MarketStar Blog | Customer Success (2)

Key Takeaways

Ad ops was quite straightforward in the pre-digital days, with media companies selling ad spots that ran during TV programming. The landscape has changed.

B2B businesses should have instant access to the data of every customer and transaction. It’s necessary to find out who is buying what and the drivers for such decisions. 

Data-driven customer understanding, when shared across teams such as marketing, sales, and customer service, can help organizations move away from departmental silos to a cross-functional work set-up. 

It is also vital to carefully analyze first-party data of your customers as well as third-party data to create a tangible picture of how your customer base views your brand. Key Takeaways 

Key Insights

• On-demand delivery services are slowly becoming a part of everyday life, with half the urban population expecting same-day deliveries

• While such a model has innumerable benefits for businesses, it does come with its own set of challenges

• The inability to identify and properly address such challenges is one of the reasons why on-demand operations fail

• Any business looking to establish or grow its on-demand offerings must ensure that they are in tune with its current and future projections. They must weigh the pros and cons of such a model before putting a plan in motion

It’s 2022 and it has never been easier for customers to get what you want with just a few clicks. From a cup of coffee to a slice of pizza to a ride to a concert, there’s an app for everything. 

Needless to say, on-demand delivery services are booming. 

Websites and application-based digital platforms are major drivers of its rapid growth. A report by Statista highlights how the revenue from platform-to-consumer delivery is expected to reach US$96,864 million by 2024. 

Technological innovations are not the only drivers. 

Evolving customer expectations, the need for instant gratification, convenience, cost-efficiency, and the emerging gig economy markets are all playing an integral role in its boom.

With on-demand delivery services witnessing a rapid uptick among business owners, it is also vital to understand how such a business model can play a pivotal role in improving customer experience.

Hop on the Ride or Be Left Behind

One of the finest examples of a company nailing the on-demand service model is Instacart.

The American company revolutionized the grocery shopping industry by bringing groceries right to the customer’s doorstep. Instacart’s partnerships with big names such as Whole Foods, Costco, and others went a long way in piloting the company towards success.

Instacart’s tremendous success can be attributed to its focus on omnichannel to close the customer experience gap. This is also a leading reason why more and more businesses are making an on-demand delivery service model their first choice for a business model.

There are several opportunities to enhance the customer experience with an on-demand delivery business model. 

1. Customer Base: Compared to traditional brick-and-mortar outlets, on-demand delivery services help brands to reach out to a larger customer base, spanning both local and international locations.  

2. Access to Customer Insights: On-demand delivery services leverage advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to better understand the buying patterns of your customers. Consequently, this improves the chances of upselling and cross-selling products.

3. Customer Loyalty: More than 57% of respondents in the 2021 Loyalty Barometer Report by Merkle said they stayed loyal to a brand despite the events of 2020. Tech-savvy brands that are taking advantage of logistic tools to enhance customer experience and provide personalization are benefiting from a customer base who act as brand advocates.

4. Reduced Manual Dependencies: Speed and the ability to ensure quick turnaround time are important facets of an on-demand delivery service model. This requires the automation of manual delivery processes. These include delivery scheduling, task allocation, route planning, roster management, and dispatching.

What are the Biggest Challenges in On-demand Delivery Services?

It is always a good idea to keep up with changing market dynamics. However, some businesses may find it a daunting exercise to identify the challenges of an on-demand delivery service model.

While it is difficult to start something new and capitalize on opportunities, understanding the obstacles can help you find ways to resolve them.

1. Inventory Management

A report by Statista highlights that 56% of global retailers experienced moderate disruption in their supply chain in 2020, while 12% faced heavy collapse. 

With the global supply chain making a brand-new start, it is vital for manufacturers to re-architect an existing business model towards an on-demand delivery service app to stay afloat. 

Addressing such challenges in customer experience means designing effective, resilient strategies by investing analytics in the supply chain management system. 

2. Real-Time Visibility

Customers want to see prices for various fulfillment options at checkout as well as view order progress in real-time.

Logistic providers require visibility into contracted fleets to ensure that Service Level Agreements (SLA) between shippers and consignees are being met. Similarly, retailers need visibility into not just inventory, but also how customers are interacting with the brand.

As challenging as it may seem, this instant, granular level of visibility across stakeholders requires reliable integration between systems as well as effective information sync, so that the data is easily digestible at any point.

