Customers are running away!? Analyze the paths of the Customer Journey, and you’ll know how to keep them

Customer loyalty is the result of a great many factors. The first association is satisfied with the product or service. However, it is worth realizing that professional performance only affects the Customer Experience. If you want to take care of all the decisive aspects, you must first identify them and then visualize them. That’s why you need to create a Customer Journey Map. With it, you will enhance the positive Customer Experience at every point of contact with the brand. Each of these points is important – it determines whether a customer will make a future transaction with your company or a competitor or abandon the idea of fulfilling this order altogether. 

Customer Experience in the process of interaction with the brand

Would you like your customer to be constantly satisfied when interacting with your company? Well, sure! That was a rhetorical question. But pay attention to the word “constantly.” It has more meaning than you think. 

Why? Because it’s not just about making the recipient happy once they have placed the order and received their product. Often only the most persistent get to this stage. Real success is about making customers happy each time they meet the brand. For example, when they see an advertisement or browse a website. 

These moments make the customer decide to interact further or reject the proposal.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing all the points of contact between the recipient and your brand. The basis of Customer Journey Mapping is:

• stepping into the role of the customer, 
• getting to know their perspective, 
• identifying the strengths of the process, 
• listing all weak elements for further optimization.

Why perform Customer Journey Mapping? To minimize any uncertainty on the part of the recipient, as it leads to abandonment of further interaction, including placing orders. The company often needs to realize it before losing leads or regular customers.

Mapping the path of the Customer Journey is an excellent starting point for creating a new process in which users intuitively go through the stages of interaction with the brand. Their satisfaction can come from a good match between an ad and their interests, an interesting – relevant message, communication that resonates with their lifestyle, an easy way to process an order, getting quick information on delivery times, or finally, getting an excellent quality product or fantastic service backed by professional customer service. If each stage is perfect – your potential customer will become a returning customer, and you can count on much positive feedback – of course, if you prepare such a form of a survey, that will not cause users the slightest trouble.

Creating a Customer Journey Map in practice

How do you create Customer Journey maps? It’s worth learning from the examples of other companies. So let’s look at the mapping created for one of the leading airlines in the UK. Digital Forms conducted a complete digital transformation there, in which Customer Journey Mapping was an indispensable element. 

The process consisted of the following several steps:

Identifying the stages of the customer’s path in the process of their contact with the company

The first critical moment is when the idea of traveling arises. The customer then thinks about where, when, and how long they want to go. These are very fresh ideas, and it is worth keeping them alive by generating more and more interest. A considerable role is then played by redirecting the customer to more pages, where he will find such content that will make him sure that staying at home makes no sense at all. The most important thing is the journey!

In the second stage, there is already awareness and encounter with the brand. The next – considering a purchase, and only then – the transaction and realization of the service. Equally important is the identification of the “post-purchase zone,” which has a not inconsiderable impact on the audience’s loyalty and their different decisions.

In the case of airlines, we identified such elements as inspiration to travel, analysis of destination destinations, searching for an offer, booking, and purchasing tickets, arranging the departure (including getting to the airport or check-in), the flight – including in-flight services, followed by baggage claim, deciding to use the service again or giving positive recommendations.

Mapping the customer’s points of contact with the brand

This step involves identifying all the contact points between the audience and the company. In the case of the passenger, this is the airline’s website at the time he verifies information about possible destinations; it is also the airline’s social media ads, the ticket reservation system, the airport, and the various stages of preparing for the flight, contact with the cabin crew during the flight, or revisiting the website and social media after the trip is over.

Analyze customer emotions and needs and identify problems and areas for improvement

As an entrepreneur, you know the role of positive and negative customer emotions in sales. So it’s all about doing your best to make them positive at every point of contact between the customer and the brand. In turn, precise identification of needs will allow you to prepare an accurate response and redirect the customer to the next stage. 

In the case of airline passengers, one of the first needs was convenience in the travel planning process. Customers need more time to casually browse dozens of offers and configure the entire trip independently. Ready-made prompts and suggestions lead the customer by the hand, bringing him closer to making the transaction work much better.

A common emotion that accompanied passengers was fear and uncertainty. Customers needed to receive notifications to know if the flight was well booked. They needed to find out where their luggage was and how to check it. They didn’t know all the options for getting to the airport and needed to be sufficiently informed about whether they had access to additional services. 

Creating a Customer Journey Map helped the company identify emotions and demands, which was the starting point for making changes. As a result, the company ensured a positive customer experience long before and after the flight.

Developing a Customer Experience improvement strategy

Identification of stages and specific points of contact between the customer and the brand or needs is necessary for developing an experience improvement strategy. Thanks to them, the brand can implement solutions that naturally respond to market demand, thus creating a base for its development.

In the case of airlines, the strategy included several recommendations. Among them, it is worth highlighting personalized sub-sites. Thanks to the information collected on the destinations where the passenger was previously interested, the company prepared dedicated hints to interest the recipient and made them make a quicker decision. A further step was personalized promotions to fly to the destinations the customer was most interested in. Thus, the brand caused far fewer customers to abandon its services and more to decide to order. It’s worth noting that these activities still need to cover the core of the business – flight. The company began fighting for customers long before the launch.

In addition, the airline has introduced several conveniences, such as booking tickets with a fixed price option. They took care of notifications of price increases if the customer was to make payment made too close to the departure date (less than seven days), which also prompted faster purchases. 
The company revised the ticket booking system to make it as intuitive as possible, with notifications containing all the information of interest to customers.

Customer Experience with the company vs. revenue growth

After the analysis, it turned out that the airline leader had excellent flight service but could have developed better all earlier and later points of contact between passengers and the brand. 

Such a customer service system prevented the company from achieving turnover increases and worsened its position. 

The Customer Experience on the flight was gorgeous. However, the travel arrangements could have been more intuitive. Customers needed to receive adequate information about getting to the airport, where to leave their luggage, or confirmation of their flights. The very act of booking tickets created a vast amount of problems. All of this contributed to poor comfort and a negative Customer Experience at many stages of travel, which, after all, does not begin when the plane takes off, but much earlier. 

As a result, the brand received bad reviews and low ratings. Subsequent improvement of these points and a focus on improving the Customer Experience, on the other hand, contributed to better brand perception and increased customer satisfaction.

As a result, focusing on Customer Experience has become a key goal for the airline in its quest to grow revenue and strengthen its position in the market.

Create a Customer Journey Map, and you will increase orders

Customer Experience research is all about not focusing on the obvious. If you’re repairing cars, you’ve undoubtedly already handled great mechanics with talent and excellent qualifications. 

However, are you complaining about too few potential customers? Check how you communicate with those who have yet to contact you. Know that there are many more of them than you may think. Many factors, such as positive customer feedback, influence their decision. So please encourage them to provide good information about your company and make it easy for them to leave reviews online. And while you’re at it, verify how you communicate on your website or social media.

Analyze the possible needs your customers face before making a choice. They need to know how long the service will take, how they will find out about its progress when they know the exact cost, and whether the repair will be professional. The fewer doubts a customer has, the more points for you.

Ensure your customers have a good relationship with your company’s employees and review all aspects of your after-sales service. Verify the appearance of your company and, at every stage, ensure that you formulate conclusions from the customer’s perspective. 

Regardless of the type of industry, a positive Customer Experience must be at the center of the business. The key to success is not just maximizing satisfaction at one point – during service delivery. The essence lies in recognizing customer expectations along the entire path of the Customer Journey.

If you are looking for a professional partner with whom to create a Customer Journey Map and carry out digital transformation – contact DigitalForms

Join us for a free consultation.