What are the 5 stages of the customer journey?

Do you take customer loyalty for granted? Consider again a recent PWC survey showed that 32% of clients abandon a brand they adored after a one negative encounter. A one negative encounter is all it takes for a company to lose a third of its devoted clients! The question of how to stop this attrition in a firm emerges. The key is to monitor, analyse, and improve the client journey.

It is simpler to say than to do. Marketing professionals struggle to successfully follow the customer journey and comprehend customer behaviour despite having access to a variety of data and analytics tools. Missed chances for customer engagement and retention may occur as a result of the inability to develop a customer journey strategy. In this in-depth article, we discuss the Customer Journey and How to Track Customer Journey.

What is Customer Journey?

Let's tackle the proverbial elephant in the room first: what exactly is a customer journey before getting any further into tracking client journeys. It describes how a customer interacts with a company through multiple touchpoints, from first being aware of it to reviewing it after a purchase. A consumer's full end-to-end engagement with a brand or product is referred to as the customer experience, which can include both online and offline interactions. In a cutthroat economy, organisations must map this journey to comprehend the consumer experience across several touchpoints and spot possibilities for improvement.

For instance, it's possible that a buyer came across your company's name and goods on social media. The customer may have watched a product video on YouTube out of curiosity.

How To Map Your Customer Journey

You need techniques to track the client journey now that you are aware of it. The different interactions and touchpoints a customer has with your brand are analysed and understood through customer journey monitoring. It covers every phase, from pre-purchase awareness to post-purchase evaluation. You must gather a wide range of customer data, including their behaviour and preferences at each stage, in order to provide a comprehensive perspective on your customer's journey. You may enhance the general customer experience and raise customer happiness by using this data. The following are some crucial tools for your customer journey strategy.

Google Analytics

You can monitor how visitors arrive at your website, which pages they view, and how long they stay on each page by looking at website traffic data. With the help of this data, you can optimise your website's content and user experience so that more visits become actual paying clients.

Monitoring social networks

The most effective engagement tool for businesses and their customers is now social media. To understand how people communicate about your brand, what they like and dislike, and any issues they might be having, you must monitor social media conversations and engagements. You may use this information to organise your social media initiatives for greater involvement and quicker consumer feedback responses.

Customer polls

You may learn a lot about how to enhance the customer experience by gathering consumer feedback at various points along the customer's journey. For instance, you can launch a survey after a customer buys your goods to learn about their satisfaction level and entire shopping experience. Additionally, it makes you appear to be a company that looks out for its clients after they make a purchase.

Interactions with Customers

You can find typical issues and client pain spots by keeping track of customer care encounters, such as phone calls or chat sessions. In the future, this information may be used to enhance customer service procedures and give consumers greater support.

Why Is Tracking the Customer Journey Important?

Today's clients have a variety of options for goods and services, thus tracking travels and enhancing user experience has emerged as a competitive advantage. Customer journey monitoring enables organisations to comprehend their customers' paths from awareness to purchase and beyond in a tech-savvy environment where they communicate with customers through many touchpoints. It provides you with a thorough understanding of the client experience as well as knowledge on how to enhance it.

A good example of how customer journey monitoring is used by a company to gather information and enhance its client offering is Airbnb. Airbnb can find opportunities to enhance the customer experience by analysing data from various touchpoints, such as website clicks, bookings, and reviews. These improvements might include streamlining the search process or offering more individualised recommendations.

Understanding consumer behaviour and delivering personalised experiences depend on tracking the customer journey. You may learn about consumer preferences and pain spots by gathering and analysing data at several touchpoints, which can enhance customer happiness and loyalty. Tracking client journeys has been simpler and more accessible as most organisations move their marketing to digital media. Your company will gain a competitive edge by investing in tracking and optimising the customer journey as customer expectations change.