Many names in e-commerce fulfillment have achieved this level of visibility in order to close the customer experience gaps. Think of Amazon, FedEx, and Walmart. 

3. Fitting In

Consumer behaviors have changed since the pandemic disrupted industries across every sector. 

Today, people rely heavily on new online shopping experiences. 

In fact, 60-70% of consumers are shopping in an omnichannel way with social media becoming a new form of window shopping, according to a McKinsey research. 

We also see a focus on value-based purchasing, convenience, and availability. Where to shop, the quality of products and the purpose of purchasing have all become the drivers of consumer decision-making. 

To compete in such market dynamics, brands can find a better fit for themselves through an on-demand delivery service model.

4. Automation, All the Way

A leading issue with the on-demand delivery model is that there is a very short period between when customers place their orders and when those orders are sent out.

With over 27% of shoppers abandoning their carts when delivery options are not fast enough, there is little room for errors with on-demand delivery.

Such services work when all processes have been automated to be completely seamless and on time. Solving CX challenges in on-demand delivery, along with adopting a mobile-first CX strategy, will be successful with the automation of logistics. 

5. Competitive Market

Despite the clear wins, the on-demand delivery service model is not suitable for every industry and geography.

You should carefully select your niche based on factors such as your expertise, tech background, users’ needs, budget, and legislative and regulatory framework.

Additionally, the model that you deem fit for your business might require tweaks, now and then.

Starbucks is a fine example of this approach.

The Seattle-based company changed its reward program to enable people to earn points through payment methods. Previously, this was only possible through the Starbucks card. And it paid off. The company’s active member base increased to a record 21.8 million in Q1’21.

6. Maintaining Customer Satisfaction

A Mckinsey report shows that over 60% of US consumers have experienced out-of-stock items in the last three months of 2021. When this happened, only 13% waited for items to be restocked. 

To stay in demand, brands should reconsider their offerings. 

A strong brand image and corporate reputation will go a long way in creating a credible online environment where your customers will be more inclined to keep coming back. 

7. Third-Party Delivery Services 

On-demand delivery service means the ability to meet customer demand, irrespective of the time or day. 

Addressing CX challenges in this model requires you to react quickly to customer needs. This is where third-party delivery solutions come in. 

Adding third-party delivery solutions to your existing fleet management tools will help you optimize your on-demand deliveries, enhance brand awareness, and help you deliver a stellar customer experience while keeping customer satisfaction on a high note. 

8. Enhanced Customer Communication

With customer expectations at an all-time high, businesses must put customers at the heart of what they do.

The success of an on-demand delivery service also depends on how well you relay messages to the customer. Delivery apps can give your customers different levels of visibility into their order’s status and location.

Additionally, look for solutions that can push notifications to customers when their orders leave the warehouse or to the store when they arrive.

It’s All About Convenience

The success of any on-demand delivery service can define the value of a brand. 

Personalization, convenience, and good performance, mixed with a dash of strong branding, will help you not only close the customer experience gap but also enable you to win repeat customers. 

This is the second installment in our series on Unique Challenges where we look into the hurdles faced by businesses in different industries and their game-changing impact on business growth.

Key Takeaways

One of the most effective ways to build brand credibility is to craft long-term customer relationships by understanding their customer journey. According to a PwC study on the future of CX, 1 in 3 customers will walk away after just one bad experience, ensuring a smooth and streamlined customer service journey needs to be a top priority for businesses. 

Key Insights

No matter which industry you’re in, the issue of customer experience is likely your focus area for 2022 and beyond. 

Customer experience was rising to the surface, even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But the disruptions and uncertainties brought on by multiple lockdowns has made one thing very clear: people want to be heard. 

This concept forms the core of customer experience. 

People want to be seen and appreciated by the companies they buy from. They want these companies to alleviate their pain points and offer solutions that are tailor-made for their needs. 

Solving customer pain points becomes a critical factor of success in this context. 

Key Insights

• Customer experience has become the top priority for businesses and the reason is simple: companies that focus on customer experience reduce churn and increase revenues.

• Effective customer success strategies offer a way to significantly improve customer experience

• An effective customer success strategy requires supporting your customer at every step in their journey to get the result they want. This begins even before the sale is made and sticking with them until they achieve their desired result

It’s no surprise because customer experience has taken center stage in the current business landscape. It has become one of the key differentiators for any brand. 

