Customer journey management is the process of understanding, analyzing, and influencing your customer’s experience of your brand. A customer journey management strategy includes all the interactions and touchpoints that a customer has with your company–from initial awareness to post-sale support.
The goal of customer journey management is to create a seamless and positive experience for the customer, build loyalty, and create long-term trusted partnerships. A solid customer experience management strategy can also help you identify and remove friction points in the journey that can negatively impact the experience.
Keep reading to learn the benefits of an effective customer journey management strategy and 7 questions to ask yourself to refocus your own strategy.
Benefits of Customer Journey Management
When executed well, there are many benefits to implementing a customer value management strategy. For example, an effective customer value management strategy:
- Improves the customer experience and drives customer loyalty – When every area of your business understands the customer journey, companies can create a more seamless and positive experience for customers at every touchpoint, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Increases marketing ROI – By identifying key points in the customer journey, targeting their marketing efforts more effectively, and building a network of brand advocates, companies can reduce costs and increase the ROI of their marketing campaigns.
- Increases referral revenue – A positive customer experience drives repeat business and positive word-of-mouth, which can increase sales and revenue growth.
- Increases the effectiveness of cross- and up-selling – Teams that effectively manage the customer journey post-sale are proactively measuring and reporting on actual solution performance for their customers. This not only increases customer confidence in your brand, but it can also help you identify good candidates for upselling and cross-selling.
7 Questions to Refocus Your Customer Journey Management Strategy
Understanding the value of a solid customer management strategy is only the first step. From there, it’s a continuous process of execution and refinement to deliver the best customer experience and secure your customers’ loyalty. The following are 7 questions to ask yourself as you build, refocus, and refine your customer journey management strategy:
1. Do I understand my customer?
Understanding the needs and priorities of your target customers is a crucial first step in refocusing your customer journey management strategy. Furthermore, identifying the areas where customers are experiencing friction or dissatisfaction can help you prioritize your efforts to improve the customer experience.
For more information, see Why You Should Care About the Customer Value Journey
2. Are all of my teams aligned around customer value?
Do all of your teams–from sales and marketing to customer success and executive leadership–understand and embrace customer value? When you align your people and processes around customer value, you can ensure that your customers receive a consistent and positive experience at all touchpoints. This helps to build trust and confidence in the brand.
To learn how to execute this type of alignment throughout your organization, Customer Value Best Practices Throughout the Entire Customer Journey.
3. Can I clearly articulate my solution’s value?
Do you have a documented customer value proposition (CVP)? A CVP is one of the most fundamental elements of your customer journey management strategy. A CVP should be clear, differentiated, and quantifiable–explaining the value of your offerings to customers in a way they can understand and that is relevant to them.
To learn more about what a CVP is and how to craft an effective CVP, see What is a Customer Value Proposition.
4. Do I have a solid framework to monitor, measure, and communicate value?
To effectively execute your customer journey management strategy, you need a value realization framework. A value realization framework is essentially a roadmap for how you will measure, monitor, and communicate success metrics for your customers. At Ecosystems, we use the Value Trinity framework, which demonstrates value by focusing on three interlocking elements of human decision-making: emotion, logic, and credibility.
To learn more about building an effective value realization framework, see How to Gauge Your Value Realization Framework
5. Do I have the right people to support the customer value journey?
Your customer journey management strategy depends on having the right people with the right skills to engage with your customers. This typically includes both training your existing workforce around the principles of value and potentially hiring new talent to fill critical roles.
To learn more, see Customer Success: How to Hire the Right People
6. Do I have the right tools in place?
Once you have the right people in place, you need to also make sure your team is equipped with the right tools. At every customer touchpoint, from sales to customer success, your team needs time to build and nurture the human side of your customer relationships. Manual data entry and reporting can take away much of their valuable time.
Value selling and value realization platforms can be an incredibly powerful technology to automate the many mundane tasks that don’t require a human touch, giving your teams the time they need to do what they do best.
To learn more, see Customer Success: How to Implement the Right Platform for Your Team
7. Am I tracking the right metrics and milestones?
Establishing clear metrics and tracking progress over time is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your customer journey management strategy. While the metrics and milestones you choose to measure will vary depending on each customer’s unique needs and priorities, there are a few baseline KPIs that you should be tracking for each and every customer: Net Dollar Retention (NDR), Net Revenue Retention (NRR), Time to Solution Go-Live, and Time to Solution Value.
These metrics clearly show the contribution of your solution to the customer’s bottom line and growth targets and demonstrate your ability to hit the ground running and deliver a quick return on your customer’s investment.
To learn more, see 5 Ways to Improve Your Value Realization Metrics
Refocus Your Customer Management Strategy Today
For more information on how to level up your customer journey management strategy, we invite you to get in touch with our team of experts. We are here, ready to help.
Not ready to chat yet? Learn how to get started by understanding the customer value journey and building your customer value proposition.
