We hear people on talent and reality shows talk about their ‘journey’ so often that we’ve almost become immune to the term. But when it comes to differentiating ourselves from the competition in business the journey is exactly what we should be focussing on. The customer journey.
If I were to ask for the names of brands that come to mind in terms of bad customer service I’d probably be inundated. At the other end of the spectrum many of us have good news tales of firms that have gone above and beyond to make the customer happy.
And if we rated these companies on customer service then it’s probably the bottom 10 percent that get the bad press and the top 20 percent that get all the plaudits. But that leaves a whopping 70 percent that nobody is talking about at all!!
So, as a business owner, what can you do to get in that top 20 percent – where your customer experience is consistently excellent and you’re inundated with enquiries that come to you via referral?
A good place to start is by putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and mapping out the journey they take with you. From the point at which they make an initial enquiry through to the job being completed.
At Evolve and Grow we conduct the Customer Journey Exercise with our clients on a flip chart using a flow diagram model. By simply asking ‘what happens next?’ we can identify the different customer journeys. And using different colour pens to highlight CURRENT STATE and FUTURE STATE is a great way to compare what happens now to what could be the case.
We use a comprehensive set of tried and tested questions to drill down into the customer journey and find that this is an excellent exercise for highlighting:
- bottlenecks in the business
- processes or templates required at different stages
- any lack of clarity around who is responsible for what
- how long it takes for a customer to move through the system
- ideal timescale targets
And once you have that information you can act on it to position yourself firmly in that customer service top 20 percent. Making your company the go-to name in your sector.