The customer experience is much lauded as an area that can be transformational for the fortunes of a business and it’s not hard to see why with up to 60% additional revenue available to those businesses that do it well*. However, it can also feel incredibly complicated, highly theoretical and unattainable for many businesses. But it needn’t be. In this two-part series, I will cover all aspects of micro journeys from highlighting what they are to the implementation process.
By starting with a few simple steps, every business can access some of the enormous gains on offer and learn how to make the power of excellent customer experience work for them.
The power of thinking small
The customer experience is very rarely made up of a single, linear customer journey and is instead usually made up of many small interactions that form ’micro journeys’. By focussing on key micro journeys that matter to your business, you can drive a noticeable uplift in performance relatively quickly and build up confidence among other stakeholders. This will allow you to push forwards with a more sophisticated customer experience programme over time when you’ve got past successes in your back pocket.
What is a micro journey?
When I say micro journeys though, what exactly do I mean? Well, a micro journey simply means the steps someone takes after an important interaction with your business, to reach the next step in their overall customer journey. Micro journeys happen throughout the customer journey, from the point people become aware of your business, all the way through to them becoming a loyal customer providing positive word of mouth. If you are new to micro journeys though, it is best to start with the micro journeys that have the highest impact and are the easiest to measure, so you can demonstrate early success to the business.
An example micro journey
What are the right micro journeys for your business?
The right journey depends on the type of business you are and the nature of the way customers interact with you. Therefore, what is important is to identify what those key interactions with your business are and then what the customer’s immediate goal is from that point. Don’t over complicate things by making the goal of someone who shows early-stage interest in the business be a transaction or an enquiry as that isn’t their immediate goal.
We find it best to look for the following:
• High impact interactions for your business, e.g. a product page or a white paper download page
• Where it is easy to measure success, i.e. can you measure how many people start the journey, how many end the journey and what the value is to the business of those that completed the journey?
• Where the customer interaction points are under your control. The best journeys are those where you can control every touchpoint and experiment with each, to find the right approach.
• Short and simple customer journeys. It’s best to start simple and not get bogged down in overly complex journeys
How can you get started?
The best place to start the process of selecting the micro journeys you will work on is to delve into the treasure trove of data your website offers you. Identify what the most important gateways are through your site, what the next action is for the customer after each point and create a micro journey flow or map. Then benchmark each part of this to see how it performs today, before developing a plan to improve every aspect of the journey. You don’t have to know all the answers as to what is going on or how to improve it; start by developing a testing plan and follow what works.
We find this is the best starting point for any business new to a customer experience-led approach. Each micro journey can be broken down into a series of small projects and then at a later point in time, a fuller customer experience programme can be put in place to fill the remaining gaps. So don’t delay and start improving your customer experience today through micro journeys!
Want to learn more about micro journeys? Take a look at part 2 of the Micro Journey Series: How to win big - transform your micro journeys
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Source: “Wealth Management Digitalisation” - Deloitte & Touche
