Introduction

Executive Summary

Have you ever wondered how you can improve your customer experience and gain more clients? The answer lies in understanding the nuances of a customer journey, which will help you develop an optimal approach by providing exactly what is expected from your business. In this whitepaper, we will introduce you to the importance of a customer journey and how it can be integrated with the SEO strategy to gain more customers. Also, the document explains the phases of a customer journey and how they can impact a business. It also elaborates on the benefits of identifying how the customer interacts with the brand and building a strategy to improve their experience with the help of the journey mapping tool. This will allow brands to understand the gaps in their business and helps them develop customer-centric goals. At LTIMindtree, we give impetus to developing a comprehensive customer journey strategy to help brands provide a satisfying experience and ensure loyalty.

 

What is a Customer Journey

Essentially, it is a set of interactions that a customer has with a brand in the process of buying a product or service and considers the whole interaction roadmap - from discovering a brand to purchasing the product and writing a review. In a customer journey, the focus is not on the transaction but about how one feels about the brand after every interaction. A customer journey encompasses all interactions across mediums, channels, devices, and touchpoints throughout every stage of the lifecycle – from awareness to loyalty. The main objective of a customer journey is to evaluate and measure how you are taking care of your customer and in which way you can bring further delight to their experience with the brand. This process can be as short as a few minutes in case of purchasing low-cost products like apparel, groceries, and food. The buying process may also last long for months or years when 

Phases of a Customer Journey

Most customer journeys have five stages

Awareness /Connection
Awareness /Connection
Awareness /Connection
Awareness /Connection

1. Awareness/Connection Spreading general information about products and services to the target audience is called awareness. Users in this group find a business through various sources like:  Social media  Online Ads  Word-of-mouth  Billboards  Search engine ads During this stage of the journey, customers search for their requirements and encounter products and brands. While conducting research, the customer reads blog posts and news articles, and browses related online forums, while looking at reviews and ratings.

Consideration
Consideration
Consideration
Consideration

This is the most challenging stage in a customer journey. During this phase, one needs to convince potential buyers to be a part of their options. In this stage, the brand focuses on promotion, and this is where buyers begin to look for alternatives to past purchases. The buyer compares the product to other solutions in the market by scrutinizing prices, reading product reviews, and going through additional details about the product or service. Here, it is essential to create a good impression on customers - You need to stay connected with your buyers till the day they decide to buy or not. In this stage, businesses want their customers to stick around given that they are directly interacting with their brands

Conversion / Purchase
Conversion / Purchase
Conversion / Purchase
Conversion / Purchase

3. Conversion/Purchase This is the stage where businesses make money, and a prospect finally becomes a customer. Here, visitors take a particular action such as purchasing a product, signing up for a service, downloading content, or subscribing to a mailing list. This is the time to do whatever you have promised in the previous stages. The prospective buyer has done all the research and made up their mind on which company’s product/ solution will best suit their needs. By the time customers are in the decision-making phase, it is not just about the product details, specifications, or shopping experience; they also consider factors like customer service responsiveness, company policies, and price vs. value. Customers normally support brands that they think can provide a quality solution to their problems without hassles

Importance of a customer journey

in a business When a customer visits your site and buys a product or service, it includes various steps before they reach the buying stage. When the website gives a pleasant experience to the user, it helps convert them to a customer. Therefore, to get more customers, you need to analyze every stage they go through in your website and make corrections, if any. When you understand these interactions that a customer has with your website and work towards enhancing the overall journey, it will lead to a positive business outcome and eventual growth. For this, it is important that the customer touchpoints are identified, and the overall experience is tracked.