Your Customer Journey is More Important Than the Destination

Ever hear the phrase, "it’s about the journey, not just the destination.”

Though the “destination” for customers—obtaining a desired product or service—can bring about its own euphoria, pleasure or satisfaction, customers (or patients, clients, even employees) look for clues and build expectations about how they’ll feel about their purchase by what they experience during their Journey.

How Important is the Customer Journey in Your Business?

Consider these examples and think about how they made you feel about the company or brand:

• Have you experienced both good customer service and bad customer service at the same store, restaurant or hotel?
• What about receiving a call from a sales person who is “just checking in to see if you’ve made a decision or, need anything or have any questions or wanted to buy today.”
• Or maybe you started day one of a job and were greeted with filling out paperwork and a lot of waiting around?

Those are all common examples of weak or nonexistent customer journeys.

This includes the sales process: engagement, customer service, and repeat business. And we added that last example above as employees are customers of your culture and deserve a well thought out experience as well.

Truthfully, most small to mid sized businesses don’t have scripted customer journeys or defined sales processes. And even in larger, Enterprise sized companies where there is an outline, blueprint or even written document about the experiences they’ve designed to give customers, it’s often not consistently coached, trained nor executed.

Which is a shame because:

A Purposeful Customer Journey Translates into Increased Revenue

• Proven, repeatable sales processes shorten the sales cycle by moving prospects forward and increases rate of conversion and close: at each touch point, delivering relevant information to assist in decision making positions you as a valued partner, their consultant.
• Putting proven methods into a repeatable format insures more consistent experiences no matter who delivers it to customers.
• Consistent experiences increase customer satisfaction by clarifying expectations – which greatly builds customer loyalty.
• Loyal customers will more often validate price increases and pay more for a quality experience.
• Loyal customers share their experiences – want to be known for providing awesome experiences to their circles of influences.

Think about your interactions with customers or prospective customers.

What experiences are you providing prospects and customers?j

Ask yourself:

• What messages do you promote about your product or services? What problems do you promise to solve?
• How do you find customers? How do they find you?
• How do you contact them? Does that add value to their lives?
• With what relevance do you call them, follow up with them, and encourage them to buy from you?
• How do you onboard customers? New patients?
• What touch points do you use to engage them, to make sure you’re meeting and exceeding their expectations?
• Are there opportunities to learn from your customers, get their feedback, customize for them?
• What platforms do you give your clients to promote themselves?
• How can your raving fans refer you? 

The ideal outcome from creating an exceptional experience for your customers is that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole: their delight in experience of the entire journey outweighs the product or service which was the destination. Thus, they keep coming back to continue their journey with you.