A customer goes through multiple stages in their cycle of engagement with your brand. It is imperative that you continue delivering the same amount of personalized attention and care to your customer throughout the cycle.
In today’s day and age, it is imperative for your brand to be modern, agile, and most importantly, customer-centric. A key priority for enterprises, like yours, needs to be fostering long, meaningful customer relationships. Your customers’ impression of you defines who you are as a brand. And this statement holds true across industries. An important factor that plays a critical role in this is your customer lifecycle management strategy.
You must ensure that your customer relationship cycle keeps running without any potential friction. This goes a long way to convert your customers into loyal promoters for your brand. The quality, efficiency, and reliability of your service are what can keep your customers coming back to you, thereby increasing their lifetime value.
Understanding the customer journey and using the insights to implement a successfulcustomer lifecycle management strategy can make it certain that your customers have a positive experience with your brand throughout their end-to-end journey.
What is Customer Lifecycle Journey? Decoding the Different Stages
Do not make the grave mistake of assuming that your journey with your customer ends after they make a purchase or complete the transaction. While it is a common myth, it is one that needs to be changed to keep up with the evolving customer expectations. To counter this, you need to deep dive into the different stages of your customer’s journey.
A customer goes through multiple stages in their cycle of engagement with your brand. It is imperative that you continue delivering the same amount of personalized attention and care to your customer throughout the cycle. And contrary to popular belief, it does not end at the point of sales. Infact, how you treat your customers after they already have your business could be a defining factor for your brand.
As a brand, it is essential for you to prioritize how your customers are treated in their end-to-end interactions with you. Your customers must feel valued at every touch point and at every stage in the customer lifecycle journey.
You might want to define the exact stages of your customer relationship cycle that are specific to your industry, or to your brand even. However, on a broad level, the customer lifecycle journey can be classified into the following five stages:
Even before a customer interacts with your brand, they hear about you through various sources, like your brand presence, social channels, and existing customers. You need to focus your marketing initiatives across multiple channels while maintaining uniform messaging. Keep in mind that in the initial stage, your audience is looking for relevant information that can address their concerns and answer their queries. Make the most of the preliminary stage by exhibiting exactly how your product or service can offer value to your customer.
Congratulations, your potential customer is now a hot lead and has entered your sales pipeline. At this stage, they are evaluating options and considering other players in the market that meet their requirements. Do not lose momentum and continue engaging them in order to nurture the lead and move them to the next stage. Show them what sets you apart from the competition and that is half the battle won.
When your customers are in the process of locking in their decisions, they want to take a look at how your past customers were treated, or continue to be treated, by your brand. In addition to this, it is imperative to directly interact with them in a one-on-one space. Provide free trials and demos, and also, give them personalized offers to nudge them towards making a purchase.
Now here comes the critical part. You have closed the deal. Now what? Continue focusing on your customers and keep them engaged. Offer them opportunities to give their feedback or submit suggestions. Ensure that after sales service is top notch. The more proactive you are in reaching out to your customers after already having their business, the more likely they are going to stay with your brand.
If you play your cards right and treat your customers like royalty across the previous stages, you have a customer for a lifetime. Encourage them to become brand promoters for you and recommend your products and services to their network. Offer loyalty points for any referrals they may have and give them early access to new product launches. A few small steps like these can help you nurture loyal customers for life.
Why is Customer Lifecycle Management Important for Your Business
Understanding the Importance of Customer Lifecycle Management
As you can see, each stage in the customer lifecycle is very critical in shaping up their overall experience with your brand. In order to make your customers become loyal brand advocates for your organization, you must enhance their experience throughout each stage of the cycle. A loyal customer can give your brand repeat business, recommend you to other potential clients, and share positive reviews about you across public channels. This, in the long run, maximizes the revenue for your business.
If you feel that implementing a successful customer lifecycle management strategy can become too daunting a task for you, or if you do not possess the required resources for it, you can always outsource the process to a professional. Leveraging an industry expert’s services can take the load off your head and ensure that your partner can build and nurture potential leads into loyal customers.
While selecting the right business process outsourcing partner for your brand, make sure that the enterprise has demonstrated expertise in the following three crucial processes:
Take advantage of your outsourcing partner’s deep industry insights to create personalized customer journeys, enhance customer loyalty, and strengthen your position in the market.
In a Nutshell
Customer lifecycle management must form an integral part of your organization’s strategic plan. The savvy customers of today value organizations that value them. Show them you care by taking into account their opinions and feedback, especially after the point of sales.
Chart out the entire lifecycle your customer has with your brand and monitor how engaged they are at each stage. Go the extra mile to deliver the best possible experience to your customers. Remember that you can always outsource your customer lifecycle management processes to a professional expert, thereby freeing up your in-house resources to focus on the business side of things.
Customer Retention: How to Identify the Right Approach
Customer retention management refers to an organization’s ability to retain its existing and newly acquired clients over a specified time.
How Can Virtual Shopping Experience Ramp Up Your Festive Sales?
Virtual shopping experience a perfect blend of the offline and online world – has made last-mile delivery possible to locations where no stores were giving the product demo.
Contact Center Outsourcing: The Ideal Fit Across Industries
Leverage contact center outsourcing and deliver superior experiences to your customers to gain a significant competitive advantage in a dynamic market.
