<p>You need to use a mix of <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-retention/consumer-insights" target="_self">customer insights</a> and intuition to re-engage them and recapture their attention – not just for brand loyalty but for advocacy as well. It <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/12/customer-retention-versus-customer-acquisition/?sh=405129e1c7d6" target="_blank">costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one</a>, and existing customers are more likely to try your new products and spend more.</p><p>The time to focus on customer retention is now. Let’s look at some effective ways that you can continue to engage your audience to keep them coming back.</p><h2>What is customer engagement?</h2><p>Customer engagement refers to any interaction between a customer and a business. It can include any communication channel, both online and offline, prompted by either party.</p><p>Traditionally, customer engagement has been nurtured and developed by customer service departments, prompted by sales and marketing. With consumers now able to access brand communications in a variety of different ways, it has expanded to include various other touch-points along the <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-acquisition/customer-journey-mapping-guide" target="_self">customer journey</a>. It essentially covers every interaction with a customer that a brand has.</p><p>Learn more about <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/customer-engagement" target="_self">customer engagement here</a>.</p><h2>What are the benefits of customer engagement?</h2><p>There are many reasons why keeping your audience engaged can be beneficial for your business. Here are a few examples:</p><ul><li><strong>Increase in revenue</strong> – Simply satisfying a customer is not enough in today’s world: you need to truly immerse them and capture their attention. After all, customers who are completely engaged show a <a href="https://www.gallup.com/workplace/241766/customers-coming-back.aspx" target="_blank">23% higher share in profitability, relationship growth, and revenue</a> when compared to the average customer.</li><li><strong>Can reduce customer churn</strong> – Unengaged customers are more likely to jump ship to your competitors, meaning your company could miss out on revenue.</li><li><strong>Higher customer loyalty</strong> – Engaged customers are happy customers, and happy customers turn into loyal ones. Customer engagement provides an emotional connection between the brand and your audience, and this can ensure that your customers’ lifespan is much longer, giving more value to your business.</li><li><strong>Increased brand awareness</strong> – Engaged customers also remember your brand more easily, solving their needs quicker and satisfying their wants earlier.</li><li><strong>More cost efficient</strong> – Since it can cost you more to attract new customers rather than keep your existing ones, to keep expenses as economical as possible, implementing a customer engagement strategy is key.</li></ul><h2>What is a customer engagement strategy?</h2><p>A customer engagement strategy is a method for identifying the most effective ways a business can engage with its consumers. It should map out how the business will do so to fit in with its wider goals.</p><p>This strategy should also include relevant customer engagement ideas, the channels and platforms on which the brand intends to prompt engagement, and the customer persona that it intends to target. A customer engagement strategy should align with existing marketing activities and campaigns and strengthen their impact.</p><h2>7 customer engagement strategies to try</h2><h3>1. Harness the power of social media</h3><p>There are over <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/507405/uk-active-social-media-and-mobile-social-media-users/" target="_blank">57 million active social media users</a> in the UK as of January 2023, and the number is increasing rapidly. So, there’s a very good chance that a majority of your customer base is among them.</p><p>People love voicing their opinions, especially grievances, on public forums like Facebook, X (formally Twitter), or Instagram, so keep a regular eye on them. Engage customers by responding to them immediately and offering solutions to satisfy them. This shows existing customers that you value their opinion and lets future customers witness your engagement and conflict-resolution skills as well.</p><p>Social media provides a cost-effective method of marketing your brand while keeping your customer engaged on a platform they’re already active on.</p><h3>2. Entice them with rewards and incentives</h3><p>If there’s one thing everybody loves, it’s free gifts and discounts. And that’s a surefire way to get your customer engaged. Offer customers rewards and incentives in exchange for feedback, participation in an event, or referring your brand to their network.</p><p>Essentially, you need to reward your customers for engaging with you, in turn, boosting even more engagement and loyalty.</p><p>Look at starting a referral scheme or appointing brand advocates from your existing customer base. Customers will be made to feel special as they represent your brand to others while doing it for the incentives you offer.</p><h3>3. Deliver spot-on customer service</h3><p>If provided with excellent customer service, <a href="https://c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/research/salesforce-state-of-the-connected-customer-4th-ed.pdf" target="_blank">78% of customers</a> will return to a company even after they make a mistake.</p><p>Top-notch customer service starts by making your customers feel like you truly care about them. This mission needs to be communicated across every team in your business – not just the ones facing customers. From finance to marketing, every member should be dedicated to providing the best customer service they can.</p><p>Offer customer service that provides what the customer is looking for and actively anticipates what they need before they know themselves. Provide high-quality customer service consistent with your brand’s mission and voice. Prioritising your customer service will ensure that customers trust you and will approach you first with any resentment before taking external action. This is essential as it allows you to control the situation before it gets out of hand.