Customer Journey Analysis How-To

Customer journeys are the grouping of interactions, messages, and actions that shape the consumer experience with a brand, product, or service before and during a business transaction, purchase, or becoming a returning customer. Typically, a customer journey will consist of multiple points where these interactions happen, and these can either add value and bring the consumer closer to purchase or do the opposite. Marketers can learn from these journeys and find opportunities for optimization by conducting regular analyses.

The Best Customer Journey

Figuring out the best customer journey that benefits you and your consumers is not rocket science but requires patience and practice. First, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Where in their journey? – Do they have a basic level of awareness of your brand? Do they know what they want/need, or can you provide direction? Are you in their consideration set? Are they repeat customers? These questions will help you identify where in the marketing funnel they are.
2. Where are consumers having issues? – Gather data from consumer touch points. For example, their website journeys end on a specific page, or they stop scrolling after a certain point. Offline, how long are they willing to hold or sustain a call? What feedback are they leaving on review sites or Google maps? Social media comments and engagements are another great way to gather feedback; more on this below. Do your competitors have similar pain points?
3. Where are the opportunities? – Once you identify your issues, how can you turn them into opportunities? This is where the magic of analysis comes to life.
4. How can those pain points become opportunities for delight and positive sentiment? Can the call hold time be reduced or eliminated? Can that website page deliver information more quicker? Can that paragraph turn into an infographic or video? Does that repeating question be answered more often via content?
5. How are you measuring? As you identify issues, make sure to take note of their metrics to establish a baseline to compare after improvements are in place. For example, look out for conversion rates, time spent on site, questions being asked and how often, quality/sentiment of social media engagements, and other business-specific KPIs.

Using Social Listening To Better Understand Consumers

As a social media marketer, social media listening is a great tool to reveal consumer sentiment, yet only a few marketers perform this level of analysis. Consumers don’t need to talk about your brand for you to take notice. An example of my role as Director of Social Media at Florida International University (FIU), I want to analyze conversations about enrollment at FIU. I rather listen in to a wider discussion and look for conversations containing the words Florida, university, enrollment. Another way to do it is to search for a class of 2023 conversations. Don’t corner yourself only to your brand; you can cast a wider net and collect valuable data if you’re willing to peek outside with the right lenses.

Rinse & Repeat

Your customers will thank you as barriers and pain points are eased or removed. This analysis should be performed regularly. Make sure you look at the entire journey, not just one part or a group of customers. Good luck optimizing your customer journeys!

Related Resources From My Blog:

• The Overinformed Digital Consumer
• Ten Do’s & Don’ts for Social Media Listening
• Social Commerce: Turning Information Discovery into Information Search