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Category: Customer Journey

The Mobile Engagement Playbook

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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How can you overcome the challenges of your digital transformation? How can you engage and monetize your customers? How can you deliver amazing, meaningful experiences any time, on any device?

Whatever your industry, right now you are likely trying to find the answer to these questions. Well, now you have a new powerful tool that'll help you find your way, The Mobile Engagement Playbook crafted by Neosperience. And you can download it for free!

The idea of this playbook comes from the evidence that we live in the midst of a revolution that is shaking all traditional business certainties. For decades, organizations have grounded their strategy on the assumption that they could win the competition playing on the quality of their product and the efficiency of their productive processes.

In today's ecosystem, shaped by all sorts of digital and mobile technologies, you cannot rely on the old belief system. We do not simply go online, we live online. We have entered an era where a focus on the digital customers matters more than any other strategic imperative. Your product is still important, but it has lost its weight as main business differentiator.

Simply said, your customers expect that you can provide them not just products, but personalized content and benefits. In a word, experiences. Thus, an excellent digital customer experience - the perception people have of their interactions with your organization - becomes your most critical differentiator.

In today's markets, nothing is more important (and sacred) than engaged and loyal customers. Customer engagement is the key to success, as we move from a product-centric approach to a world where people - not brands - must be the core of every digital strategy. The only way to hack your growth and stay relevant is to stop being self-referential and start focusing on your customers.

"Everything starts and ends with the customer", this is the shift that you must acknowledge. The balance is on the customer's side, thanks to the smartphone, social networks, and mobile apps. In this ecosystem, there are many digital spaces for your brand and products to occupy: virtual reality and augmented reality, chatbots, wearable technology, the Internet of Things platforms.

How can you master customer engagement and play a primary role in a mobile market that has reached 36.7 billion dollars in revenues at the end of 2015?

Being out there where customers live is the first step, but it is not enough. If you think that a bad designed website or a dull mobile app will save the day, you are destined to waste time and money. You need something more: It is time for a new approach that delivers your digital customer experience in 1/10th of the time and with 1/10th of the investment.

This is exactly the path that we try to highlight with The Mobile Engagement Playbook, a collection of relevant insights and content that set one big goal: help you survive and win the challenges of digital transformation and grow your business exponentially.

The Mobile Engagement Playbook offers a complete overview of what is happening around you: the emergence of Micro Moments, the importance of happy loyal customers, the renovation of the rules of mobile app development, the urge to compete on the field of customer experience.

At the end of the journey, you will understand what makes brands like Amazon, Apple, Uber, Starbucks, and Disney so special. What makes them so magic.

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5 Ways Mobile Shopping Connects Customers To The Retail Store

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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Is mobile killing the physical store? If you are a retail brand, right now you are probably trying to find an answer to the most critical question of our times: “How can I overcome the challenge of thousands of digital competitors in a global arena?”

Mobile shopping is not just a trend that we might or might not see in the near future. It is a reality that customers live every single day. Retailers must embrace this reality as soon as possible. The smartphone, however, does not inevitably have to be an enemy: it can help you to connect the online experience with the physical store.

The mobile shift has changed our life as human beings and is constantly redefining our behaviors as customers. Whether you are a small local shop or a big company competing against the whole world, you need to acknowledge this (r)evolution and start from there to renew your digital strategy.

Under the pressure of the Internet (before) and mobile devices (after), there is no doubt that the retail industry is undergoing its deepest transformation, somehow stuck between the fall of traditional certainties and the urge to replace them with innovative approaches.

At the core of the discussion, we find the new role of customers (always connected, empowered and extremely demanding), and the influence of technology in reshaping the connection between organizations and people. For their nature, retail businesses are in the forefront in this change.

We are at the dawn of what Gartner has called “Digital Commerce”: it generates from the combination of online and offline transactions; it involves both mobile and traditional relationships, and it might end up in a digital or in-store purchase.

What is really vital is the value you create for customers during the stages of the transaction, where ‘value’ is built through different elements: the customer experience, the ease of use, the quality of the retail journey in addition to the traditional price and quality of the product.

The smartphone is not the only technology that has (or will soon have) a huge effect on the retail customer experience. We have virtual and augmented reality, beacons and geo-fencing, the Internet of Things, wearable technology, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and smart data platforms just to cite a few.

What makes smartphones so important is that they can act as a connector for all the technologies above, and - even more important - they never leave us alone. According to Google:

  • 68 percent of users say they check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning;
  • 87 percent of millennials always have their smartphone at their side, day and night;
  • On average, we check our phones 150 times a day (177 minutes per day).

We do not simply use the smartphone and then put it back on the bedside. We live in connectivity; we are online 24/7. If this influences our daily life, it also revolutionizes our behaviors as customers. And, as a consequence, the business strategy of retailers.

