Human handover: Seamlessly transfer chats to Live Agents
Co-browsing: Eliminate confusions
No-code: Build your chatbot effortlessly
Get Started for FreeNo credit card required
Customers often prefer a brand that understands them well.
They love to stick with a business that offers them value and provides great experiences along the journey.
So, the question is – do you understand your customers well? If you don’t, how can you provide value to them, or how can you deliver great experiences?
This is where a lot of businesses falter — they neither bother to understand their customers nor take steps to know their journey.
You should not make such a mistake.
After all, customer journey stages are often the sum total of all the interactions from the initial research stage to post-purchase. They are made up of various steps and touchpoints.
So, the more you focus on the journey, the more you will understand customers and their experiences.
Once you are aware of the different stages of the journey, you can take steps and offer value at each stage of the way.
In this post, we will discuss stages of the customer journey and how to deliver value in each step.
A customer journey refers to all the interactions and experiences that a customer goes through while engaging with a company, its product, service, or brand. It includes every touchpoint – right from the initial awareness and consideration to purchase. A customer journey also includes usage and follow-up.
In other words, the customer journey can also be referred to as a series of steps that lead to a purchase and eventually culminate with customer loyalty. This journey is important for businesses to understand their customer needs and experiences at every touchpoint.
Understanding and optimizing the customer journey is vital to providing customers with a positive experience. A business that masters the customer journey can design the kind of customer experience that will enhance customer loyalty and long-term relations.
The customer journey stages serve as a framework for understanding the customer’s experience and journey from the awareness stage through to the loyalty stage. Businesses can use these stages to tailor their sales, marketing, and customer service efforts and better meet customer needs
Knowing the customer journey and perfecting its stages is always key to staying competitive in the industry. The more you know about the customer touchpoints, the more likely you are to serve the customers better. So, you need to understand each of the customer journey stages thoroughly to strike a perfect balance between what they want and what you deliver.
The five stages of the customer journey are:
The terms “customer journey” and “buyer’s journey” are not the same but are closely related. Each one focuses on slightly different facets of the overall process of a business. While the customer journey centers on the entire relationship between a customer and a brand, the buyer’s journey gears more toward the process leading up to the purchase.
A deep knowledge of both journeys is essential for businesses to effectively engage with customers and provide value at each stage of the journey. The better a business understands the customer and buyer’s journeys, the more opportunities it can foresee in meeting the needs of customers and winning their loyalty.
Here are some of the key differences between the customer journey and the buyer’s journey –
Customer Journey
Customer Journey |
Buyer’s Journey |
Encompasses a customer’s entire experience with a business |
Does not encompass a customer’s entire experience with a business |
Includes all journey stages, from initial awareness to post-purchase and beyond |
Specifically refers to the process contributing to the purchase decision by a customer |
Considers all touchpoints and interactions irrespective of their relation with the purchase decision |
More sales-focused compared to the customer journey |
Focuses on the holistic relationship between the brand and the customer, including factors such as loyalty, advocacy, and retention |
Focuses on understanding customer’s needs and motivations during the purchase process |
Dwells more on customer experience at each touchpoint |
Concerns the stages that have a direct relation to the purchase decision |
Buyer’s Journey
For customers, experience matters a lot. They often stick with a business and spend more when the experience is excellent. For businesses, it’s first important to understand what customer needs and then deliver on that. Customer journey stages help in understanding customer behavior better.
Here are the reasons why the customer journey stages are important –
As a marketer, it’s always your duty to reach potential prospects in all stages of a customer journey and ensure them a good experience with your brand. You need proper planning and some content ready to guide customers through different stages. After all, 70% of buyers have their needs defined on their own before engaging with a sales representative.
You need the right plan of action to improve each customer journey stage like the below:
In the awareness stage, customers look for information as they have a need or a problem. So, your focus should be on providing the information to solve the problem.
Naturally, this stage of the buyer’s journey will also be your first impression and you need to strategize well to add value to customers.
To make a good first impression, you need to know first how more than 75% of internet users read blogs regularly to get information about a product or a brand.