Improving customer experience should be your prime focus to make your brand stand out. 

When 74% of customers are somewhat likely to buy based on experiences alone, customer experience improvement can have a major impact on your bottom line. 

Considering the mounting need to improve customer experience, customer success has become more critical than ever. Although there are differences between the two, they are inevitably connected. 

The customer is at the heart of both disciplines—and each shares the objective of helping organizations understand customers better. 

Consequently, when you focus on customer success, you make progress in enhancing customer experience. 

7 Practical Customer Success Tactics to Improve Your Customer Success Program & Transform Your CX 

1. Build Buyer Personas

A staggering 90% of organizations are able to understand their customers better by using personas, with 82% of them having improved their value proposition. 

Buyer personas are often considered a marketing tool. 

It helps the marketing team figure out what potential customers are looking for. However, the same information can be used as a customer success tactic, creating an improved experience throughout the entire customer journey. 

With better personas, you know what your customers are going through, the problems they face, their communication preferences, their pain points, and so on. You can then tailor your interactions to suit them, and in the process, improve the customer experience. 

2. Personalized Customer Interactions

Twilio Segment’s The State of Personalization 2021 Report highlights that 60% of consumers will become repeat buyers after a personalized purchasing experience. 

The first step in personalization is identifying each customer’s unique goals. 

If your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) can show your customers that they understand the unique situations and desires of each individual, you will build a base of customers who want to stick with you in the long term. 

If a new feature can help your customer, have your CSM call that customer and talk to them about how it will specifically help their business. You can also send them an email congratulating them on an accomplishment that you saw in the news. 

3. Guided Onboarding

Onboarding is perhaps the most critical stage for any B2B company. 

You can smoothen out the shift from acquisition to onboarding by having internal operations involved during the last leg of the sales process. Similarly, your sales team can stay involved during the beginning of the onboarding stage. 

Remember, your client has shared a lot of useful information with your sales team and they are excited about their decision to work with you. You can help buyers by having one person oversee all onboarding activities and ensure that these are carried out in a timely manner. 

4. Proactive Outreach

Customer success takes a proactive approach. 

Your customers should have your solutions before they run into a problem. Thus, you need to get them the information they need before they ask for it. 

You can enhance your customer experience through proactive outreach.

A leading example of this type of approach is the welcome email series. You get these when you sign up for a free trial. Such emails include communications encouraging you to use the tool or service to its maximum potential. It might also contain tips on how to get the most out of the service. 

Take this approach a notch higher by letting your customers know about industry trends, and even, changes to your products. 

5. Chase the “A-ha” Moment 

It will be rare for any customer to immediately understand the value of your product. 

But you don’t have to wait around for them to figure it out. Actively showcase your best product features during the onboarding process and work with them through its implementation. 

Don’t forget to have a full grasp of your customer’s expectations in order to successfully chase their ‘a-ha’ moment. It will be advantageous if you can anticipate their needs at every stage of their engagement. 

6. Make Use of Educational Content

Educational marketing materials like eBooks, case studies, and others can help you bring in leads and at the same time drive solid returns. 

Publishing educational materials about your product and its features should be a part of your customer success strategy. When you post content about issues your target audience deals with daily, you establish a stronger relationship and pave the way for brand loyalty, even before they become your customers. 

Later, this will help you not just minimize any potential roadblocks people might find themselves in when using your product, but it will also create a more user-friendly customer experience in the long term. 

7. Get Feedback

It is easy to get caught up in high-tech tools that monitor keyword searches and web metrics. But an effective feedback system can be as simple as asking your customers what they need. 

Once you have collected all the feedback, you’ll need to implement changes before customer churn becomes a problem. 

Furthermore, training and offhand conversations can be excellent routes to get a better understanding of the gaps in your product, thereby helping you to enhance and deliver a superlative customer experience.

Final Thoughts

While each company has a different journey, it’s vital to commit yourself to customer success. 

You can start by implementing any of these strategies with the relevant adjustments and necessary tweaks. 

The entire customer lifecycle benefits from a customer success mindset. And when you start making improvements, you will see a marked difference in how your customers are benefiting from your product or solution. 

