The moments that a customer experiences at each stage of the customer journey really matter, and here’s why.
Customer experience is the new battleground for brands, and how meaningful moments during the CX are monitored and evaluated can have a huge impact on a customer’s experience. Positive and negative CX also has the power to alter consumers’ perceptions of a brand and therefore a brand’s success.
The current tools to understand how customers feel are NPS and Sentiment Analysis both of which give narrow and vague evaluations, and fail to go into the ‘why’ behind consumer emotions. Adoreboard is an SAAS emotion AI platform that analyses digital customer opinions and delivers deep decision ready insights. This is something that has been recognized more recently by Forrester, who have named Adoreboard in their ‘The Future of CX Measurement’.
Forrester defines the customer journey as such:
“The customer journey spans a variety of touchpoints by which the customer moves from awareness to engagement and purchase. Successful brands focus on developing a seamless experience that ensures each touchpoint interconnects and contributes to the overall journey.”
In order to match up to and overcome competitors, you first must understand what the customer journey is. As mentioned above, the customer journey encompasses each step the customer takes from awareness of a brand or product, to engagement and that purchase (and often post-purchase).
Secondly, you must understand the areas that are causing friction for consumers i.e. customer problems Adoreboard’s emotion analytics platform Emotics offers deep analysis of data which uncovers the ‘unknown unknowns’ of customer emotions. Adoreboard’s analysis can then be used to better comprehend consumer emotions and better business performance.
Thirdly, identify the ‘moments of magic’ i.e. the things you can accentuate that create a differentiated experience for your customers and put you above your competitors.
Click here to access the recording on our latest webinar – Customer Journey Mapping: Moments that Matter
Why customer journey?
The customer journey does not pertain solely to in-store or online experiences but can be is an important tool that maps and identifies consumer experiences at every stage in order to tell a story of the engagement from the customer’s point of view. Customer journey mapping aims to address each touchpoint and interaction experienced by the consumer.
Customer journey mapping helps the brand or business realise whether they are meeting their brand promise or if they are falling short, factors which will greatly alter the in-store or online experiences of the customers.
For customer journey mapping to be useful, it must address each stage of the journey and each stage must be appropriately analysed for the business to empathise with consumers, improve consumer ‘pain points’ and maintain the moments of magic.
Factors affecting the customer journey may simply come down to poor customer service, unhelpful staff little brand engagement and brand personality etc. All issues that can be identified and analysed by Emotics, Adoreboard’s advanced emotion analytics platform.
How to Implement the Customer Journey: British Gas
1. Define your CX Vision
Taking the example of British Gas, their CX Vision may be to heat the nation and provide world class customer experience.
2. Define what you do & how you do it
Map out everything that you do and how you do it to meet your vision. British Gas may say that they achieve step #2 by delivering great customer experience through their mobile apps.
3. A) Basic B) Essential C) Differentiator
Look at what you do and how you do it from the point of Basic, Essential and Differentiator. ‘Basic’ for a mobile app is that it needs to be working. ‘Essential’ for the supply of gas is that it needs to be connected to houses – these are the real fundamentals before you can then look at Differentiators. ‘Differentiator’ may be how you connect the mobile app to help manage people’s finance. The Differentiator sets you apart from competitors so, for example, going beyond ability to pay bills to something more meaningful and helpful, such as actually splitting bills if you’re sharing a house with other tenants.
4. Measure drivers of emotion
Then, finally, the key element is to measure the drivers based on emotion. Emotion is an integral aspect of the customer journey. Identifying and analysing emotion allows you to be specific about the themes and drivers behind the good and the bad, and essentially enables you to customise and monitor brand performance to optimise customer experience.
Adoreboard helps you make better CX decisions by revealing the ‘unknown unknowns’ of customer emotions.
Emotion analytics can act as the breadcrumbs to help you prioritise the key contributors to your customer experience and discover how to improve it in order to advance the brands that you operate.
Check out this piece on Customer Journey Mapping featured in our CX Academy.
Keen to learn more about how Adoreboard can help you achieve business success? Click here to book a quick demo.
