The quality of the customer journey is what determines the fate of any organisation. The experiences that your clients have before they even access your site or enter your offices matter. A sponsored ad on Facebook may be the first interaction you have with a customer." Similarly, the sign on your front door may be the reason a potential customer chooses to walk into your store or walk right by without a second glance. By correctly mapping out your customers' journeys across all channels and platforms you can greatly expand your customer base and maximise your ROI. Here are some valuable tips to do that:
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Surveys
Surveys are the means to the end. They help you understand your customers' wants, needs and goals. Surveys also allow you to gain insights on customer engagement patterns, how they found you, the devices they use, their preferred channels of interaction and the features they leverage in each one. You can also learn about the things that drive prospective clients to opt in or out of a transaction. The data that you gather from these surveys can then be channeled into developing certain aspects of your business's web interface and applications. It will also direct you on the content your marketing campaigns should contain and which type of users to target.
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Customer journey maps
While surveys provide you with the data, visualising this information in a comprehensive customer journey map is what makes understanding your customers' behaviours easier. Some of the information that can be noted in such maps includes the types of actions your customers take while on your website, the motivations behind them, the things that leave them hesitant, as well as the barriers stopping them from completing their purchases. Such data allows you to track which channels your customers use to engage with the organisation and guides you towards knowing what to do next in terms of optimising the customer journey.
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Customer profiles
Another technique which many organisations today choose to adopt is the option of creating personal customer profiles. While this is mainly leveraged by online shoppers, it allows organisations to understand the behavioural patterns of their customers who can choose to access their accounts anytime and anywhere. In turn, vendors can track their usage and personalise the shopping experience for them. Linking the activities of a single customer across multiple devices also reduces the amount of duplicate data results that appear in the organisation's analytics.