Key Insights

• In today’s competitive world, customers expect immediate, transparent, and accurate delivery of their purchase

• Customer experience has become the key to building loyalty and trust in on-demand delivery services

• Brands can make it a reality by putting the right technology in place. This will help them to communicate efficiently and strike deeper connections with customers. 

On-demand delivery services have witnessed steady growth over the years, charting the path for innovation and success.

With the pandemic, the steady expansion gave way to a sudden explosion in demand. 

A report by IBM states that the wide-scale disruptions of the past two years have powered a shift away from stores to online shopping by close to five years. 

This sudden growth of the e-commerce ecosystem has brought sharp focus to the capabilities of on-demand delivery services. 

An on-demand delivery service can be described as a business that provides an order to a customer within hours or even minutes. Many SaaS providers have changed the way on-demand delivery works. Take DoorDash and Uber for instance. 

What these services require is hyperfocus on creating a better customer experience from the customer’s perspective. 

But before we jump into approaches that can be employed to be customer-obsessed, let’s understand why it is vital. 

Why is Customer Obsession Important?

Customer obsession is essentially a business that puts its focus on delivering the most value to its ideal customers. Connectivity is the key. So are user interfaces, customer service channels, top-down and bottom-up team communication, and customer feedback cycles. 

As customer obsession entails a consistent effort to better the buyer’s journey, your clients are more dependent on you and your brand. Consequently, they begin augmenting their frequency of purchases, and in the process, advocate your brands to more people. 

What is the Difference Between Customer Service & Customer Obsession?

Think of customer service as the individual interactions your customers have with your company. This includes the assistance they are provided with before, during, and after their purchase. 

On the other hand, customer obsession is your customer’s overall journey with your company, and how it made them feel. The overall customer experience is the foundation on which they will talk about you to people in their lives. 

Some of the most successful companies across the globe are focusing on becoming customer-obsessed brands. Take Disney for instance. 

Disney goes above and beyond to create a world-class customer experience. And it’s reflected in everything they do–from treating all guests to their parks as VIPs to cutting-edge training for their staff. 

How Do You Achieve Customer Obsession?

In most cities, on-demand delivery is now a part of everyday life, making the customer experience a critical game-changer. 

A common assumption is that the customer experience journey starts when the customer has placed the order. However, the customer starts interacting with the logistic provider much before that. 

To help you navigate the ecosystem, we have listed down steps that you can incorporate into your on-demand delivery for a better customer experience. 

Step #1. Pre-purchase Customer Experience

Your customer’s expectations begin before the order is even placed. Suggest the best possible slots to them but the flexibility of making a choice should rest with the customer. 

Automation will allow you to provide instant quotes to your users. However, it is necessary that you have those delivery times and convenient fulfillment options set up in the first place. 

Step #2. Synced-up Process

From the moment an order is placed to the time it reaches your customer’s door, your delivery process should be coordinated and digitized end-to-end. 

This will enable you to have visibility over your operations. When you have visibility across the entire last-mile flow, you are better equipped to utilize your existing resources to complete demand deliveries. 

Step #3. Discounted Delivery Services

Cart abandonment is at an all-time high. Why? Because 40% of customers will leave a shopping cart if there is no free shipping, according to the survey of European customers by Sendcloud. 

When consumers are increasingly driven to choose brands that offer discounted rates, make way for such a model in your own on-demand delivery service. 

Step #4. Third-Party Services

On-demand delivery entails the ability to meet your customer’s demand, irrespective of the time or day. You can enhance your capabilities by adding third-party delivery solutions to your existing fleet management tools. 

By doing this, you can also enhance brand awareness and sustain your customers’ satisfaction. 

Step #5. Automation

Automation during the purchasing stage is just a small facet of its potential. 

Automation must be embedded into every aspect of your on-demand delivery process to augment customer experience. 

An automated system will make the right decisions based on business rules pertaining to cost, volume, and other goals. It can also help you to determine whether the delivery should be done in-house or outsourced to third parties. 

Step #6. The Human Element 

While automation can free your teams from more repetitive tasks, it is important to remember that your customers would want a human touch to get their queries solved. 

So, you can make use of chatbots who will take care of your customers’ queries, but make sure to design the automated system in a humane way with the possibility for your customers to speak to your personnel at the end. 

The Way Ahead

On-demand delivery services are more than just offering an app to customers. 