</p><h3>4. Create a loyalty program</h3><p>We’ve seen this work really well with coffee shops over the last few years. They hand you a card to get stamped every time you buy a drink, and after paying for nine drinks, you get your tenth coffee for free.</p><p>You can make a loyalty scheme work for almost any kind of business today. Whether it’s pushing them towards buying in bulk for a discount or upselling in slow-moving areas, customers get rewarded for their loyalty, and you get guaranteed business.</p><p>Here are a few ways you can introduce a loyalty program:</p><ul><li>Annual birthday or anniversary discount</li><li>Email-only discounts</li><li>Free delivery over a minimum order limit</li><li>Themed and limited-time programs during the festive season</li><li>Creating a ‘VIP’ group of customers and treating them to pre-sales and exclusive discounts.</li></ul><h3>5. Keep in touch in a personalised way</h3><p>Keeping a customer engaged is an ongoing process and is like maintaining a friendship. If you make no effort to stay in touch, the relationship is not going to last very long. Set up regular touch points throughout the customer’s buying journey to establish your brand and messaging along the way. The customer will engage with you if they see you more often.</p><p>Send regular emails, SMS campaigns, and post often on social media. Even after a successful transaction is complete, there is plenty of potential to touch base and remind the customer of your existence. A nice ‘thank you’ note shows them that you appreciate their patronage and may encourage them to come back again. Or, send them company news and update them on the latest products they would be interested in.</p><p>Providing a complete <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/how-to-improve-your-brands-customer-experience" target="_self">customer experience</a> is key to maintaining customer engagement in the long run. Never go for more than six months without connecting with your customer. Use their first name, remember their birthday, and remind them of their last purchase to truly personalise their shopping experience and make them feel special.</p><h3>6. Ask for their opinion</h3><p>Customers love sharing their opinion, so simply ask and engage with what they have to say.</p><p>Actively request every customer to leave reviews and testimonials for your company. This can be through Google reviews, on social media, or independent review websites – like Feefo.</p><p>You can also consider embedding reviews into your website and alongside each product offering to display social proof to new customers.</p><p>Make reviewing your business a fun experience. Not all businesses need in-depth ratings. A scale of between 1-5 stars will look nice and is easy to use and understand by all.</p><p>An important aspect to remember when dealing with reviews: pay attention to the<a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/negative-reviews" target="_self"> negative ones</a>. Never leave a negative comment unattended for long, which means you must always monitor all mentions of your brand. Be professional in all communication and offer a solution immediately. A negative review is still a customer attempting to engage with you, so don’t let this opportunity slip.</p><h3>7. Create engaging content</h3><p>Over 25 years ago, Bill Gates said, ‘content is king’, and this statement is even more relevant today. Everything you post and create from your company is content and should be used to engage your customer.</p><p>Play around with different mediums to see what works best for your business. Some common forms of engaging content include:</p><ul><li>Short and snappy videos</li><li>Blog posts on relevant topics</li><li>Infographics and images</li></ul><p>There are plenty more types of engaging content you can adopt, but whatever you choose, make sure it’s share-worthy, relevant, and engaging.</p>

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<h2>Customer engagement examples</h2><p></p><figure style = "margin: auto; text-align: center;width: 345px;"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9mFbCiGBH8aMVQsy8jV5cdDPCSBoljcWBudPZseuklZA5RRGRtEaZiBCsY_zj0NBoYC15X_fiW6M5ZVTYZKW5NntVQq0jLW_VuR2ZIxv9sKPAGwBZDcbDbxHEXjKoxzeI4Y1s0tUkdmGqY3I" style="margin-top: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-bottom: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;width: 345px;" /></figure><h3>1. IKEA</h3><p>IKEA is a great example of how to engage your customers. Their hashtag <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/ikeaatmine/" target="_blank">#ikeaatmine</a> shows exactly what IKEA’s products look like in a real home.</p><p>Hashtags are a great way to keep the conversation going and make sure you’re constantly posting about the latest trends.</p><figure style = "margin: auto; text-align: center;width: 430px;"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/5TPOE41yqt11NeFIvR0QilmAkXB08jFfq3ME5R6JGLplzC9W73nVHr6kBUQY-FjzAJExQSAs-ob8-QVobH98TRodFEiNBClasF2ijPJS5QcasoIJu2IhELLMzJdTlnyAlB6wLBjKegsdQUH2" style="margin-top: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-bottom: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;width: 430px;" /></figure><h3>2. B&amp;Q</h3><p>We love this example from B&amp;Q. They shared <a href="https://twitter.com/BandQ/status/1276539407617712128" target="_blank">video content </a>on how to create a butterfly haven, giving their audience helpful and actionable tips.</p><p>Videos are perfect for your social media channels, as they’re much easier to digest, and you can encourage customers to share their own projects.</p><figure style = "margin: auto; text-align: center;width: 398px;"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/iwxFrYEQa-goMCaj8vbqIaPmcuAXW157s9Gq-mXn2QldMjR-8CYwNl1XxXDlJ-wreqFm6eCwO6Z9hzmeenY6o2HtVGjesXAUB2HPX-Ff97sHED17U0RQ1NpKTvvp8LkcKcjm8yiQWHolp1mz" style="margin-top: auto;margin-right: auto;margin-bottom: auto;margin-left: auto;text-align: center;width: 398px;" /></figure><h3>3. Apple</h3><p>Apple is also a master at how to encourage engagement via social media hashtags. They’ve done it super effectively with their <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/shotoniphone/?hl=en" target="_blank">#ShotOniPhone</a> campaign. Customers simply need to create content with their Apple devices and share using the hashtag.