Few more statistics confirm that mobile devices beat the rhythm of our entire existence, and reshape the shopping experience:

  • 60 percent of customers use a smartphone while they visit a store;
  • 50 percent of customers use a smartphone on their way to the shop;
  • 46 percent of customers use a smartphone to look up prices online before going to the store;
  • 82 percent of customers say they consult the phone on purchases they are about to make in a store;
  • 91 percent of customers turn to their phones for ideas in the middle of a task.

All in all, more than half users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphones. You need to be there when it matters most: since customers can buy using mobile, showing up will ultimately get your brand to be chosen, not just seen.

Google recently sent out a report, confirming that the smartphone shopping has reached a new remarkable milestone in 2015: Mobile shopping-related searches increased 120 percent in one year. What does this growth mean? It could be the sign that people want to buy, in the exact moment that their needs or desires show up.

This may seem the end for physical stores. If you combine the previous trend with another percentage, however, the real truth comes out: 47 percent of customers use a smartphone to search for local information. The ‘Near Me’ searches have grown 2x in the past year alone.

“Our digital lives connect us to our physical world”, to say it with Google. The traditional shopping experience is not destined to disappear anytime soon, as mobile plays a critical role in driving people to the store.

As a business, you just need to recognize the importance of the micro moments, and match your contents with signals of intent and context. In other words, you need to understand how to engage and monetize digital customers, delivering meaningful experiences in every kind of moment of truth (crucially, I-want-to-buy).

In the same report, Google has selected five ways to engage customers in these critical moments, using mobile to connect the customer to the store (online and offline).

MOBILE AS FRONT DOOR TO THE STORE

“Smartphone shopping has created a new front door to the store.” The retail giant started to use this phrase after learning that three-fourth of its guests start their shopping journey on mobile, and that one-third of guests who click on a mobile search ad take a trip to a Target store. An optimized mobile experience (website, app, e-commerce) can open huge opportunities for brick-and-mortars.

CUSTOMERS WANT LOCAL INFORMATION

Mobile devices enable different approaches to old problems. Local information, for example. As said, we have seen a twofold increase in local searches last year. Customers want local info, and they want them quick: more than one-third are in a hurry searching for local business on their smartphone. If you can engage them, you will have enormous benefits: 50 percent of those customers visit a store within a day.

LOCAL INVENTORY ADS DRIVE CUSTOMERS

Recent researches found that online ads that show local inventory have become an important driver of in-store traffic. One in four people who avoid stores say it is because they do not know if a product is in stock. Customers do not want to waste their time looking for unavailable products. Showing them that you have that product in stock is critical, whether you have an e-store or not.

SMARTPHONE AS IN-STORE ADVISOR

Even when they enter the store, it does not mean that customers are willing to make a purchase. What happens while they are there will ultimately decide whether they will take action or not. And, again, the smartphone becomes critical, this time as in-store research advisor. Be careful: Nearly one in four shoppers say they have changed their minds while in a checkout line after looking up details on a smartphone.

OMNI-CHANNEL CUSTOMERS SPEND MORE

Customers that use the smartphone as shopping companion spend more - also in store - compared with those that only use one channel. If you are still skeptical about the importance of an omni-channel strategy (mobile first), think again: customers who shop both online and off with a specific retailer buy 250 percent more on average (Mastercard); omni-channel shoppers are 8x more valuable than those who shop in a single channel (Macy’s).

If you want more insights to improve your strategy, check The Future Of Retail 2016 and how to reinvent the customer experience.

To help you provide a strategic advantage to your organization, Neosperience has crafted the first DCX 7-Steps Checklist, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. Download the free guide here:

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5 (+5) Tips To Start Mapping The Digital Customer Journey

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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“My brand is customer-centric.” How many times have you heard these words? What exactly does it mean to be a customer-centric company? It is a revolution in how you think and act; it is the awareness of the increased significance of differentiating on customer experience.

Of course, you can’t simply switch your strategy and mentality overnight. This is a change that requires time and dedicated tools. Smart tools for smart customers. The digital customer journey map is the first and primary tool to deliver amazing meaningful experiences.

In digital markets, you always find yourself between two opposing forces:

  • Digital smart customers are leveraging technological innovation (mobile devices) to rebuild the traditional relationships with brand and products.
  • Competitors from all over the world are increasingly focusing on customers, starting from their needs and desires to create the ideal experience.

The customer is the nerve center of a journey that gets constantly reinvented by technology and innovation.

Digital leaders know the importance of understanding clients and being customer-centric: A recent Gartner study revealed 89% of CMOs plan to compete primarily on customer experience by 2016. Also, most entrepreneurs think they are already doing a very good job. The problem is, there is still a chasm between theory and practice.

There will be no results if you try to engage new customers using old tactics. Traditional customer journey mapping applied to empowered customers translates into a drop in the engagement. According to a survey by IBM and eConsultancy, 81% of companies say they have a holistic view of their customers, but only 37% of customers believe that brands really understand them.