It is about restructuring your entire last-mile delivery operations for enhanced customer experience and fast and quick fulfillment. 

With customer behavior changing, putting speed and convenience at the top of the list, customer-obsessed companies are recalibrating their model to deliver a smooth last-mile experience. 

This is the first installment in our series on Customer Obsession where we look into the benefits of having a customer-obsessed mindset and how it will help businesses understand what’s motivating their customers. 

Head over to Growth Hub at MarketStar and discover more insights. 

Key Insights

• The fashion industry is under enormous pressure to provide better shopping experiences, requiring a thorough evaluation of strategies and models to improve customer journeys efficiently and cost-effectively

• Data and immersive technologies can pave the way for more interactive experiences and help brands pivot their business strategies

• Closing the customer experience gap is an ongoing process, one which every business must consider for long-term success

The consumer psyche is changing rapidly.

When it comes to improving customer experience, tech companies have taken the lead, raised customer expectations of speed and convenience and streamlined the customer decision journey. 

But retail customer experience lags. Across industry, the process is far more fragmented. 

Customers often struggle to shop based on their ideas, desire, or inspirations. 

A survey by Qualtrics highlights that while 75% of consumers have high expectations for digital shopping experiences, only 63% believe that brands are delivering on them. 

Solving the many CX challenges requires brands to digitize and reassess how it would foster better customer relationships.

What is Digitization in Fashion?

Many experts feel digitization is primarily a social phenomenon, offering domains through which we can restructure our digital communications. 

Others take a more business-centric approach where digitization comes with the potential of changing the business model and providing new revenue and value-producing opportunities. 

In the case of retail customer experience, both these analogies are applicable. 

Digitization has opened new ways for consumers to interact and engage with their favorite brands. It has also enabled brands to change their ways of retail execution to adapt to the new realities as well as new restrictions.

What are the Challenges in the Retail Fashion Market?

The global fashion industry continues to be the largest industry in the B2C e-commerce market with an estimated global size of just over $750 billion (as of 2020). 

To succeed, it is incumbent for fashion retailers to close the customer experience gap by anticipating and delivering on customer preferences at every touchpoint. 

From addressing changing consumer preferences to mergers and acquisitions, there’s a lot in store for companies in the fashion and apparel industry to tackle as they move forward. 

Below, we have highlighted the top 5 CX challenges for the fashion and retail segment. 

1. Rise of D2C E-commerce

It is likely that consumers will continue shopping online in 2022 even with pandemic restrictions being eased and marketplaces reopening to normal capacity. 

For many fashion brands that have traditionally relied on their department store channel to reach out to customers, it means a change in strategy and a move towards a direct-to-consumer model. 

While e-commerce provided brands a pathway to better understand their customers’ preferences and uncover pain points, they would need to re-evaluate their sales channels and recalibrate their relationships with legacy brick-and-mortar stores.

2. Bringing in Social Values

A study by Euromonitor International highlights that more and more consumers expect brands to be purpose-driven. In simple terms, brands should support the “triple bottom line”- people, planet, and profits. 

Leading a fashion company and providing a stellar retail customer experience in a post-pandemic world requires a broader mindset to create strategies that drive environmental, charitable, and other social causes. 

Closing the customer experience gap would be incomplete without organizations capitalizing on the transparency of their socially conscious, environmentally friendly, and ethical sourcing practices.

3. Leveraging Immersive Tech

The pandemic pushed brands to engage and experiment with immersive technologies to provide customers with a physical experience they used to enjoy at stores, and in the process, close the CX gap. 

Virtual clothing, digital catwalks, and online showrooms came into play. 

Going forward, brands must maximize such opportunities. Digital technologies offer a quick route for apparel companies to create a collection and present it. 

The digital fashion campaign by Selfridges (a UK-based chain of high-end department stores) is a prime example of how immersive tech can be employed to rethink the future of fashion and retail radically. 

The campaign explores the domain through the medium of digital art, created by 3D digital fashion designer, Cat Taylor. 

4. Boosting the Buying Experience

It’s a hypercompetitive market for any sector. 

Fashion companies will need to be creative in the way they offer their goods. With the D2C model becoming more dominant, it is incumbent for this industry to develop online shopping capabilities and use AR and VR in more ways. 

Additionally, brands must look at leveraging digital transformation solutions for processes such as delivery and returns for better speed and accuracy. 

