Re-modelling the Customer Journey in the Digital Age

The traditional marketing bubble was all about some TV or radio ads trying to woo buyers to go to brick-mortars stores to choose and shop for products from one of the x-numbers of brands available.

It’s 2019, most organisations are well versed with the fundamentals of customer journey: the complete chain of selection of the product/service, from brand awareness to buying a particular commodity and becoming a repeat customer. The last ten years have seen this journey getting a digital flavour. Prospective buyers mesh up with your product through social media channels, website, advertisements, email marketing and other ways in which you try to woo them.

On the whole, companies have taken a leap of change to engage with the potential buyers via these new-gen avenues. But the biggest question is to find the right way to do it; How can businesses weave these digitally updated marketing weapons into a powerful, cohesive roadmap to an effective customer journey.

This digital customer journey to a very large extent is governed by a mobile device. Recent research reveals that an average human taps, swipes and pinches their gadget’s screen 2,617 times a day* (or around a million times per year).

Let’s pen down the three ways businesses need to remodel the digital customer road-map in order to increase conversions, enhance brand awareness and nurture a long-lasting seller-buyer relationship.

You are digital and so are your customers!!

Days are passing, and your marketers aren’t the only people who are becoming digitally sound, your potential customers are just as digital as your business- if not anymore. Let’s take note of recent buying behaviour review by Statista– around 1.7 billion shoppers made online purchases in 2017 which amounted to around a whopping $2.3 trillion in terms of sales. The customers are taking a step ahead from the sales cycle and around 67% of them use social media channels to look for support in regard to a product/service. More importantly, if your company is on social media customers tend to shop 20-40% more from you than from the folks still using traditional methods. Zendesk in a survey found that live chat out of all the customer support mediums generates the highest amount of customer satisfaction.

The advent of digital channels has changed the way customers behave. While jotting a customer journey, it’s very important for businesses of all sizes to understand the ways in which the present-day digital buyer engages with the various touchpoints. Which platforms do they follow the most? Which is the most used gadget? Fill yourself to the brim with data about how the potential buyers behave, this will help you to woo them the right way.

Shoppers are digitally literate, there’s no room for error.

The customer is never satisfied, they always want more. The increasing digital literacy is making the customers set even higher goals for businesses when it comes to providing a good digital experience. They are educated about the marketing gimmicks you are going to play on them, they can easily figure out the sponsored content or unsubscribe the email marketing campaign shouting buy me in every line. And you better not make them unhappy, they may not call to complain; but would surely share their experience on Twitter, Facebook and more.

Going by the prevailing trend, customer experience will soon surpass product as well as price as a key brand differentiator.

The internet is filled with endless tools that can help you automate and efficiently manage these touchpoints from tools for building specific landing pages to one-platform apps for all social media channels. Getting a holistic overview of how shoppers interact with various touchpoints is difficult as critical information is available is a different app silo. Intelligent automation is a way to solve this issue; you can get a complete 360-degree buyer view just via a few clicks.

There is a lot at stake when it comes to Potential Growth.

Digitally sound customers are the most valuable ones for the business. Harvard Business Review suggests zealous customer loyalty plays a vital role in growth. A Survey by Gartner reveals that around 65% of all the new businesses come from old or existing customers.
Whatever be the size of their purchase, it’s important that you pick out the remarkably content customers and leverage their superior experience to enhance your business.

Last few years have seen businesses to be in the race by staying up-to-date with newer technologies. Frequently referred to as Digital Transformation- this phenomenon has filled the e-world with endless webinars, e-books, and lots more to help businesses embrace the d-word effectively.

As the businesses are climbing the digital ladder so are the customers. Technology changes its behaviour with every new advancement; businesses should too. A digitally empowered company is a customer favourite one.