A generic customer experience lacking personalization has gone the way of the rotary telephone: Still in existence, quaint enough to be intriguing for a moment, but ultimately not a viable option for the caller or the recipient.
Customers are accustomed to being acknowledged and understood throughout their post-sale experience, from early stage onboarding to renewal and beyond. Organizations can and should use a combination of digital and non-digital interactions to create that experience.
To do so well, they first must articulate the ideal customer journey. The SiriusDecisions Command Center® shows customer journey mapping correlates with myriad success metrics, including high customer retention, ability to cross-sell and upsell, and a higher Net Promotor Score® and NPS response rate.
The interaction points are numerous and varied. How are customers introduced to the resources available to them? At what point are they invited to interact with other customers? When does the conversation begin about renewing, even growing, the relationship?
Teams responsible for orchestrating the customer journey and determining how to execute those many interactions should consider three important elements. (An expanded discussion of these elements is available in the brief “Three Steps to Determining a Digital Approach for B-to-B Customer Engagement.”)”:
Whether digital interactions play heavily in the customer lifecycle – such as in a digital first organization – or are in support of a higher-touch engagement cadence, organizations must begin the process of determining the ideal customer journey with a clear view of the customer’s needs and expectations.
Amy Bills is a research director of Customer Engagement Strategies at SiriusDecisions. She has more than 13 years of experience in demand marketing and customer marketing, including senior marketing roles at innovative b-to-b technology organizations as well as b-to-b marketing agency leadership roles. Follow Amy on Twitter @AmySilverBills