Adding to their arsenal will be social media. 

Brands that don’t capitalize on it would be left behind in striking long-lasting customer relationships and building brand loyalty. 

5. Overcoming the After Sales Barrier

A macro-challenge for fashion companies to address to enhance retail customer experience is the after-sales process. 

Organizations need to facilitate smooth exchange and return processes as well as institute open communication policies if they want to build better relationships with customers. 

This is where conversational commerce comes into play. While born with the primary objective of stimulating sales, it is not restricted to that role. 

How Do You Improve Customer Experience (CX) in Fashion and Retail?

While the pandemic disrupted the industry, forcing sales to drop to zero in months, there is a positive side to look forward to. 

The challenging period has also offered a learning curve to the sector to understand how to employ technology and maximize benefits from the minimum. 

We have listed five strategic steps that the industry should take to close the customer experience gap. 

Step #1. Make Way for a Stronger Foundation

It is time to simplify processes and consolidate your core systems to improve customer experience and achieve success in today’s digital competitive marketplace. 

Your first step is to eliminate data fragmentation and duplication to create efficiency and deliver real-time information. 

Take a one-system approach by putting your back-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and order & inventory systems into one platform. 

Step #2. Build Your Digital Platform

Now that your foundation is in place, you can seamlessly connect more modern channels with any part of your business. Unified with your back-end systems, an e-commerce platform will serve as the base for your digital platform. 

With instant access to inventory, you will provide accurate inventory levels to shoppers while delivering relevant cross-sell and upsell merchandising offers. 

Step #3. Make Use of Data-Driven Insights 

You cannot manage if you don’t measure it. 

Fashion and retail companies that have integrated data into their planning, merchandising, and supply chain processes are not only witnessing tangible results but are also closing the customer experience gap. 

In fact, data-driven strategies for stock and sales optimization led to a 10% increase in sales, according to McKinsey research. The same study highlights how data-centric models have streamlined inventory management, improved returns forecasting, and optimized transport networks. 

Step #4. Extend Your Digital Capabilities to the Store and Beyond 

Your e-commerce platform, which is now tied to your back-end systems, will also unify your online and offline channels by supporting a modern Point of Sale (POS) system. 

This essentially means that your customer journeys can easily transition between online and offline platforms. Sales associates can quickly leverage inventory and product data for an enhanced in-store experience. 

Other channels, such as pop-up stores, catalogs, and call centers, will also seamlessly connect with your back-end systems, allowing your shoppers to truly buy from any touchpoint. 

Step #5. Personalize It

A survey by Twilio Segment highlights that only 60% of consumers find their retail shopping experience to be personalized. 

While e-commerce does offer a way ahead for brands to customize their customer journeys, such strategies usually focus on improving the shopper’s current visit. 

But technological innovation is giving a whole new dimension to personalization. Retailers can utilize a customer’s current shopping behavior to generate profiles, complete with their brand affinities, to point towards their future purchasing habits. 

Putting Customers at the Center

Customer behavior and preferences keep evolving, but the pandemic has created a revolutionary change in their purchasing habits.

Convenience takes the top spot on the list. In fact, 73% of customers are ready to spend a premium on convenience, according to Deloitte’s Global State of Consumer Tracker.

While the tide of digital innovation does not mean the permanent closure of in-store experiences, it does require brands to focus on building customer-centric strategies for a more immersive omnichannel approach. 

Introduction

The past couple of years, there's been a remarkable shift in how companies perceive and prioritize their customers, evolving from a mere transactional relationship to a full-blown commitment to being “customer-obsessed”. And this is true across any landscape, customer success included. From being a mere support function to being recognized as a strategic pillar for business growth, this domain has undergone quite the transformation. Gone are the days when customer interactions were merely part of a routine; the current landscape champions the art of cultivating lasting relationships. 

Key Takeaways:

• To gain loyal and long-term customers, you need to design a journey map that provides a superb experience

• Providing an incredible journey can turn someone who was casually browsing your website into an advocate who offers valuable referrals

• Journey mapping via pipeline management enables your customers to experience what it’s like to interact with your company

• Pipeline velocity refers to the speed with which leads move through the sales pipeline

Knowing what’s on your customer’s mind can be tricky and challenging. When you think you’ve accounted for their needs, their requirements change, and new buying trends emerge.