The management of experiences is not just a declaration of intent; it is the willingness to get involved and get ready to evolve (your business structure and mentality) to meet and exceed the expectations. Excellence in customer experience is not an advertising copy; it is a mindset, an attitude.

Today, people can choose from a potentially infinite set of suppliers that have essentially the same offering and quality. Thus, the product is not a differentiator. Why should they choose you? Someone is surely selling at a lower price, so the price is not a differentiator either.

A fantastic product speaks for itself, and it is surely critical to increasing revenues and earn loyalty, but the experience is the only thing that sets you apart from competitors in this global dematerialized market. Now you see why companies focus so heavily on the customer experience.

Customer experience is the result of the interactions a client has with your brand and products across all channels, online and offline. Customer journey mapping is the tool that helps you portray your customers’ experiences, a holistic approach to understanding what they do and think during the interactions.

 

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When you face the journey map, you have many questions that need an answer. It looks like solving a mystery: the less you know about your customers, the more you need to map their journey. Start with what you already have and work backwards to understand customer behaviors.

The ‘crime scene’ revolves around four key elements:

  • Digital customers - always connected and empowered.
  • Mobile devices - smartphone as the first screen.
  • Connected technologies - wearables and the Internet of Things.
  • Micro moments - real-time interactions with specific intents.

You can structure a customer journey map in many ways, but each approach involves the same prerequisites: Five basic and five advanced rules that set the foundations of the new digital customer journey.

BASIC TIPS

BE CLEAR ON THE GOALS OF MAPPING

You should create a journey map to gain insights about your customers’ typical experience, and to help them through the conversion process. Maps are excellent at showing the gap between expectations and perceptions, but they are useless if you do not have a clear objective for the journey. Goals include your objectives AND your customers’ ones.

KNOW WHOSE JOURNEY YOU ARE MAPPING

There is a reason if personalization has become the mantra for so many digital companies. No customer is like the others. To map a journey you first need to identify your buyer personas, fictional representations that should include both the customers you currently have and the ideal customers you expect to have.

TALK TO PEOPLE AND GAIN DATA

The definition of business goals and buyer personas has roots in data analysis but can only happen if you talk to people. Customer experience is about people, not technology. To truly understand what happens at each touch point of the journey, you need to gather feedback from as many stakeholders as possible, starting with employees and customers.

CREATE A CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAM

One great mistake that companies often do is to consider customer experience as a department, sometimes absorbed into customer service. The experience, on the contrary, is a full-time commitment that involves the entire organization. The best way to manage the journey map is to create a cross-functional team, able to analyze and take action.

AVOID DATA PARALYSIS

Connected technologies produce a continuous stream of information about customers and competitors. Today, you can understand what customers think, what they do online and in store, what they like and prefer. The downside is the overflow of raw data that may slow down the entire process. To avoid the paralysis, you must be able to move forward from big data to smart data.

Once you are sure you control these elements, you can take one step further.

ADVANCED TIPS

TRACE THE NEW TOUCH POINTS

Every single (social, economic and technological) trend leads to the inevitable change in the digital customer journey. It may be a new touch point or a total reinvention of the map. Just think about what the smartphone has done to our life: the way we communicate, share and buy is now completely different. No journey map is now and forever. You should never ignore the different sources of interaction that extend the relationship with your customers and reveal new means of engagement.

DEFINE THE SINGLE TOUCH POINTS

As said, a single customer has peculiar qualities. Pretty much the same happens with touch points. They are different in number, intensity, consequences and relevance. Each one has a distinct entry point, inner path, and exit point. The definition of the single touch points is essential. Start with the following question: Where did the customer come from? How did he find your brand? How many interactions happened before he moved on?

SEE WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND THE SCENE

When defining a touch point, it is important that you can look at it both as a business and as a customer. Assuming your customer’s perspective, you will be able to evaluate the experience for what it is. Considering the touch point as a business, you will see what happens behind the scene, below the line of visibility. Here you will find those technological and organizational aspects that impact the experience as a whole.

FIND THE MOMENTS OF TRUTH

Every touch point is critical, but some touch points are more critical than others. We can call them (micro)moments of truth, where customers make the final decision to purchase. They are an invaluable source of useful insights about engagement: not only where they ultimately buy it (in store, online, e-commerce site), but also where they find the information that triggers the decision. Use the map to highlight these moments and find your strengths and weaknesses.

