The Path To Success: Mapping The Customer Journey With Your Customer Care Efforts

We’re here with a grand idea: Mapping the customer journey with your customer care efforts. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. They will make or break you with their decisions. And truthfully, customer care can be what makes them stay loyal to you.

There is a lot that goes into providing good customer service, which is why we’re going to talk about this idea in detail today!

Customer Care: What Is It & Why You Should Focus On It

Having a good customer care policy can make all the difference for your company.

A lot of companies have no idea what it is, how to do it, or why they should focus on it – but let’s talk about some reasons right now!

• Better retention rates by providing better service and making sure customers are satisfied with their experience
• Customers often expect a personalized experience
• Customers want instant gratification (and that means waiting on hold is not going to cut it)
• It’s important for businesses to take into account the different channels through which consumers can make contact with them

At B Squared Media, we define customer care as the proactive support companies provide to their customers using communication channels of their choice.

Why social-first?

Well, for starters, it’s cheaper than phone or email and there is a nearly guaranteed response time that can’t be beaten. In an era where everyone has access to all forms of media, you can grab attention in just one click.

As our world becomes more connected through digital technology, traditional customer service by telephone and email will become less common because people prefer social media as a communication channel.

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Additionally, we see this trend accelerating even faster with Millennials and Generation Z.

The Importance Of The Customer Journey 

The customer journey is the experience a person has with your company from before they buy, to during their purchase, and then post-purchase. Here’s how we look at the customer journey …

It’s essential that companies take into account what happens every step of the way because it can have major consequences for how people feel about your business in general.

Proactively engaging with customers throughout the process will lead to higher levels of satisfaction and a greater likelihood that they’ll recommend you to friends who may be interested in making a purchase too.

It also leads to improved conversion rates as you’re able to better understand what potential or current customers want so you can meet those needs faster than ever before possible!

What does this mean? Essentially, it means by mapping the customer journey with your customer care efforts you are able to create a superior experience for customers. And that includes would-be customers, too.

Mapping The Customer Journey With Your Customer Care Efforts

First, we added a sixth area of the customer journey, which is ownership. But looking at the traditional model, there are five areas to focus on. Let’s map the five phases of the customer journey …

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Purchase
4. Retention
5. Advocacy

Awareness

In this phase, the customer may or may not be aware of your product or service.

The customer is in the preliminary stage of their decision-making process. Therefore, they will be weighing all the pros and cons of making a purchase.

Using customer care in this phase means being available to field product/service questions that your brand is tagged in, as well as, conversions happening around that product or service.

Consideration

Here, the customer is considering whether to purchase from you after becoming aware of your company and product/service offerings.

For customer care, this means educating would-be customers on your nurture content.

This includes things like:

• Videos tutorials
• eBooks
• Case studies
• Product pages

Purchase

Finally, the customer is ready to make a purchase.

Customer care in this phase can be as simple as providing customers with the proper information and answering any questions they might have about your product or service, before finalizing the transaction.

This could also include asking for feedback on their experience after making an order. Additionally, following up accordingly if there are any issues!

Retention

The customer is now, in fact, a customer.

In this phase of the journey, customer care should be reactive to any issues or concerns that arise. However, you must also remain proactive in providing helpful content for customers who have made purchases with your company.

A prime example would be handling returns queries promptly and efficiently.

Advocacy

In this phase of the journey, customer care is more than just solving problems. The focus shifts to how your company can provide a better experience for future customers by providing excellent service and support in order to get good reviews on social media or word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied clients.

You Must Be Proactive With Customers Throughout The Journey

Mapping the customer journey with your customer care efforts is critical for a few glaring reasons.

• A recent study by Sprout Social found that in the last three years, customer service on social media has increased 97%.
• The number of brands using Facebook for customer care jumped from 41% to 78%.

But what’s even more interesting is how these channels have become a part of the broader conversation about customer experience. We’ve seen an increase in other communication methods like SMS and chatbot technology as well.

However, it all comes back to one thing: The power of customers controlling their own journey. It also means they’re not limited to just being reactive when there are issues because they can proactively reach out via any channel at any time with questions or concerns.

Furthermore, the ability to understand what your customer is thinking is paramount. Using this social data allows you to provide them with a truly valuable experience.

The importance of social media comes from its potential for gathering insights about how customers are feeling, and then using that information as a way to nudge their journey towards completion or conversion.

Improve Your Customer Care Strategy Today

A big part of understanding the customer’s mindset can be found through analyzing both sentiment and tone on social media posts. This is yet another reason why mapping your customer journey is so important to understanding your customer. And would-be customers!

Customer Care provides an opportunity for response-time analytics so you know when someone needs help most urgently — either because they’re having trouble with your product or maybe just out of frustration over something else happening in their life at that moment.

In any case, social intelligence and data will be a significant way to collect interest data … especially as third-party data options disappear.

To see how your customer care efforts measure up, consider taking our Customer Care Quiz (totally free!) or reaching out to see how we’re helping enterprise-sized brands differentiate through proactive social-first customer support.

To see more posts like this, be sure to follow us here on LinkedIn or check out our other articles on the B Squared Media Blog.