Ever wondered why a customer spends hours on your website researching your product/service to close the tab? Why does it take so many steps to get from point A to point B when it should ideally take just one?

Well, the problem could be in your customer journey mapping – you probably don’t have a clear understanding of your prospect’s journey to purchasing your product/service.

What is Prospect Journey Mapping?

Customer journey mapping or prospect journey mapping is a visual representation of how potential customers perceive your brand and how they interact with your product/service. It helps them gain insight into the challenges they’re facing.

The journey mapping aims to understand the needs and resolve pain points at all touchpoints (an instance where your prospect can form an opinion of your company) across the customer lifecycle.

How Prospect Journey Mapping Helps Drive Pipeline Velocity?

Prospect journey mapping enables you to get in your customers’ shoes and experience what it feels like to engage with your brand.

It helps you understand the good and the bad your brand offers, while the insights you gain help personalize the customer experience.

Before we explore the benefits of customer journey mapping and how it helps drive pipeline velocity, let’s find out what pipeline velocity is. 

What is Pipeline Velocity?

Pipeline velocity is the speed at which qualified leads move through a sales pipeline and eventually become customers.

The Benefits:

• Journey mapping helps you understand the role of different touchpoints and see how all customer interactions influence each other.

• By mapping out the prospect journey, you can understand what is interesting to your customers about your brand and what is turning them away. 

• It helps identify roadblocks to reduce customer pain points and improve user experience.

• Mapping out the customer’s journey helps you understand the channels they visit and what they’re trying to do at each touchpoint.

• Journey mapping helps you improve your customer retention rate. According to American Express, 33% of customers switch brands after just one poor experience.

Components in a Prospect Journey Map

A prospect journey map compiles your customer’s experience with your brand and combines the information into a map.

By understanding this relationship between your customers and your brand, you can build your touchpoints for the most effective journey mapping process.

The Purchase Process: This element defines the path/stages you intend for your customers to take to reach a specific goal. Using this path, you can start listing your stages in the right order.

Customer Actions: This component details what your potential customers do at each stage of the purchase process and explores the different ways they might reach their goals.

Adding Emotions: Your customers are looking for solutions to solve a problem. Adding a range of emotions to the journey map can help improve their opinion about your brand and turn them into brand advocates.

Pain Points: Adding pain points to the journey map helps identify the exact stage where your customers are facing issues and work out solutions.

How to Create a Prospect Journey Map

Before you start creating the journey map, you need to ask a few questions yourself – Why are you creating a map in the first place? What experience will it offer? Who is it about?

Based on these questions, you may want to create a buyer persona.

The next step is to interview prospects for direct feedback. A few good questions are:

• How did you hear about us?

• What attracted you to our website?

• On a scale of 1 to 5, how easy was it for you to navigate our website?

Based on the feedback and research, find out where your customers can interact with you on your website; list all the touchpoints your prospects are and should be using.

Determine all the elements your journey map needs to include and identify your resources and the ones you need.

Once you have designed your map, take the customer journey yourself first – this ensures that you are providing a valuable experience.

Finally, you can make the appropriate changes to your map to achieve goals.

5 Best Practices for Customer Journey Mapping

• Set a clear goal for the journey map to improve the customer buying experience.

• Turn customer pain points into business terms that your customer success team can understand and act upon.

• Create customer journey maps for different buyer personas based on demographics and psychographic.

• Update the journey map every time your product/service offers changes. Even a small tweak, like removing an additional field in the form, can significantly impact your customer journey.

• Make the prospect journey map accessible to cross-functional teams, as they are not effective in a silo.

Delight your Customers at Every Stage

Building an effective prospect journey map can help your brand create strong relationships with them. Once you understand their experience with your business, you can provide great delight at every stage of their journey.

Whether you’re optimizing your existing customer journey or exploring a new business opportunity to serve their unrecognized needs, start mapping the future of customer success in your business with the help of experts.

Bonus Takeaway:

Mapping customer journeys can be difficult for the marketing team, especially if they don’t know how and where to start.

So, here’s a handy worksheet designed to help savvy marketers chart their customers’ buying journeys to enhance their overall buying experience.

Print it out, pin it on your desk, and share it with other departments to ensure that everyone is consistently working towards attaining your customer experience vision.