The customer experience journey (CX) is a vital concept that transcends mere transactions. It’s a holistic view of the interactions and experiences a customer has with a brand or business, encompassing every touchpoint from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. In industries like hospitality and weddings, where personalization and satisfaction are paramount, understanding this journey is crucial.
Understanding the customer experience journey is vital for businesses to create personalized, engaging, and satisfying experiences. It helps in identifying pain points, optimizing processes, and enhancing customer loyalty.
The 5 main stages of the customer experience journey are: awareness, consideration, decision/purchase, use/experience, retention/advocacy.
Awareness
The journey begins when potential customers become aware of a brand or product. In the hospitality industry, for example, using social media to showcase a property’s luxurious rooms and personalized services, creating awareness and desire among potential guests.
Consideration
At this stage, customers research and consider various options. The wedding industry often sees couples exploring different planners, fashion designers, venues, caterers, officiants, and stylists. This can include detailed information, reviews, and testimonials, helping potential clients in the consideration phase.
Decision/Purchase
The decision stage is where customers make a purchase decision. Offering incentives and personalized recommendations can be crucial here. This could include offering seasonal discounts and tailored packages to entice bookings. On social media, this could look like custom package options for specific ideal client avatars (ICAs) to make their decision and purchase experience easier and less of a cognitive-load.
Use/Experience
This is the stage where the client is experiencing what they’ve purchased. This could be a product and now they are wearing, using, or using their five senses to experience what they’ve purchased. If things don’t go as planned or designed, if expectations are not met, or if they realize it was the wrong item purchased, your ICA’s sentiment may change from a pleasant experience to a sour one.
Retention/Advocacy
Engaging customers post-purchase to encourage loyalty is vital. This stage involves follow-up emails, loyalty programs, and feedback solicitation. This is crucial especially in cases where things did not go as planned. How you resolve and handle the process of righting the wrong needs to be to the proper amount of satisfaction needed for the customer to be either ok with or very satisfied with the outcome. Ironically, the best reviews or word-of-mouth referrals are from those who either did not purchase your product/service or had a less than desired experience but still leave a glowing review. Getting what you pay for is no longer the goal – customers expect to be wowed and pleasantly surprised.
How to Determine the Customer Experience Journey for Your Business
Identify Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience’s demographics, preferences, and their psychographic and behavioral characteristics is essential. Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. Saying your ICA is anyone getting married is almost insulting to marrying couples today because weddings are no longer just a necessary ceremony of tradition or legality but a full experience for the couple and all their family and friends attending. Plus most are also thoughtful about how the experience and events will translate on social media.
If you don’t have a defined ICA, please email me for a free PDF workbook to help you determine who you need to be targeting with your marketing and social media: hello@thebridalmasterclass.com. For the time you put into your digital marketing of social media, emails, websites and brochures, don’t let it be in vain. It needs to represent you well and to the right audience.
Map the Journey
Utilizing customer journey mapping tools and analytics helps in visualizing and understanding the customer’s path. This can seem silly or boring but it is extremely important in understanding what your customers are experiencing and where they may be dropping off or becoming unsatisfied. Incorporating thoughtfulness for every part of this journey allows for expectations to be exceeded and maintained throughout the entire journey instead of waxing and waning. You cannot put yourself into your ICA’s shoes without knowing who the ICA is and what type of shoes they wear.
Analyze Touchpoints
Assessing various touchpoints like website navigation, booking process, and customer service interactions is crucial. Having a user-friendly website navigation enhances the booking experience and oftentimes dictates whether or not an inquiry or purchase will be made. Think of how many times you haven’t waited for a website to load, can’t find a phone number or email easily, or even evaluated a business based on their lack of social media presence or activity. Making everything seamless allows for fewer opportunities for your ICA to bail on their journey to purchasing from you.
Implement Strategies
Implementing strategies like personalization, automation, and enhanced customer support can elevate the customer experience. You have a million and one other things to do in running your business. Trying to manually keep up with everything on your own becomes another full-time job. When looking at online services (virtual assistants, SaaS, or social media agencies) to do what you are doing, sometimes the cost can give you a bit of sticker shock, but when you think of what your time is worth, it ends up being quite a bargain. Think of that money as an insurance to all the other things you work hard to do in your business. Think of that paying for time in your schedule to focus more on improving and expanding your business. Making all touchpoints focus back to an amazing and seamless experience that exceeds expectations allows for everything to be in line with your hard work, efforts and excellence.
The customer experience journey is not a static concept; it’s dynamic and multifaceted. By understanding the various stages and implementing targeted strategies, you can create memorable and mind-blowing experiences that foster loyalty and growth.
In an era where customer expectations are ever-evolving, staying attuned to the customer experience journey is not just beneficial; it’s essential. The journey your ICAs embark on with you can be as memorable as the event itself. By focusing on this journey, you can ensure that you are not just meeting expectations but exceeding them, creating lasting impressions and relationships that allow for your fanbase to grow.
If this all makes sense as you read it but you feel lost thinking about where to start, email me to set up a 15-minute chat about where you are, where you want to be and clarifying your CX journey and map to help you reach your goals: hello@thebridalmasterclass.com.
