Check out this week’s video review with Ken:
I have worked in the business-to-business space for over twenty-five years at this point. My time in customer experience has been quite varied. Initially, I was brought in for my experience in retail operations, but my first task was to optimize a process in my new organization – probably the area in which I excel the most and really enjoy more than most everything else. Since then, I have worked in project management, operations, integration management, mergers, sales, product development, product management and sales.
When I started out in my career path many years ago, I was going to be a teacher (I am a credentialed secondary mathematics teacher) before I jumped into retail operations management. For what it’s worth (or FWIW for those that like abbreviations for everything), I really enjoyed working in those fields, and it took someone that I consider a close friend to this day to bring me into this career where I have spent nearly half my life.
Back then, if he had told me everything I was going to work on and the industries I would learn, I may have jumped out at the interview phase. What I knew at that time was that I was looking to make a change (awareness), and I had found a place that could use my best skill sets at an ideal level (consideration). If the entire journey, all those touchpoints, the bad client experiences and the sometimes crazy hours had been communicated to me in advance, I would have found something else to do. I would have filtered myself out of considerations.
The very same idea is true with all the customers, they do not need to know about every persona and every touchpoint on the customer journey map to make a purchase. This answers the very simple question: How does a marketing funnel differ from a customer journey map?
The overall goal of a marketing funnel and a customer journey map is the same, optimize customer revenues. However, the marketing funnel can identify the stage of a specific customer in the path to purchase, but the customer journey map will provide details of the specific touchpoints they may experience at that point in the funnel. A stage in that funnel might be indicated in a company CRM, whereas their interactions with specific touch points might be a note or interaction record.
Many view the filter as four stages (awareness, interest, desire, action) – known as the AIDA model. In the business-to-business space, particularly in software-as-a-service, we recognize that the stages have a little more complexity and have five stages to monitor (ACPRA: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy). Ideally, you would want every customer to move through every stage of the funnel regardless of your use of AIDA or ACPRA. At least you would want them to move through the funnel with positive results – either Action in the form of a purchase
The same is not true of a customer journey map; you do not want a customer to move through every touchpoint in your organization. For example, you would hope that most customers would never need to be in touch with the customer contact center. At the simplest level, such an interaction is usually as a result of a breakdown in the overall customer experience. It usually involves a missed delivery (product or service), a refund of a purchase or the inability of customers to complete their activity through other channels.
Beyond the experience of the customer, a contact center represents costs against a company’s overall profits. It does not mean we should eliminate that touchpoint. Can you imagine the impact on Advocacy if customers find out they have no means to contact an organization? The resources committed to such a touchpoint should be optimized in a way that meets the customer’s needs, but an organization can also look at the other touchpoints to see where these functions can be optimized to minimize the need for a contact center. Ideally, an organization would have one person in the customer contact centers, that sits idle all day long – dare to dream, right?
While that is a simple example, in more complex customer journeys, there should also be customer personas that never need to be a part of a specific touchpoint. Two customer personas looking to make a purchase for just about any household good, but in this case, let’s consider the category of batteries – both needing to make the purchase for their television remote control (someplace where we still need batteries that are generally not rechargeable).
- Persona 1: Retiree fixed-income, mid-70s, not technologically proficient
- Persona 2: Full-time worker, mid-40s, tech-savvy individual
When we consider Persona 1, we recognize that the individual might be price-sensitive based on having a fixed income and may be driven by a potential discount. That discount would not likely be discovered on a social media campaign or through a seller’s website – instead, we would expect to lure them with a discount through an in-store promotion, a coupon in a magazine (those still exist, right?), or mailed to them if you know them as a customer. However, if you wanted to provide a discount to Persona 2, you might still consider an in-store promotion but may also target social media campaigns or an email promotion.
Two different personas at the same point in the marketing funnel, but yet they would likely experience different touchpoints in the brand’s defined customer journey map – and optimization of conversion may vary based on many factors not within the control of the brand or the customer. A clear explanation of why you need to have a good understanding of your marketing funnel and customer journey map, which is why a path-to-purchase analysis for a brand is a good idea to bring those ideas together – without exposing customers to every touchpoint. After all, a twenty-five-year career could have been derailed if too much information was exposed during the consideration phase.
Is there something wrong with your customer experience?
When you complete an honest assessment, the outcome can be beneficial, particularly when it comes to your Customer Experience program.
Take five minutes and complete an audit for your organization here.
You may discover a gap in measurement, an opportunity to improve a process, the place where an organizational shift needs to take place or an opportunity to win a greater share of your customers’ wallets.
We all want that bigger “return”. In this situation, the worst case scenario is that you’ll get some information that will help your organization since there is no cost or obligation in completing this audit.
