Marketing Strategy: Increasing Loyalty with Journey Maps
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When I first began my career in marketing, it was in the healthcare industry. During that time, I was fortunate to work along side an outstanding Alzheimer’s advocate named Nora. Nora would start presentations by helping the audience have empathy for people with dementia—which is not the same as sympathy. Understanding how someone feels is different than feeling bad for them. Nora often said the best way to understand another’s needs was to “join them on their journey.”
With 92% of companies reporting a decline in customer service*, customer journey mapping should be a standard best practice.
Nora’s approach is excellent advice for marketers, as well. Often organizations make decisions based on internal goals, without realizing the impact those decisions make on their most coveted customers. The end result is a poor customer experience. Business of all sizes are finding, despite improved key performance indications (KPI’s), their customers are hopping over to the competition. The best way to drive loyalty is by understanding your customer’s goals. Next, determine a strategy designed to meet those customer goals. KPI’s measuring how you are delivering against those needs results in a win-win by reducing churn through loyalty and referrals.
To illustrate this point, I’ll share a customer experience with a well known coffee subscription company that happened last Saturday. This customer experience chart illustrates how the company repeatedly dropped the ball, losing me as a customer, while probably fist bumping on achieving KPI’s (check out the juicy stats in the table).
customer journey mapping solves problems
It was obvious after mapping the experience, that this company did have customer service strategy in place. However, journey mapping would have helped align their customer’s needs with the internal goals of improving churn rates, and increasing revenue. According to Forrester, it costs 5 times more to acquire new customers than to keep the ones you have happy. Emmet C. Murphy, author of Leading on the Edge of Chaos. states that reducing churn by 5% increase profitability between 25% and 125%. For those of you who are sales focused, the probability of closing a sale to an existing customer is between 60% and 70%, while close rates for new leads is only 5% to 20% (Forbes).
top customer service problems
In my example, it was feigned sympathy (not empathy) that laid the groundwork for a poor customer service experience. The rep simply didn’t have the authority to make me happy. In her world, getting me off the phone quickly with an order is the priority. I didn’t need help with that. Worse still, no matter how many people I reiterated that to, my need was dismissed in order to meet their internal targets. So what are the top reasons reps can’t deliver great experiences? These, for starters:
- no permission to authorize coupon codes
- lack of training on sending a customer to retain them
- antiquated systems and technology
- measuring performance indicators vs happiness indicators
Some KPIs (Key performance Indicators) inhibit loyalty at best, and actually encourage complaints. KPIs that measure speed, close rates, shorter interaction time (aka “resolution” time) may indicate they are achieving company goals. From the customer’s perspective, lack of empathy convinces them they should take their business elsewhere.
social is not your friend here
The paradigm of customer experience changed with the rise of social and mobile. Venting is now in the palm of their hand and linked to an entire network of potential leads. Complaints on various communities and social media are instantaneously gratifying to your irritated customer. Unfortunately, those branded comments are also nearly impossible to scrub off the web. American Express found that an unhappy customer will tell an average of 53 people a about bad customer experience on social.
89% of customers leave because of perceived poor customer service.* In fact, almost 70% of the reasons why customers switched to the competition was due to poor customer service. (Forum Corporation Survey). Compounding the issue: the 30% loss of revenue occurring from poor service is becoming harder to replace as search results for those complaints grows. Now calculating lifetime value (and loss) of a customer includes the potential loss from irritated customer’s personal and professional network, PLUS anyone who searches for “your name, product, or service” and complaints.
A Zendesk survey found 1/3 of customers sited exceptional customer service as the way to gain their loyalty.
customer loyalty is all about relationships
The important thing to remember is that whether you like it or not, you’re in the relationship game. Relationships don’t thrive on one sided conversations and selfish decision making. The end result of not being customer-centered is a failed relationship—and increased churn.
To change to a customer-centric model, first rank and flesh out your top 3 revenue generation target audiences. Personas will help you uncover their needs, desires and behaviors around discovery, purchasing and loyalty. Next, reinvent how you deliver great customer service, with measurements against delivering loyalty. (Check out a basic Customer Journey Map.) Ask these questions:
- Why do they tell you they are leaving? This question creates the foundation for what areas need to be addressed.
- How do your top 3 targets prefer to discover your offerings? This should be considered in your content and customer acquisition strategies, and the start of your customer journey map.
- What are the conversion points for each of those audiences? Once they have discovered you, understanding and perfecting the steps to conversion, lead them through the sales funnel with confidence and trust.
- Why do your top customers in each segment tell you they stay loyal? Reasons for loyalty vary, but always depend on whether you continue to provide enough value to keep them from popping into Google and finding a better choice.