No doubt you’ve heard the term, but what does it really mean?
Sometimes it’s called Customer Experience, UX and HX (Human Experience) and more.
It’s absolutely central to building every business, therefore every brand.
Put simply, it’s about understanding what your customers want and how best to provide that for them.
Sounds simple enough and pretty straight forward, so why are there so many branding businesses that don’t talk about it? There are others that shrug and pass it off to the ‘boffins and researchers’, but the reality is, if we or anyone else are to help you develop your business, grow your market share or disrupt a sector then we need to know, and understand your customer’s journey.
Digital, virtual, online and offline
It doesn’t matter where you operate, today it truly is access all areas and you will have people discovering what you do from every angle. And that’s a problem for many businesses because they simply don’t know where to focus. What will make a difference? And how to measure that difference.
Ooooh, look at that shiny object
So many people fall into the trap of chasing the latest, greatest shiny thing. It’s a common mistake, but there are other routes to understanding where to focus your energy.
The Busy as AB Customer Journey
This is our take on how these processes work, the way we see people connecting with what you’re doing. It’s the result of years of experience, working with many models across a wide range of sectors and for clients both large and small.
In our mind’s eye, this is what the customer journey looks like. It’s an infinite loop with lots of work to do at every stage. We start on the outer loop, where people are exploring and discovering. We then move into the consideration phase before connecting, which often involves a purchase, then we move into the experience, advocacy and finally bonding, before the process starts again with the consideration of other products or services. All the time we need to be mindful of what we say and do, ‘being human’ throughout these processes is essential.
It’s not a magic funnel
Our model is a based on the infinity loop because this is something that you have to work on ALL THE TIME! It’s not a funnel, where you load up and off you go, waiting for some magical tipping point.
It’s an infinite loop where your current and potential customers spend their time, understanding what they are doing, that’s another process, we call research and data. This involves learning and understanding. Something that allows you to walk in your customers shoes and experience your business the way they do. This is super important, it’s not the model you’ve developed, it’s the real-world experience, where your business sits – it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses.
This Customer Journey model is at the heart of what we do, it’s a reflection of how humans build relationships – everything is based on trust. This value is absolutely central to any work that we undertake.
Why do we use the Customer Journey model?
The answer is very simple, we all need a map or a plan to follow and neither of these can begin to be developed until we know where your customers are and what their expectations are of you, your sector and your service.
Whilst we have spent a lot of time developing and refining this model, it’s most definitely not a ‘one catch all’ and it will continue to evolve.
Every business is different, like people, businesses will have their own ways of doing things, good and bad traits. We use our Customer Journey model to help our clients understand how and where they fit into peoples lives.
Busy as AB 