MOVE BEYOND MAPPING

Digital customer journey mapping is a tool. An incredible tool but still a tool. By that, we mean that you will see the map in many shapes and forms if you look online. Choose the one that suits you the most but do not waste your time to build a catchy one. Do not focus on the form; concentrate on the relationship with your customers, instead. Exploit the map to improve your customer experience strategy, do not make it the purpose of your analysis. Use the map to move beyond mapping.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Map Your Digital Customer Journey, Mobile First

To help you provide a strategic advantage to your organization, Neosperience has crafted the first DCX 7-Steps Checklist, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. Download the free guide here:

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5 Steps To Rock Your Customer Experience Strategy

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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What is your ultimate plan for your brand? If you ask any single marketer out there, they will tell you they want to become digital rock stars. Still, so many are still thinking and acting like support bands or - even worse - they simply stand in the crowd watching.

The long way to the top (if you want to rock and roll) starts with the awareness that best-in-class experiences are the key factor if you wish to top the bill. The first step to creating a rocking brand, thus, is to rock your customer experience strategy.

This constant reference to the music business is not accidental: whatever the industry, the bridge that you build to connect your company to your (actual and potential) customers closely resembles the emotional relationship between celebrities and fans.

Just think about it. Today, social media dictate the agenda and digital technologies rewrite the rules of engagement. Celebrities become brands and brands aim at becoming celebrities.

The smartphone and other mobile devices provide you with the ability to be there and everywhere, but success is more than just new tools. To cut it short, if you think that technology can create the magic by itself, you are on the wrong path.

A meaningful experience comes from the perfect blending of rational and emotional elements. The digital transformation involves both aspects: ignore the intellect and you will be sidelined as ‘old’; ignore the emotions and you will be considered ‘cold’.

To conquer the heart and mind of your customers, you must give your whole self, deliver a top quality performance and involve both brain and emotions. This is the only way to engage and understand customers. This is where loyalty comes from.

If you pretend to be what you are not, your customers will soon find out, and they will immediately abandon you for a better choice. Now you see why we insist that product or price are not the main differentiators in digital markets: people - not brands - fill the core of every marketing strategy.

Your company lives in a global, hyper-competitive environment where the next potential competitor could come from the depths of a basement far away from your market. Tradition and the ‘name’ that you have created over the years will not help you if you keep on focusing on the wrong priorities.

The only way to grow your business, embrace the healthy effects of transformation and stay top of mind is to stop being self-referential and start focusing on your customers and their experience. Sales pass, loyalty stays (potentially) forever.

Quoting the new 2016 Digital Trends Report by Adobe, “It is official. Customer experience is in charge. In 2014, it emerged as a top priority for marketers. In 2015, it gained momentum. Now, in 2016, it is so important, it pulls other priorities into its orbit.”

What should you do to rock your digital customer experience? Here are few suggestions that draw attention to the trends shaping the way we live, communicate, share and buy.

BE QUICK OR BE DEAD

The spread of mobile devices has caused a steady evolution in customer behaviors. Using their smartphone, today they take in a few hours decisions that needed days (or even weeks) only five years ago. We have witnessed the emergence of what Google has called ‘Micro Moments’, fragmented interactions driven by a specific intent.

Customers move fast and act even faster. It is your duty to develop the ability to reach and engage them when and where it matters most, delivering useful and contextual content (in a word, a meaningful digital customer experience).

ATOM APP MOTHER

When we use desktop computers, browsers are the main entrance to the Internet. When we use the smartphone, browsers are replaced by mobile apps. Now that mobile searches have surpassed desktop searches, we are facing an epochal change: we own the entire world in our hands, and applications become the primary way to explore it.

The importance of mobile technology is strictly linked to the evolution of mobile apps. They have gone from plain web views to technologically advanced tools, which you can use to deliver the best message at the right time. Right-time personalization and contextual contents are the direct results of this evolution.

HEALTH IS THE NEW BLACK

Long gone are the days when technology was considered something that had harmful effects on our life (improving efficiency to the detriment of health). Despite the never-ending debate about the danger of Wi-Fi and other connections, it is now evident that innovation is trying to find an answer to the eternal question: “How can we use technology to improve our life?”

If you think that self-tracking is just the name of the usual trend destined to fade away, think again. The urge of a quantified self is, in fact, the signal of a clear shift in perspective: mobile devices (and the so-called wearable technology first of all) can be used to improve the quality of life, becoming healthy lifestyle icons. Just check the EU Pegaso - Fit For Future project as a perfect example.

EMPLOYEES WILL BE FRIENDS

What is the hidden ingredient of a successful customer experience? Company culture, that is the answer. You can invest all your money in new technologies; you can build the most beautiful brand image but if you do not have a shared customer-centric culture in your company, every action you put in place will probably fail.

Genuine customer engagement always lies on genuine employee engagement. Your employees are - and will always be - your best friends. If you do not treat them like that, their discontent will ultimately have implication for your customer experience. You have no choice but to share your business purpose and empower your people. Involvement, commitment, productivity: these are the key takeaways of a well-designed employee engagement

THINGS, BRAIN, AND HEART

The customer journey in the digital era moves across a multitude of touch points, both in the physical and the digital worlds. One single device (the smartphone) connects us to an expanded net of technologies (the smartwatch, wearables, beacons, cloud services, the Internet of Things, virtual reality platforms).

