1. Origin
Until not many years ago, the success of companies was based on capturing benefits from economies of scale. From “in any color you want, as long as it is black” to super proto-personalization in less than 100 years. Perhaps to future generations, for certain products, it will be necessary to explain what “mass production” means.
Faced with this, our customer has always “traveled.” What happens is that, in a “product-oriented” model and in a competitive environment of less complexity than the current one, its trajectory could seem irrelevant to analyze since the potential advantages were not perceived. Customer Centric environments have dynamited this approach, and what was previously a journey of small (or directly elliptical) steps is now a methodical process based on subdivisions (touchpoints) and their individualized and concatenated analysis.
2. Access to knowledge
We have heard it several times: knowledge is the main asset of an organization. Knowledge is the most important strategic resource, and the ability to generate/acquire it and – above all – the ability to apply it under a business approach allows us to obtain competitive advantages over the competition. And speaking of knowledge: when we want to know something… why not ask our current client? It is a fundamental source of internal knowledge of the organization and a basis on which to model the Customer Journey Map not only in terms of Loyalty/Retention, but also at the level of attracting new customers. Knowledge often already exists: it is there, but we should seek and find, making emerge it and exploited.
3. Products and services vs. Value delivered
The world divided into “Products” and “Services” will soon be a vision only available in Marketing manuals from the ’90s. We are faced with a mix of Products and Services whose value lies in the combination of the tangible delivered and/or service provided PLUS a delivered experience. This experience can act as a trigger for the purchase (beyond the tangible acquired) or be purely a commodity. This fact takes on even more value, for example in organizations whose asset is not (for now) the manufacturing of the product itself but rather its distribution. Where does the value delivered by Amazon and its excellence in service reside, which we already take for granted?
4. Perception
If we previously talked about “value” and “experience delivered”, we cannot forget the following: the assessment of the delivered experience can only be carried out by its recipient. An obvious one, but sometimes we can lose sight of it.
Decoding is personal and non-transferable. It is key to know how the customer has perceived each interaction with our brand. Do you value that benefit that I’m giving in any of my channels? Can I delete it without affecting the perceived level of service?
5. Empathy
And if we talk about “personal and non-transferable” perceptions, developing a value such as empathy is highly recommended (without falling into unnecessary Stockholm syndromes).
For example: in the event of a delay or cancellation of a flight, the customer’s reaction can contemplate different states, from simple anger to direct churn or loss of that customer… or also what we could classify as no beyond: the sum of ” customer loss + conversion into a negative apostle of the brand” (what today’s jargon would call a hater). A perverse arithmetic.
In the case of a flight cancellation, it is evident that we are facing a touchpoint with a high negative value. If that canceled flight was the last of the day and involves accommodation costs, this negative value must be multiplied, but the perception and reaction will always be personal and non-transferable.
6. Deconstruction
Taking the marketing funnel par excellence, we know that going through the different stages (need-> consideration-> etc) is unavoidable. What essentially varies is the duration and intensity of each of them.
From the point of view of attracting a new customer, we will have encountered brands whose strategy is based on linear processes and with minimal steps. Capture a lead and transform it in 2 steps: you know, we want everything, and if possible, cheap (and quickly, since I have the car in double row).
Aiming for a lightning-fast transition to sales should be restricted to monopolistic industries, since not even top-of-mind brands have reached their market penetration quotas with such expeditious strategies. It is therefore necessary to deconstruct in detail and identify:
- Which interactions are inconsequential in terms of value generation, but nevertheless are crucial.
- What kind of interactions are likely to generate value for the customer.
- In which of them we’re able to capture value, that is obtaining a positive feedback/perception from the potential customer towards our brand.
7. Modeling
Accepting that we must deconstruct our Customer Journey, we will surely have to define different routes. It is essential to develop the ability to model the Customer Journey in as many journeys as we consider necessary, thus adapting it to different types of user, from the simplest (is it already a customer or a lead?) to the most complex.
8. Customer Journey as a circular cycle
A company may be tempted to end up representing the Customer Journey as a succession of correlative stages within a linear process, assuming that each stage represents the delivery of X amount of apparently incremental value. Therefore, at each stage we generate a greater delivered value, which we assume is cumulative, since the company understands (with greater or lesser reason) that:
- The potential customer has gone through each and every one of them in what we believe is a “pre-established” order.
- It’s been decoding them properly, just as the company/Brand wanted and therefore the journey can only lead to success.
Given this, we must approach the Customer Journey as a circular process. We know how it begins: consumer behavior, whether existing or in a previous aspirational phase, but customer loyalty and feedback from the entire process makes it a “non-finite” process.
9. Control and flexibility
The user makes their decisions in a timely manner. Although we try to determine patterns and assign pre-established routes, the combination of them can be left to your free will. Each client/potential client will be able to make different decisions, and although as we have said before, it is necessary to model, we must maintain a balance between control and flexibility since:
- Greater control can generate a feeling of inflexibility on the part of the Brand (for example, forcing the customer to use a certain channel to perform an action): we already know that each of our inefficiencies is an opportunity for competitors.
- It is essential to listen to the client but above all, learn from them, since they can present us with patterns that we had not contemplated.
10. Common sense
So simple and yet sometimes so scarce. We live in an environment where analytics and the intensive and extensive exploitation of data has brought us to a point where it seems that what cannot be demonstrated empirically, then simply does not exist. When we deconstruct the Customer Journey and analyze the performance at each touchpoint, in many cases the decisions to be made can be evident. Let us not be afraid to take them nor let us always wait for the numerical demonstration.
