Without further guidance, customers will likely leave the company’s site (and the company-designed journey) for a search engine, which provides links to numerous articles, blogs, or competitor sites - any of which might better help the customer achieve their purpose and, as a result, prompt them to purchase elsewhere. What new offerings, journeys, or experiences might manufacturers of power tools create to enable customers to achieve this purpose?Ī traditional journey might start with ads or emails with images of a family building a treehouse that link to the company home page, and then expect the customer to discern what tools or other things they need. Some might want to build a treehouse with their kids but don’t yet have a specific model chosen or the plans, instructions, or tools to realize it. Many are first-time homeowners, unsure what tools they might need for planned improvements or unplanned repairs. Customer-centric journeys start and end with the outcome customers are trying to achieve: Their intended purpose.įor example, the pandemic has spurred many people to relocate from cities to suburbs. The question for these companies is: Which customer segments wake up with a burning desire to be acquired? Which think their lives would be so much better if only they could be retained or upsold? These journeys, too, are entirely company-centric. Many other companies have recognized that customers engage in multiple journeys over the lifetime of their relationship however, those different journeys are typically aligned to and named for specific outcomes, such as acquisition, retention, or upsell. The corralling pens customers pass through - awareness, interest, evaluation, intent, purchase, loyalty - are all in the context of a product and what the company wants, not what customers want. The least customer-centric companies often have a single customer journey that is essentially the vertical funnel turned on its side, like a livestock chute through which customers are prodded toward a fate of the company’s choosing. This practice is so engrained that we have a name for it: The funnel. They guide marketing or sales or service teams, perhaps inadvertently, to manipulate customers toward a business outcome. Every time a customer achieves their purpose, the company that enabled them to do so receives revenue or some other value (loyalty, advocacy, etc.).īut the vast majority of customer journeys I see focus on company outcomes. Customer-Centric, Not Company-CentricĬustomers happily serve as the engine of business outcomes when doing so is a byproduct of achieving their own intended outcomes. Regardless of one’s industry, whether B2C or B2B, the following three simple but critical factors will determine whether your post-pandemic customer journeys will help amplify or impede business growth. Companies that have adopted different approaches to customer journey and experience practices have seen more than six times greater growth in year-on-year profitability. But today, as we enter a new stage of profound change, those differences will be more important than ever to business performance. While using customer journeys to guide what teams build and how they operate is common practice, small differences in approach produce vastly different results. Your customer journeys must change to reflect your customers’ new preferences and behaviors. These considerations will influence not only what customers choose but also how they go about choosing. Spending loyalties will be cemented (or potentially lost to others) based on how well companies understand customers’ new priorities that were forged by the degree of uncertainty, fear, strife, or loss each individual experienced. As vaccinated millions step tentatively back into an in-person economy poised for growth, the relationships they had with companies they preferred before will resume - but on a trial basis.
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