These objects and machines are able to communicate with each other, even without human intervention. The can study our behavior, trace our movements, learn from what we do and like, and act consequently. Technology knows your customers better than you do; it is a fact. The way you can exploit their capabilities to create immersive experience will make all the difference in the world.

Digital customers are ready to love (or hate) you. The dividing line is your willingness to invest and work hard to deliver a memorable digital customer experience. Today, the race for success has become a competition for relevance.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Customer Engagement - 5 Things Sports Can Teach You About Loyalty

To help you provide a strategic advantage to your organization, Neosperience has crafted the first DCX 7-Steps Checklist, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. Download the free guide here:

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Top 5 Requirements For Your Digital Customer Journey Map

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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Think about the last time you have made a purchase. Now consider all the steps - online and offline - that brought you from need to conversion (and over). That is your customer journey, a map that you can break up into many different pieces.

Customer experience looks like a puzzle, that you - as a business - can shape and analyze using a specific tool: the customer journey map. As the years pass by, new technologies change the perspective, and so the map needs to become more structured, to include the new touch points.

The map is not the result of the creativity of marketers. On the contrary, it draws a precise picture of the experience that customers actually live when connecting with a brand or product. Any single - even minor - change in the experience causes a profound change in the requisites of the customer journey map.

Far from being little obvious, the digital transformation driven by the smartphone has completely disrupted the way we live, communicate, share and buy. The Internet-gone-mobile has laid the foundations for the dawn of a new generation of customers. The digital customers: empowered, demanding, and connected 24/7.

Disruptive technology trends continuously shuffle the cards on the table, sometimes confounding marketers and entrepreneurs. What is evident is that digital leaders still need (more than ever) the customer journey map to stay on course, but the map they need is not the one they used to rely on.

A digital customer journey map is a complete framework that enables you to understand how clients and prospects connect with your brand and product. An illustration that shows all the different stages that your customers go through as they interact with you, from awareness, to consideration to purchase.

In the Age of the Customer, it is an incredible tool aimed at identifying areas for improvement and establishing the appropriate technology to enhance engagement and loyalty in the customer life cycle. Easier said than done. With empowered customers, old-style funnels won’t work anymore.

Although the map is still rooted in traditional marketing funnels, it is non-linear and made even more complex by a plethora of socioeconomic and behavioral factors. Thereby, there is no standard to create a digital journey map. You need to build - and get ready to rebuild - your own from scratch, shaping the experience from your customer's perspective.

The new customer journey must start from the following mandatory requirements:

CUSTOMER POV (Point of View)

The best thing about customer journey mapping is that it puts customers first, describing not just the experience that a brand wants to provide, but the quality of the experience that customers actually perceive.

The digital journey has replaced the traditional one, melting online and offline in a continuous sequence of micro moments. That is why your only chance to understand and engage customers is to track the interactions as they live them, including those interactions and touch points out of your direct control (i.e. social media).

DATA-DRIVEN RESEARCH

A great journey map is always rooted in data-driven research. You might already know your clients, but that all the surveys in this world will not ensure that you understand them. Only smart data can confirm or refute your assumptions about their behaviors or desires.

Today, technology gives you all the information needed to understand customers and markets at your fingertips. You just have to gather it across the different sources (user research, interviews, contextual inquiry, web analytics, sentiment analysis, social media monitoring), and finally dive through stats and facts to extract useful strategies from numbers.

MICRO MOMENTS OF TRUTH

Mobile devices enable new ways to explore the world and do things. They help us to find all relevant information in the blink of an eye. As a result, we can buy whatever we want, whenever we need it, from an increasingly wide set of suppliers. This activates the multiplication of touch points and the dawn of micro moments.

The framework of your map should communicate the type, channel and order of touch points, including those out of your control. Of course, some interactions have more impact than others, and your map has to separate those essential micro moments of truth from those less impactful.

GOALS AND EMOTIONS

There is no action that is not fueled by emotions and objectives. A proper map always shows goals at each stage of the process. That includes your business goal AND your customer’s goal. Keep in mind that objectives are never static: in an evolving scenario, they can rapidly change as the process unfolds.

The main cause behind this change is the heart, not the critical mind. You need to take into consideration the emotions that arise during the connection, not just the behaviors. Emotions are critical to any experience, and there is no possibility of customer engagement or loyalty if you ignore them.

TIMELINE AND METRICS

As said, no map lasts forever. Time is critical to transfer the value of digital customer experience. At the same time, mapping is useless without measurement. If you want to stay on top of your clients’ mind, start by refining and redefining your framework according to the evolution of technology.

In a world where mobile, proximity and real-time marketing constantly rewrite benchmarks, good metrics become the key to deliver a meaningful experience when and where it matters most.

