Do you know how customers engage with you across channels and perceive your end-to-end purchase journey?

Over the last couple of weeks, I shared articles that make the case for having a unified commerce aspiration and a go-to-market approach that complements this aspiration.? In other words, what is your unified commerce north star, and how will you achieve it??

I suggested that any unified commerce aspiration:

• Should deliver a seamless, end-to-end customer journey
• Is consistent with your brand
• Will meet or exceed your customers’ expectations
• Complements your enterprise strategy

In addition, I suggested that potential aspiration options sit on a wide continuum, ranging from a superior cross-channel commercial experience to a rich, cross-channel platform integrated into customers’ lifestyles (with a personalized/tailored experience sitting in between).? The “right” aspiration depends on your brand and your customers.

This sets the stage for a critical enabler for any unified commerce strategy, and that is having a distinctive customer journey.

I think we can all agree that customer journeys are not as simple as they once were.? The deeply engrained linear construct of awareness->consideration->trial->loyalty, while not completely irrelevant, undersells the complexity of how customers engage with brands today.

The popularity of social media, marketplaces, word of mouth, online reviews, the ubiquity and functionality of mobile devices, etc., mean that we need to deeply understand:

• How customers engage with you brand across these touchpoints and what a customer's path to purchase looks like as they meander through and between these touchpoints
• What customers' expectations are for each point of engagement along the journey (which are likely shaped, at least in part, by experiences with competitors and/or leading brands in the market that may not be “pure” competitors)
• What their perceptions are of the journey with your brand at each of these points, and specifically understanding where there are pinch-points along the journey
• How to optimize the journey, i.e., reducing or eliminating the most important pinch-points, and elevating the touchpoints that matter the most

To add a wrinkle to this: Different customer cohorts will engage with your brand in different ways – i.e., a new customer will have a different journey from a loyal customer and from a lapsed customer.?

Understanding and tailoring the journey to these key customer cohorts is critical.

Ok, so now what do we do?

Here are some suggestions:

• Align on 3-5 customer cohorts that matter most to your business. This could be defined behaviorally (i.e., new vs loyal vs lapsed), or attitudinally (i.e., the output of quantitative segmentation research).
• For each cohort, map their most likely journey with your brand.? This can be done via a combination of CRM data and qualitative research.
• Identify the steps that are most influential to driving customer behaviors or perceptions – each step is not created equally.
• Understand customer perceptions at each journey point – which are viewed favorably, and which present improvement opportunities??
• For points that are both important and present improvement opportunities, develop an action plan to improve them; for points that are important and are viewed favorably, amplify them as a point of differentiation versus peers
• Put in place a process to track your performance and refresh the journey itself overt time.? As part of this tracking process, carefully watch how your peers and leaders in other categories are evolving their journeys to ensure yours remains relevant and differentiated.

Of course, it’s impossible to highlight the universe of relevant considerations and possibilities in this article, but if this raises questions that you’d like a thought partner to help you answer, please reach out!

Columbus Consulting International has extensive experience in Unified Commerce with proven results, including specifically mapping and improving customer journeys.

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Columbus Consulting?delivers solutions that drive true value and have been?transforming the retail and CPG industries for over two decades. We are a?retail consulting company of?industry?experts.???Our approach is simple, if you do it, we do it. We are more than consultants; we are experienced practitioners who actually sat in our clients’ seats. We understand the challenges, know?what questions to ask and deliver the right solutions.??@ColumbusConsulting offers a unique, consumer-centric approach with an end-to-end perspective that bridges functional & organization silos from strategy to execution.?Our specialties include:?unified commerce, merchandising & category management, planning & inventory management,?sourcing & supply chain, data & analytics, accounting, finance & operations,?people & organization and information technology.?Let us know how we can help you.??To learn more, visit?COLUMBUSCONSULTING.COM

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