Organisations too had to learn. Adapting to its workforce being based at home, to serving customers online or via home delivery, the experiences their customers are now requiring and receiving dramatically changed overnight. Subsequently the subject of customer experience moved its way up the agenda in board room conversations. Business leaders understood they needed to give this important topic more attention and resource and started to relook at, or perhaps even begin to draw up, their customer experience journey for the post pandemic world.
With a greater reliance on e-commerce and building online experiences into their customer journey, many organisations may have started to re-consider how their own version of an omnichannel experience should look. Being forced to use digital tools such a video calling, or online messaging to stay in contact with other humans during lockdown meant certain consumer groups were now comfortable with technology they may have previously actively avoided.
Investing time upfront on a ‘know your customer’ exercise will help target your spend and efforts in the right places which also result in a deeper and more meaningful experience for your customers.
— Nicola Murphy | Head of Client Services & Delivery
But how many organisations took the time to think about their customer before they embarked on creating or updating the customer journey map? How much of a thorough understanding do they have about them? Not just their age or income levels and their family make-up but understanding why they use the product or service their organisation offers. What motivates them to seek you out and what kind of experience are they really wanting when they find you? Or what may frustrate them or put them off hitting the buy button?
Understanding more about your customers’ psychographic data, i.e., their motivations, beliefs, values and priorities over traditional demographic data such as age, gender and location, before starting to create your customer journey map will help you create an experience tailored to your target market.
For example, a coffee chain which understands its customer base is passionate about environmental issues and healthy food, may wish to highlight it only uses organic ingredients which are locally sourced. It may also decide to invest in higher levels of recyclable packaging as well as an easy-to-use waste sorting system in store to ensure its customers can responsibly dispose of any packaging they use.
Imagine that same coffee chain wishes to digitalise post pandemic. Understanding customers’ motivations can help focus resources on the part of the customer journey which will have the biggest impact for its customer base. If a large proportion of its customer group had a motivation to spend as little time as possible buying their lunch as they are always in a rush to get the office, it may wish to rethink how it can reduce time waiting in line at the till. Using smart technology such as smart fridges, (where items you take from the fridge are automatically scanned as you remove them and charged to you via their app), time spent on the payment part of the journey could be significantly reduced.
The introduction and integration of digital experiences can require a large investment not just in terms of budget but also effort required from your teams in terms of change management exercise to seamlessly integrate the new processes into your organisation. Investing time upfront on a ‘know your customer’ exercise will help target your spend and efforts in the right places which also result in a deeper and more meaningful experience for your customers.
At ELLA we adopt a customer and user-centric design approach to ensure technology solutions and supporting business processes are delivered that solve the right problems for your customers and your employees. Find out more about our services here.
Want to know more? – Get in touch with the ELLA team to discuss how we can help you transform your business. Contact ELLA.
