Your customer journey is so important when it comes to your business and can make all the difference in how your customer feels and responds to your business. 

It is instrumental for a good client experience. 

Think about breaking down every single touchpoint in your customer journey…each individual point creates your client experience. So it needs to be good! And it always needs to start with the client.

So in today’s blog, I’m going to break down each of the buckets within the customer journey map and tell how you can audit each step!

Phase 1: Awareness 

This is where the customer journey starts and is where your potential customer becomes aware that they have a problem. 

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re aware of your company. They are just aware that they have a problem and are starting to do research on how they can solve this problem. 

So to make this stage work in your favor and to start being involved in this aspect of your customer’s journey, you need to be asking yourself how you can grab their attention.

Phase 2: Consideration

In this stage, the potential customer starts to consider different solutions. You might be in the running, but speaking generically, they’re just considering different options.

This could look like wondering whether they are going to try and solve the problem themselves, or whether they are going to outsource and hire a professional to help them.

In this phrase, the key question you need to ask is how can you engage more with your potential buyer or how you can build up the engagements that are had between you and your potential buyer? 

The answers to these questions will probably be related to how you create awareness, so make sure they work well together!

Phase 3: Decision

This is the third stage of the customer journey and is when the potential buyer has decided on their solution strategy. 

For example, they decided that they aren’t going to do it themselves and they are going to hire a professional instead.

So they’ve narrowed down what they want (or how they want to go about solving their problem) and then they will start looking for that solution. 

In this case, they’ll start looking for a professional who can help. This naturally leads them on to the next phase!

For this phase, you need to look at what transactions you can put in place to solve a micro problem for the potential buyer. This plants the seed that you can offer real help and it gives them a quick win!

Phase 4: Purchase 

This is where the buyer chooses an actual product or service and makes the purchase. 

This is what will transition them from a potential buyer to an actual client! 

In this phase, it’s really good if you can try and get them to make a micro commitment to you. This ties in with the solution you’re presenting them in the decision phase. Get them to make a micro commitment to solve their micro problem. 

This could look like getting them to buy a low ticket offer, or watching a 10-minute video!

Phase 5: Loyalty

In this phase, you’re fulfilling the work the buyer purchased. And in doing so, you’re trying to build up loyalty between your company and the customer. 

The key question to ask yourself during this phase of your customer journey is how do you provide excellent delivery of your service and prove that you know what you’re talking about! Because it is in providing this exceptional service that will help you build loyalty between you and your customers. 

Phase 6: Retention and Advocacy 

This phase is where you can take your customer in one of two different directions. For example, you can try and retain them. This could look like getting them to buy another month of your membership or continuing with your services. 

Or you could go into advocacy. This is when the client starts talking nicely about your business/service. This is when you can ask for testimonials!

Depending on the route you want to take, there are a couple of questions you can ask yourself here. 

If you’re going down the retention route, you need to start asking how you can grow them into a new service or product, or how can you get them to stick around!

If you’re going down the advocacy route, you need to start thinking about the best way to ask for testimonials– remember, you want to make it as easy for the customer as possible!

After this phase, we move on to the final one…

Phase 7: Nurture

This is where you think about how you want to turn the customer into a raving fan of your business and where you want to nurture your clients. 

This is (hopefully) where clients will start promoting your brand without even being asked or paid to do so. This could look like sending referrals and essentially they help you close the loop on the customer journey map. 

There are several questions you need to ask yourself about this phase to make sure it’s working how you want it to:

• How do you want to stay connected with your clients?
• How do you want to nurture them?
• How can you turn them into raving fans?
• What would a referral/affiliate program look like for your business? 

So there we have it! Each of the touchpoints in your customer journey that you really need to be focusing on to create a good customer experience. 

My biggest piece of advice would be to think about each step in a present and future state. What is the customer currently doing (or how are they acting) in each of your buckets right now versus how do you want them to be acting! 

And of course, if you need any help developing each of these buckets, this is exactly what the Business Operations Audit is all about! You can apply to work with me here! Let’s get your business serving you and your customers!