain stage of development. Some customers will be ready to buy at a high level, others will be more basic. Let’s add segmentation to our journey thinking.

Goalpost #2 – know what we do as a company and the value-in-use we bring to our customer. Do we take our basic product and service offering for granted? We cannot deliver a delightful experience if our most basic product and service does not do the job the customer expects, if it is priced too high, or too low in the eyes of our customer. Are our deliveries reliable? Is our web content consistent with sales presentations? Hear our customer’s answers to these questions.

In CX, the closer these goalposts are to each other, the easier it is to score.

How can businesses intend to systematically convert qualified sales opportunities into customers?

End-to-end, lifecycle journey thinking reveals two things: (i) where customers are in their relationship (journey) with us, and (ii) the connection between marketing, sales, onboarding, helpdesk, delivery, invoicing, call centers, etc. When these functions are disjointed and siloed from the customer's view, customers know it, feel it, and will leave (i.e., not convert).

When we consider converting customers, first make sure we are not chasing them away. Most “qualified” customers want to buy from us. If we make it difficult, they will go somewhere else.

A customer who buys again will have a very different set of expectations than when they bought the first time. Conversion practices must be very different for our repeat customers.

Which people, and which organizations, are most influential in shaping your prospect’s thinking – and influencing their buying behavior?

People generally trust those they know.

Professionals trust other professionals.

Some social media review sites are not as reliable as we would like them to be. We just don’t know the quality of information. Global B2B will use online reviews that include friends and trusted colleagues, chat groups, and communities. Safety, for example, has dedicated social media communities. Same for procurement, operations, and maintenance.

Customers will spend time in our website. Make sure our content is correct. If our website says one thing and our salesperson says something different, that’s a disconnect that will erode trust.

In retail and CPG, what is the noise in the supply chain? In airlines, the customer experience is impacted by the parking garage which is out of the airline’s control. Supply chain realities and airport parking must be in our journey thinking if we want to fully understand the impact on the customer.

How can we stay intact with our business strategy?

First ask, “What is our go-to-market strategy?” A muddled answer is an indicator of a muddled strategy.

What are the key measures, metrics, and goals you are going to use to measure the success of your go-to-market model?

There is no cookie cutter approach. Metrics for a shoe retailer will be very different from a paramedic service.

Curb side pickup has become ordinary and even boring. Everybody does this now. How about real-time changes to pick up orders while our customer is waiting in their car with the engine running?

We must understand how far apart our customer expectations (goalpost #1) are from our offering (goalpost #2). Metrics should change from time to time to reflect evolving business needs.

Is there a final soundbite you would like to leave with the audience?

There sure is. That soundbite is data!!! Data can be numbers. Sometimes it is words. It can also be behavior. Data is anything that helps you glean insights.

A note on data protection regulations – they came about because companies were doing (and some continue to do) dumb things with personal data.