The creation of a proper journey map is one of the blocks of the DCX 7-Steps Checklist crafted by Neosperience, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. Download it here for free:

Get the DCX 7-Steps Checklist

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2014 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy with the latest trends and advancements of digital customer experience.

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4 Ways Customer Journey Mapping Will Boost Customer Experience

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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Try to remember the last time you have given up on a product or service because of a bad overall experience. As a customer, there is nothing worse than those situations where you expect one thing, just to receive a totally different result, as if you were dealing with two different companies. Customer journey mapping is essential for brands to avoid these pitfalls and boost customer experience.

To show how markets have changed in the last five years, let’s start with two insightful statistics:

  • 92% of companies that reported a decline in customer satisfaction said that clients were most disappointed by inconsistent experience (Salesforce)

  • Customers are 4 times more likely to buy from a competitor if the problem is service related rather than price or product related (Bain&Co.)

Even when your customers find everything they need in your products, even when you solve their problems and answer to their wants and requests, they will inevitably feel the bitter taste of dissatisfaction if forced into a bad customer experience. One missing link in their journey is more than enough to compromise an entire marketing strategy.

The battle for customer loyalty is more intense than ever before, and takes place on a different level: not products or prices but experiences - the key to differentiate from the competition.

As Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail”. Translated in business terms: to stay top of mind and retain clients’ attention, never underestimate the value of all different touch points, always maintaining the overall vision of your customer experience management, online and offline.

Easier said than done, and that’s where customer journey map becomes the perfect tool to accomplish this hard task.

WHAT

In digital markets, made more complex by mobile devices and innovative technologies, the connection between brands and customers is not a flat line, a straight one-way communication. The conversion process might start with a search on a desktop computer, then continue on a smartphone - let’s say a branded app - and end up in a physical retail store - thanks to iBeacon and push notifications.

The customer journey map is a complete framework that illustrates all the stages customers go through when they interact with a brand: from initial contact, through purchasing, post conversion support, remarketing and - hopefully - repeat sales. It maps not just the experience that you want to provide to the customer, but also the one that clients would like to receive. Once you have identified the essential requirements of your map, you are ready to go to step two.

WHY

Why would you use a digital customer experience map? The ultimate aim of customer journey mapping is to identify areas for improvement and establish the appropriate technology to effectively enhance the experience across all stages of the customer life cycle. When you believe you truly know yourself and your clients, that is the moment you need it the most.

The map is the only tool that enables you to understand - and eventually fill - the gap that separates the experience that you think you are offering from the journey you actually offer. Any inconsistency between the two increases the percentage of people that will stop doing business with you and become someone else’s customer

If we were to pinpoint the 4 key advantages of customer journey mapping, we would definitely say:

  • Personalize the experience;

  • Communicate and act proactively;

  • Identify and remove bottlenecks;

  • Improve efficiency and remove inconsistencies;

HOW

Despite being one of the three basic elements of an omni-channel customer experience, journey mapping is not an easy task. It requires deep involvement, the implementation of big data and analytics platforms and - most of all - the ability to look at yourself without filters and the willingness to take that further step from words to action.

It takes time and dedication, but the results are worth the effort. Here are 4 ways customer journey map is essential to design a seamless customer experience and remove inefficient silos and practices:

  • Understand customer’s POV - the great thing about mapping is that you can understand exactly how customers experience your brand across all touch points - digital, physical and mobile. Once you have reached such an incredible knowledge, you will be able to tailor-cut your content marketing and engagement actions to better reach them at all stages of the inbound conversion path.
  • Recognize Moments of Truth - a framework includes all sorts of touch points, channels and media. Of course not all interactions have the same importance, so how can you recognize the ones truly impacting on your business results? One reason why you should create your own map is exactly to highlight meaningful moments of truth and separate them from those with a lesser relevance.
  • Connect with emotions - human desires and needs change over and over again, following the evolution of society and technology. The main reason behind this change is not rational; it's emotional. The weight of emotions in the purchase decision is now higher than ever. Why would customers choose you? A proper map helps you in setting appropriate emotional goals and objectives for every single step of the customer journey.
  • Make sense of data - numbers have always been the root of every customer journey map (a tool not so young as you may think); innovative devices plus the Internet plus proximity marketing plus big data make it possible to develop a knowledge inconceivable just few years ago. A well designed map helps you set metrics and time lines to measure the real-time impact of your strategy. To offer the best experience, whenever your clients need it and wherever they are.

