Gain Clarity In Your Business To Drive Revenue Growth – Part 5

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the importance of gaining clarity on your vision, mission and guiding principles and aligning your branding to showcase them. In Part 2, we discussed how your community involvement, social media presence, and overall reputation affect how your business is seen in your community. In Part 3, we looked at how your products & services, employees, customers and vendors all come together to paint a picture of how your business operates. In Part 4, we explored refining your target market, creating detailed customer avatars and using customer feedback to improve your performance.

In this final post, I want to walk you through developing a customer journey. The customer journey represents the experiences your customer has with you. That experience begins with the first interaction your customer has and continues throughout the relationship. You should create a customer journey for each type of customer you have. You can refer back to Part 4 for more details on this. Here are five steps to help you create your customer journey.

Step 1: Define the customer decision stages

What steps does your customer go through in order to actually become your customer – and one you hope to keep? Write this from your customer’s perspective.

Let’s assume you own a local restaurant that specializes in serving health conscious meals and offers options for dietary restrictions. One of your customer types is someone following the keto diet.

Their decision stages could look like this:

Need: Keto friendly dinner for two.
 

Research: Search online for keto friendly restaurants nearby.
 

Compare: Look at online reviews, download menus and look at pricing.
 

Experience: Check out the atmosphere, friendliness of waitstaff, quality of food, does it meet dietary needs?, timeliness, etc.
 

Decision: How did the meal go? Do we want to come back again?
Ambassador: This place was amazing! We can’t wait to eat here again and tell our friends!

Step 2: Define the customer’s milestones

What has to happen for your customer to move through each phase and select you? This is also written from the customer’s point of view. Let’s continue with our restaurant.

Research > Compare:

Meets general needs- Find a few restaurants in the area that seem to offer keto friendly options.

Compare > Experience:

Meets specific needs- The reviews are positive, the menu contains keto friendly meals and the price is in the right range.

Experience > Decision:

Evaluation – Good atmosphere, prompt service, good food that is keto friendly?

Decision> Ambassador:

Exceeds Expectations – The overall experience was amazing and we can’t wait to eat here again and tell all our friends!

 Step 3: Identify the main interactions between you and your customer to complete the journey

Throughout the customer journey, you and the customer have several interactions. Don’t get too bogged down in the detail here, but make sure to identify the main interactions that need to happen to help your customer move through their journey.

Need: Keto friendly dinner for two.

Research:

• Your restaurant must show up in search results.
• Your information must reference the keto diet.
• Your website needs to be mobile friendly.

Compare:

• Keep up to date with your reviews – respond as needed to poor reviews to show you do the right thing if something doesn’t go well.
• Offer a downloadable menu with pricing. This makes it easier for your customer.
• Post quality photos of your restaurant and your food so they want to experience it first hand.

Experience:

• Make sure your restaurant is clean, well lit and not too crowded.
• Staff must be friendly and take care of your customer’s needs promptly.
• The food is served at its best every time.
• Notate dietary restrictions on your menu to help your customers find what they need.

Decision:

• If you met all of your customer’s experience requirements, this will be an easy decision.
• If there is an issue during the meal, handle it in a friend;y, accommodating manner. It may not turn them into an ambassador, but it could keep them from posting a negative review online.

Ambassador:

• You’ve done great up to this point. Your customer is happy and wants to come back.
• Work on consistency in all areas of your business to make sure that all of their experiences are amazing.

 Step 4: Prioritize touch points at each step

Now that you have identified the areas that you interact with your customer and the end result that is needed to make them your ambassador, you need to determine the best ways to manage those interactions to ensure you recruit an ambassador for your business.

Research:

• Make sure you appear on Google Maps in the correct location with all pertinent contact information.
• Have a professional website.
• Look at advertising opportunities online and locally to help people find you.

Compare:

• Make as much information available on the Internet as you can to make it easy to choose you.
• You need quality pictures of your restaurant, your food, happy staff, and a downloadable menu with pricing.

Experience:

• Incorporate strict cleanliness requirements – exceed expectations.
• Concentrate on hiring quality staff and train them to your standards. Make it second nature for your staff to ask after your customer’s needs to make sure they are taken care of.
• Focus on food quality and preparation. Your food should look better than your photos of it online and taste great too!

Decision:

• Encourage your managers to check in with customers throughout the evening to make sure everything is going well. If it’s not, handle it personally.
• Provide feedback cards at the table. You could offer discounts or something free for completing them. Gather their email address so you can follow up with them.
• Create your own hashtag and encourage your customers to share their experiences online.

Ambassador:

• Once you have recruited an ambassador, stay in touch. Send out emails. Reply to their posts online. Make them feel like part of the family!

Step 5: Incorporate the journey into your CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not just gathering leads to follow up with later for a sale. It encompasses the entire life cycle of your interactions – from introduction to ambassador. Your industry and niche will determine how detailed these interactions are and how each area of your business is involved. Look at your list of interactions. Each of those interactions contains many steps that need to go the right way every time to recruit an ambassador.

Map out each stage, identifying everyone involved in producing the desired result. For our restaurant, these could include:

• Website designer
• Digital marketing company
• Staffing agency
• Trainers
• Shift managers
• Waitstaff
• Cooks
• Cleaning crew
• Food vendors
• Delivery vendors
• Restaurant supply vendors
• Other ambassadors

Determine the necessary processes to make sure anyone responsible for interacting with your customers – directly or indirectly – is doing so in a way that encourages them to become an ambassador.

Now, you have traveled on our own journey – you know yourself and you know your customer!

You are now prepared to make the changes necessary to prepare your company for growth! Collect your notes, finish your plans and get busy reaching new customers and helping them solve their problems!

Ready to take action and increase your revenue growth?

Download our free guides on the strategic planning formula and the most popular financial ratios today.