Looking at the touch points of your customer’s journey can help you determine where improvements can be made to increase satisfaction with the onboarding – and retention – experience of your customer. Today’s customer is:
1. Informed
Your customer does their homework long before they walk into your brick and mortar or put an item in the cart on your website. A 2014 Deloitte study found that digital data influenced 49 percent of consumers before they made an online or in-store purchase. And that number has increased incrementally in the last three years.
2. Interactive
Your customer reads reviews and interacts with previous users and purchasers of your product or services. Your reputation with their peers is much more important to them than your brand, how long you’ve been in business or even the reviews on your site. The chart below shows that the consumer trusts third-party reviews more than the retailer from whom they are purchasing.
3. Impatient and Impetuous
Your customer wants what they want when they want it. Browsing in stores is no longer a national pastime. Today’s consumer sees time spent in stores as an expense, not an investment. No longer seeing value in trying clothes on in stores, they prefer to purchase and then return. This has forced many retailers to a ‘no questions asked’ return policy in order to retain customers.
What The “I’s” Mean for Your Customer’s Journey
The “I”s in consumer behavior are empowering the consumer at each phase of the purchase process.
Today’s consumer wants to purchase from companies where:
- The buying process is easy
- Associates are informed but not intrusive
- The consumer has control over how they make their purchase
Retailers and service providers need to create an environment of flexibility and adaptability. Listening to your customer – and knowing their needs and wants on their journey to make a purchase is crucial to maintaining a competitive edge in today’s market.
So how are you listening to your customer this week? Feel free to share in the comment area below.
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