You will never have a real process of improvement if you don’t accept the fact that you must dig down deep - putting your identity into play - to understand how your customer experience works, from your client’s perspective. A true and efficient digital transformation always starts from the bottom, the customer.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Map Your Digital Customer Journey, Mobile First

The creation of a proper customer journey map is one of the blocks of the DCX 7-Steps Checklist crafted by Neosperience, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. You can download the free paper here:

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Why Mobile-Only Strategy Will Shape The Future Of Customer Journey

Posted on by Neosperience Team

mobile_only

Just a few years ago, a common objection to the value of mobile in business strategies was that “phones are not for marketing”, because you couldn’t do anything real - payments, to name one - on a phone or tablet. That time is well behind us, as mobile technology is not only reshaping the customer journey, it is rebooting the entire experience of connecting with clients. So that maybe it’s time to go beyond mobile first and start thinking mobile-only.

Forget the days when connections were faulty, touch screens slow to respond, and the only marketing action you could think about was ‘SMS advertsing’. The evolution of mobile devices has brought to you amazing new tools to bolster the connection with customers, and build a digital customer experience well-integrated into an ecosystem that melts physical and digital into a new amazing reality.

Mobile First or Mobile Only?

A mobile only strategy is not alternative to mobile first. It's a natural evolution of your strategy, in markets where the pace is imposed by disruptive digital technologies. Problem is: mobile-first is often still considered a goal - and not a stage already fulfilled. Too many brands still struggle to move with the times, while customers evolve and become more and more empowered (what we called the Age of the Customer).

Mobile should be already the standard for all things marketing. The next step into a real digital transformation would be, then, a mobile-only approach. This further step doesn’t mean that you should ignore physical touch points of the customer journey; it is a plain consciousness raising that we are moving towards a world in which the mobile will be the first screen, not just a secondary screen.

Mobile-Only: Is It Real?

The centrality of mobile only strategies may seem just a risky conjecture, but it is a trend rooted in facts and stats:

  • Half of customers believe mobile is the most important resource in their purchase decision-making. More than a third confessed that they used mobile exclusively. (Nielsen)

  • As of last year, mobile platforms accounted for 60% of total time spent on digital media. (ComScore)

  • Roughly one third of shoppers use mobile exclusively, and more than half consider mobile the most important resource when it comes to the purchase decision. (Altimeter, in Brians Solis' webinar called - not by coincidence - ‘The Inevitability of Mobile-Only Customer Experience’)

Reality is that technology ties the best knot with marketing and sales when users can experience a positive connection without feeling it at work. The Internet of Things is the perfect example of this invisible interconnection of smart objects, and smartphones are at the forefront of a revolution that will soon involve also smartwatches, activity trackers and virtual reality devices.

The Evolution of Customer Journey

The smartphone is already the first screen among connected customers, the first place they go to communicate on social networks, look for information about products and brands and share their opinions, wants and needs. There is a major consequence for companies: customers expect that you are capable to reach them wherever they are, whenever they need it, across all touch points of their omni-channel customer journey.

For the most part, however, mobile strategies are still focused on an isolated aspect of customer engagement - push notifications, E-Commerce, loyalty programs. Basically, they still can’t go beyond single minded campaigns, and lack of an overall vision. Your ability to understand clients’ desires and fulfill their expectations will be, then, the key element for successful customer experience management.

The small screen dictates how and when customers interact with brands throughout the lifecycle, from research to purchase (i.e. mobile payments), service and support. Mobile is now part of the customer experience, crucial for your engagement strategy, to enhance loyalty and improve customer retention. To be successful, you must think - or at least start to think - about mobile-only as the basic foundation for the next generation of digital customer experience.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: 5 Mobile Marketing Trends Reshaping Digital Customer Experience

To help you ensure a strategic advantage to your organization, learn about the DCX 7-Steps Checklist crafted by Neosperience, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation.

 

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3 Key Elements For Your Omni-Channel Customer Experience

Posted on by Neosperience Team

Omni_channel

Involved in a mobile environment, customers expect personalized and consistent experiences across all different touch points. As a consequence, an omni-channel customer experience isn’t just important - it’s essential to differentiate from competitors. Dealing with empowered customers, brands are not judged for what they make or sell, but for the overall journey they create to connect products and clients. So, if omni-channel is the rule, what are the foundational elements of your innovative strategy?

The explosion of social media, together with the merging of physical and digital, is changing the game for companies looking to build effective relationships with customers. Logic tells us that brands that offer an amazing experience will enjoy improved engagement, increased loyalty and repeat purchases. As the voice of clients continues to get louder, ‘omni channel’ becomes more than just another fancy marketing term; it is a reflection of how customer’s life has evolved.

Awareness - consideration - decision - purchase: the digital customer experience is now a sequence of online moments built across more and more different touch points. Given that you’re not confined in the four concrete walls of your office/store, traditional marketing funnels don’t work anymore. You need to adopt a more complex and multifaceted point of view. In a few words, you need to think and act mobile first, going from multi-channel to omni-channel. What does this mean?