Apart from sharing information, there has to be an attempt to build trust with customers. And if you couldn’t do that, all the other stages would cease to matter.
— Make customers know you exist
— Influence buyers early in the journey
— Guide them in a way that easily meets their needs
So, your business must take this stage as a springboard to win new customers and move them smoothly through to the next stages.
Customers will buy from you only when you come across it as the best option for them.
The consideration stage is the opportunity to show them you’re the best option. It’s the stage where you need to know customer pain points and deliver solutions for them.
And if customers find you the right option, they won’t hesitate in engaging with your business.
And when they engage or show interest, you can always present them with the relevant information and compel them to make a decision.
In this stage, customers may do many things, like –
At this crucial stage when customers compare you to other options, you need to make sure your offers are clearly and easily understandable.
You also need to ensure that customers find you on the web quickly. Above all, you need to realize how about 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase.
In a way, the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey is an opportunity for your brand to –
— Make the benefits of your products and service obvious.
— Present your products or services in a way that gives an edge over competitors.
— Ensure customers easily see through the competitive advantage you offer.
Customers have done their research, they have compared options and now they are ready to make a decision. Or, the customer is ready to buy.
For such a crucial stage, you need an in-depth understanding of their buying motivation and have the right resources ready to make customers purchase from you.
Source
Before buying anything, most customers nowadays prefer two things –
But what if your product or service does not include either of the choices?
In that case, you need to rely on different kinds of content to build confidence in potential buyers.
The easiest way is to show them social proofs or reviews as it will remove the doubts and may help win their trust.
It’s always easier and cheaper to retain existing customers than to win new ones.
And when you have won clients, the focus should always be on retaining them. And when you want to retain customers, you first need to build trust.
To build trust, you should regularly follow up with them and try to know what they think about your products and services.
Similarly, you need to ask for customers’ feedback and then work on it to improve their experience with your brand.
When you ask the feedback, it shows you are keen to ensure an amazing experience through different customer journey stages.
You have probably won the customers over when they start advocating for your brand.
However, customers will only say great things about your product or service when they are truly happy or satisfied with it.
In fact, happy customers often refer brands to others. So, at this stage, you need to think of ways to increase customer loyalty for your brand.
So, if you want customers to turn an advocates for your brand, make sure you-
And if you manage to do all this through each stage of the customer journey, there is no reason why customers can’t go out of the way to spread the word about your brand. At the same time, make sure your support team benefits from the customer service checklist and does its job well.
Mapping your customers’ journeys is always the key to guiding buyers in the right direction and delivering them consistent experiences. If your business takes care of customer journey map stages, it will fail to utilize the customer data, resulting in missed opportunities. So, you should work on understanding different stages of customer journey mapping to increase conversions and boost sales.
There are various steps stages involved in mapping customer journey stages.
Customers expect to reach out to businesses in a smooth manner without facing any hiccups.
They also want to use the channel of choice in getting solutions to their problems. Plus, most of them expect quick responses to their queries.
At REVE Chat, we realize how brands need to deliver value at each step of the way so that customers can stick forever.
So, you can use our AI chatbots to help automate support and ensure quick replies to customers.
It’s also possible to design the bot with different conversational styles to boost engagement at various customer journey mapping stages.
In fact, you can deploy a powerful chatbot to track customer journey stages and get valuable data.
Similarly, live chat software can help deliver real-time support and engagement to boost customers’ experience with your business.
A business needs to have a solid understanding of the stages of customer journey mapping to provide value at each stage of the journey.
You can always think of using the power of AI bots and live chat software to automate support, respond quickly and ensure a smooth journey to buyers.
With REVE Chat, you sign up here and take the first step towards building your own bot or setting up your live chat.
Once you have the right tools and software at your disposal, it will always be easy to track customer journeys of any complexity.
Start a 14-day free trial, no credit card required
Stay updated with the latest trends and ideas we share
Business competition has been more fierce than ever before in the insurance market. Therefore, generating high-quality leads is getting more...
In recent days, we have found at REVE Chat, that our Banking customers have been experiencing a significant shift towards...
When it comes to live chat software, there are countless options out there, each offering a variety of benefits. When...