Understanding the C.L.I.E.N.T. Journey

Most business people would tell you that the key to having a great and successful business hinges on the manner you treat your customers and on getting them to trust you. And since customers are the lifeblood of any business, it is important to maintain and nurture a healthy relationship with them.?

Customer experience is the key to success for any business. To ensure customer satisfaction, it is important to understand what their journey is from first touchpoint (initiation) to ultimate termination of the relationship. By understanding this journey, you can create a customer experience that engages and retains customers.?

A customer journey is a graphic representation of the different steps someone takes from discovering your product or service to using it and eventually leaving your business. By understanding who your customers are and where they're located, you can create an engaging experience that keeps them coming back for more. Additionally, by understanding customer needs and wants, you can design better products and services that meet people's needs. Creating a customer journey can also help you design better products and services.?

In this article, I'll walk you through understanding the different stages of a customer journey, and share tips on how to create a memorable experience for your customers from start to finish. I have created an acronym C.L.I.E.N.T. to present how this journey looks like.

C-reate Learning Opportunities. Our first encounter with a potential customer is the opportunity to make them aware of us and what we are offering. It is therefore important for us to continuously seek ways and avenues to educate our target market. But before we start sending out communication to our intended audience, it is important for us to have a clear picture of who they are, and more importantly, what are their needs and wants. Once you know this, you can create a customer persona that represents your target market. You can then start creating communication that would appeal to their persona.?

Find out where your target customers are. Reach out to them through different channels and create opportunities to educate them about your products and/or services. Use these learning opportunities to convince them that your products and/or services are a perfect match to satisfy their wants and needs.

L-and the Sale. Once your prospects are convinced that you hold the answer to their wants and needs, it's time for you to land the sale. Get them to sign up for what you are offering, purchase a product, or avail of a service. It is important, however, that at this stage, the client is fully appraised of everything that he needs to understand going into the relationship with you. Since getting a customer is akin to creating a partnership with them, at the very least, the customer should be made to feel that they are getting into a relationship that they will not regret.

I-ntegrate Into the System. Your relationship with your client does not end with the sale. In fact, it is just the beginning. You need to get them into a customer relationship management system to manage their experience with your company. It could be as simple as providing after-sales service, answering queries about the product they bought or the service they availed, or just getting them into a mailing list so that you can greet them on important dates and create a continuing communication relationship with them.

E-nable Delightful Experiences. Nowadays, especially with the advent of the Internet and social media, businesses are pitting against each other in a more highly competitive environment. Even after knowing what your customer wants and needs, satisfying their desires may not be enough to keep the relationship going. Customers are now more demanding and it is only when you give them experiences that delight them can you expect to gain their loyalty. A company's success depends on loyal and regular customers. In reality, current clients have a 60-70% chance of purchasing from you for business, whereas new prospects have a 5-20% chance.

N-urture Customer Lifetime Value. The total income a business may expect to earn from a typical client for as long as that person or account remains a client is known as customer lifetime value (CLV). Loyal customers are one thing, but getting to increase the lifetime value that you get from your loyal customers is another. Nurturing the relationship and getting your customers to become repeat buyers or to buy other products and/or services you are offering are the key to increasing their lifetime value. Cross-selling and upselling are two common ways to do this. It's a cross-selling win, for example, if you encourage a customer who just bought a new phone to get a protective case at the same time. When you encourage a customer to add on services or buy a more expensive model, you are upselling.

T-erminate the Relationship. Unfortunately, sometimes even good relationships end. There comes a point in the customer journey when they may have to end their ongoing relationship with you. For example, you may be supplying a service that is location-based. When they move to a new area that you don't cover or where your product is not available, they will terminate their subscription with you. Circumstances in the customer's financial status may also be a reason why they would need to terminate their relationship with you. At any rate, the important thing is to make sure that the cause of the termination is not because they lost confidence in you or that you are not able to meet their wants or needs anymore.

At The Davidic Growth Paradigm, we apply a framework that helps businesses identify their problems but more importantly, guides them into focusing on those problems that when solved will give them the right impact. By doing so, we are able to craft a transformative roadmap that can immediately give them results on their first year of implementation.

If you want to dive into the possibilities of digital transformation for your business but don't know where to start, feel free to chat me up here on LinkedIn or better still schedule a more extensive conversation through an online call. Check out the comments for a link to my calendar and find a schedule that fits your availability.?

*Cover image by Michal Jarmoluk from?Pixabay .

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