This week, we feature an article by Sage, an international company that helps organizations of all sizes with accounting, payroll, and payment solutions. They write about how improving customer journeys increases business growth. When simply surviving in the saturated e-commerce market is a struggle, achieving business growth might just feel impossible. But don’t worry. […]
This week, we feature an article by Sage, an international company that helps organizations of all sizes with accounting, payroll, and payment solutions. They write about how improving customer journeys increases business growth.
When simply surviving in the saturated e-commerce market is a struggle, achieving business growth might just feel impossible. But don’t worry.
Consistently improving the customer journey and user experiences can help you attract and retain loyal customers. Your customer journey refers to the path that your customers take as they interact with your brand at different touchpoints.
Optimize this journey, and growth is well within your grasp.
Still not sure about the link? Let’s explore how improving customer journeys and user experiences empowers you to achieve sustainable business growth.
Stockouts, inaccurate forecasting, delays, silos, poor customer service: all of the weaknesses within your customer journey threaten to ruin experiences. The result of all of this is angry, frustrated customers.
Without sufficient or up-to-date customer journey mapping, it’s difficult to pinpoint the origination of these weaknesses. This means that pain points can go unresolved, losing you valuable customers.
Improving your customer journey doesn’t just eliminate the inefficiencies that cause dissatisfaction and churn. It leads to the creation of a holistic customer experience in which every level of your sales funnel is optimized to meet customer needs and expectations.
To do this, you need to use the right solutions to accurately identify and resolve shortcomings in your customer journey. This is where ERP and CRM integration comes into play.
What is an ERP? Enterprise resource management (ERP) systems centralize, automate, and manage core business data and processes, from inventory management to real-time sales information. When integrated with a CRM, you can unify all of your inventory and customer data to eliminate silos and increase data accessibility and management.
So, for example, salespeople can access hyper-accurate inventory and pricing information to keep customers up-to-date. Customer service teams can access updated customer information in real time to deliver first-class customer service.
Smooth, personalized customer journeys result in great customer experiences. And when customers have a great experience with your brand, they tell their friends and family about it.
This is called word-of-mouth marketing, and it’s one of your most valuable strategies for growth.
88% of customers trust personal recommendations more than any other type of advertising.
According to RRD, word-of-mouth has a higher research-to-purchase ratio than every other type of marketing. In just one month, 40% of consumers made a purchase after receiving a word-of-mouth recommendation.
Customers repeatedly return to brands that provide consistently stellar customer experiences.
According to Zendesk, 60% of customers are loyal to a brand purely based on the quality of their customer experience. So, if you want customers to stick around for the long haul, you need to continuously refine your customer journey. It’s worth it, too, as loyal customers not only make more frequent and higher-value purchases—they sing your praises online and offline, driving more customers your way.
There are bound to be competitors that aren’t putting the same degree of effort into their customer journey—and it’ll show.
According to the Zendesk study, 73% of customers will switch to a competitor after multiple bad customer experiences. Over half will leave after one singular bad interaction.
Through competitor analysis, you can identify weaknesses in your competitors’ customer journey and use them to inspire improvements in your own. So, when customers abandon your competitor and are on the lookout for a new company, you can lure them in by resolving that specific pain point.
Targeting customers with personalized recommendations can generate significant revenue growth. In fact, according to Hubspot, for 42% of companies, 11-30% of their revenue can be attributed to cross-selling. The same goes for upselling—47% of companies report that 11-30% of their revenue comes from upselling.
But it doesn’t come easy. Cross-selling and upselling require an intimate understanding of your customer’s needs and goals that allows you to target them with the right products at the right time. Tellingly, this is a more effective strategy than offering discounts and promotions.
By mapping your customers’ journey, you can accurately pinpoint cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Combined with the data you’ve collected about your customers, you can make personalized recommendations to increase your chances of success.
Remember, cloud ERP software unifies all of this data for you. So not only can you automate the online cross-selling process, but your salespeople can also access customer and inventory information to make quick, knowledgeable, and personalized recommendations to customers. No more missed opportunities for a sale!
Your customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter scores (NPS) provide invaluable insight into how satisfied customers are with their experience. Even handling negative feedback offers valuable opportunities for growth.
But knowing exactly when to ask for customer feedback—as well as who and what to ask—is the tricky part.
Customer journey mapping illuminates touchpoints that present perfect opportunities for collecting customer feedback. Leaving no stone unturned, you can gather feedback from every area and use these insights to improve and refine your customer journey.
Entering a new market is a notoriously high-risk, high-reward endeavor. It can catapult your growth or leave you lying flat on your face. But expanding into a new market is much less daunting—and risky—when you’ve mastered customer journey mapping.
Market expansion involves intricately understanding your new target customer and market. Market trends and customer pain points, preferences, and personas need to be as accurate as possible to allow you to localize customer journeys.
This is the case whether you’re selling a new product to your existing customers or targeting an entirely new customer base with your current product.
If you’re looking to bolster your growth strategy, improving customer journey touchpoints and user experiences, then using data insights should be one of your leading initiatives.
An optimized customer journey does so much more than attract new customers through intuitive simplicity. It tailors the experience to meet customer expectations, enhancing satisfaction through personalization and efficiency. And the higher your customer satisfaction, the more sales, positive reviews, and loyalty you’ll receive.
Sage is a global software company that provides accounting, payroll, and payment solutions for businesses of all sizes.
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