How to understand customer journey?

How do you define customer experience and how does it differ from customer service?

Customer experience and customer service are interrelated. But they are not the same. Because  customer experience is about customer journey with your business and customer service is how you support customers on various occasions.

With small business being the heart of every customer, new innovative products have a wide and creative market. Although established giants Ikea, Target, WalMart and CostCo provide product ranges extensively, the customers continue to dig through online marketing searching for new products.

The Walmart total net amount of sales for 2018 fiscal year amounted to 495.76  billion U.S. and other store figures are keep being added.

Customers are different and they are categorized into:

• Millennials : Think differently for buying products
• Men : Mostly set budget and would like to enjoy all the promises made by the companies
• Women : Buy the needs first and prefer to enjoy choices.
• Baby Boomers : Spend mostly on food, medicines, clothing, fuel and would like to be taken care of without delays.

It is important to understand the needs and buying interests of various categories of customers as they are not the same.

pricing, advertising and marketing strategies must also be developed accordingly to enable that they are emotionally connected to the product.

The next part of pricing strategy is based on various factors - manufacturing, product design, shipping, packing etc., However it should be noted that a moderate price is easily sold than a high cost price that limitedly categorizes the segment of buyers.

Pre and Post Sales Customer Experience

When customers visit your store or browse  an e-commerce website, it is important to provide samples, explain about the quality and describe the features and highlights of products. While shopping online, a brief description with reviews should be easily accessible to the clients for quick decision making.

However, in the recent times, it was found that customer experience require more focus on improving customer retention,   increase customer satisfaction and increase cross-selling and upselling. The Gartner surveys says that the company that collects and analyzes customer feedback can provide better experience.  This also helps in meeting the expectations of customers.

Additionally, pre-sale and post-sale customer experience has a unique prominence to provide access to all the services that customers are looking for and satisfy their requirements successfully.

This is also one of the assured methods for customer retention.

To convert better sales and satisfying customer experiences, there are three areas that need improvement.

• Follow up with the customer gently discussing about resolutions you are offering
• Be on time to attend to the complaint and process the request for speedy solutions
• Get in touch through email giving latest updates about complaints
• Add new steps, processes and course of actions if they have been missing
• Remove the customer journey programs that are underperforming

Conclusion

Though the CRM (Customer Relation Management) software is enhancing the scope of better customer experiences, sometimes the customer still remains unsatisfied with the performance and responsibility undertaken by the company due to non-delivery of expected results. This may even further lead to the permanent loss of the customer. Because, tolerance and patience have also certain limitations. Being let down may disappoint and cause a negative impact on your business.