  • Seamless Experience: when attention is hard to retain, consistency is the key to get customer’s loyalty. Users can now search for product info on a website, then look for reviews on social networks, engage with a company in the point of sale, and receive push notifications on their smartphone. Each piece of the journey should be consistent and complementary, so marketers need to provide a seamless experience, regardless of the channel or device used.
  • Customer Journey Map: a recent study says that 89% of customers have stopped doing business with a company after experiencing a poor customer experience. An omni channel strategy operate across different channels simultaneously: what you need, then, is a map that depicts how clients connect with your brand and product at every step of the process. 'Where' and 'How' become more crucial than 'What'. A customer journey map acts as a complete framework that enables you to understand how to plan an efficient strategy and adapt in real-time.
  • Clear Key Metrics: different touch points mean that marketers are armed with an armory of customer data, gathered through mobile apps, wearable technology, social media, fidelity cards, E-Commerce and websites. You can leverage these insights to develop a deeper understanding of how customers interact with you and make purchases. To get real results, though, all functions must be aligned on innovative key metrics: data itself is useless if you can’t capitalize on it to determine where you’re starting from and measure the progress you’re making. Data mining becomes mandatory, and analytics dashboards a necessary backup to help you 'shape the unshaped' mass of information.

In the Age of the Customer, the main challenge is to attract clients and retain their loyalty. Easier said than done: thanks to the Internet, customers can find all the information they need, and choose from a potentially infinite set of suppliers. As a results, price is not the main reason why clients drop out a brand. Nor the products itself.

Looks like a conundrum, but the answer is at hand: if you aim at relevance, the first step is to create a powerful digital customer experience, converting on every possible channel.

To help you provide a strategic advantage to your organization, Neosperience has crafted the first DCX 7-Steps Checklist, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation.

 

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3 Big Things You Need To Improve Digital Customer Experience

Posted on by Neosperience Team

3_things_dcx

To start off your 2015 with a huge marketing leap, you need something big. Three big things, actually. We all know that the ultimate purpose of digital customer experience is to build the perfect bridge between brands and customers. But you will never get - and retain - customer’s love and trust if you don’t understand deeply yourself and the ecosystem you live in. Here, between the lines, you can spot 3 big things you need to improve digital customer experience.

In traditional markets - ruled by analog models -
customers used to opt for you at the purchase moment because:

  • You did build something they loved and/or needed;

  • You did build an efficient contact strategy.

But that was before smartphones came in to change our lives forever. In an era defined by disruptive mobile technologies, where clients can choose from a potentially infinite set of suppliers, you can’t rely on this certainty anymore. Products, advertising and paid content are not enough ensure you get repeat sales: loyalty replaces price as the most important business assets, and the experience becomes way more crucial than what you produce or sell.

What does this mean for your business? That the power balance has shifted from brands to customers, and the client should always be the core of every single strategy you plan.

To shape a compelling customer experience a good approach is to look at things from a totally different perspective. Markets are evolving in so many different ways that you really need a compass to maintain focus. Big story, Big Journey and Big Data (#BigIdeas2015): here lies the foundation of a great digital customer experience.

  • Big Story: the first thing you need is a big story, rooted in your brand identity. "Know yourself to know your customers", this is the rule in the Age of the Customer. The meaning your brand holds is a primal assets, and archetypes are the model that your strategy should be patterned on. Storytelling is one of the main pillars of digital transformation, essential to create an emotional connection with your customer. Remember that loyalty is not just about products or services; it runs hand in hand with emotions. Start with your true why, build a coherent content strategy across all touch points and devices, and don’t underestimate the power of social media and tech revolutions.
  • Big Journey: every story creates a journey, and you should be able to map that journey to understand if your strategy is working as expected. Empowered customers demand compelling experiences: they want what they need, wherever they are and whenever they need it. A customer journey map is essential to learn how customers interact and connect in your mobile, branded, ecosystem, where touch points are potentially infinite (smartphones, wearables, Internet-of-Things). To build a big journey experience, a story is not enough. You need to put customers first, then design personalized and real-time engagement actions - i.e. using gamification dynamics and proximity marketing (iBeacon, push notification).
  • Big Data: from 2015 on, data mining will be mandatory to move with the times. Disruptive technologies produce an invaluable amount of data about the market and customers. The key to success will be the ability to scan, process and turn it into actionable strategies. As Big Data become a priority, at the same time companies will increase investments in analytics dashboards and machine intelligence, to make sense of all this unshaped information. A proper use of data will allow you to anticipate customers’ needs and answer every time they need and everywhere they are, with tailored contents and location-based offers.

We have described a 3-steps path:

  1. you need information to implement your strategy;
  2. you need a narrative background to mold the data clay into a story;
  3. you need a technological and emotional framework to involve people into a complex map.

This is all you need to create an amazing digital customer experience.

To help you provide a strategic advantage to your organization, Neosperience has crafted the first DCX 7-Steps Checklist, with requirements and insights for a successful digital transformation. Download the free guide here:

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