</p><p>The result? Apple gets content curated on their customer’s feeds, and the users get featured on Apple’s media in return. With over 28 million posts shared using their #ShotOniPhone hashtag, it’s a certified success.</p><h2>What is a customer engagement platform?</h2><p>A customer engagement platform is any platform where customers interact with a brand. Some of the most common examples include:</p><ul><li>Email marketing campaigns</li><li>Loyalty programs</li><li>Podcasts</li><li>Studies and PR campaigns</li><li>YouTube channels</li><li>Social media networks</li></ul><p>These platforms can be used two-fold: both by the brand to push out communications and by the customer to interact with the brand. But, businesses should also implement customer engagement channels where the customer instigates contact first, such as helplines, email inboxes, and chat functions. These tend to serve slightly different, often problem-based, purposes, but are still valuable communication and customer engagement channels.</p><p>At present, video content is one of the most popular customer engagement tactics, as it’s an excellent method for quick and easily consumable information sharing and can be condensed and optimised for various platforms.</p><h2>Customer engagement is a long-term strategy</h2><p>No business can master customer engagement immediately. You will need to undertake at least two or three of the ideas mentioned here and monitor their results over time to see which ones work best for your business.</p><p>Whichever techniques you take for a spin, do so with the intention of delivering products and services your customer truly needs and wants. Segment your customers to see which idea is working best for which demographic. Not all customers are the same, so you need to engage them in a voice they understand and on a platform they use.</p><p>Combining these customer engagement ideas will help boost engagement and establish a long-term connection with your customer.</p><p><a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/contact" target="_self">Contact </a>our Feefo team today to see how we can help you keep your customers coming back.</p>

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7 Effective Customer Engagement Strategies to Increase Sales

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<h2>What is customer engagement?</h2><p>Customer engagement is all about the interactions you have with your customers and the way they interact with you. These interactions or engagements can range anywhere from messaging a company via live chat, to making a purchase on a website.</p><p>It’s up to you what engagements you believe are valuable and meaningful to the relationship with your customers. Visiting a website could be counted as an engagement, but it’s not necessarily meaningful, unless they fill in a form or make an enquiry.</p><h2>Why is customer engagement important and what are the benefits?</h2><p>Investing time and resources into your customer engagement strategy can result in lots of positive outcomes. It can help your business understand the relationship you have with your customers, improve your communication with them, boost customer loyalty and attract new customers.</p><p>Your bottom line will benefit from engaging with your customers and offering them a great experience, with research showing that <a href="https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics/" target="_blank">86% of buyers will pay more</a> for a better customer experience. Aside from increased sales and revenue, a strong customer engagement strategy can also help to reduce churn. As many as <a href="https://www.providesupport.com/blog/real-cost-of-losing-customers-due-to-poor-customer-service/" target="_blank">60% of consumers stop doing business with a brand</a> if they have a negative experience.</p><p>Getting your customer engagement strategy right can also benefit your brand awareness and recognition, which is key to bringing in new leads. <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/ekolsky/cx-for-executives" target="_blank">72% of customers will share a positive experience</a> with at least six people – for your brand, this could include referrals to friends and family, positive reviews online, great case studies, or promotion on social media.</p><h2>How to create a customer engagement strategy</h2><p>If you’re ready to create a customer engagement strategy, carrying out a thorough analysis of your customers and their interactions with your business is the best place to start. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be in a much better position to create a successful customer experience strategy that's bespoke to your business.</p><p>Use our step-by-step guide to source the information you need to create your customer engagement strategy.</p><h2>Improve your customer experience</h2><p>Your customer experience has a huge impact on your engagement, so it’s important to get it right. Start by defining what your customer journey looks like with a customer experience map, which plots how your customers engage with your business and how they feel at each stage.</p><p>This allows you to see where the positive engagements are happening and when your customers are happiest, as well as any areas that need improvement. Good customer experience maps are highly detailed and cover every channel and touchpoint where a customer may encounter your brand.</p><p>Another key part of improving your customer experience is understanding who your key customers are. The best way to do this is to create customer profiles or personas. Customer profiles help you identify who your ideal customers are and how you can attract and retain them.</p><h2>Collect feedback</h2><p>To fully understand every interaction a customer (or potential customer) has with your brand, you need to ask them what they thought at each stage of their journey. There are lots of different ways to collect feedback, but the two main methods are customer reviews and surveys.</p><p>Customer reviews are ideal for understanding which of your engagements are working, where customers are most engaged and which touchpoints are most important to them. Tools like Feefo’s Feedback Request Manager allow you to collect feedback at every stage of the customer journey, as well as tailor feedback campaigns to your different buyer personas.</p><p>Most businesses only collect feedback on the buying experience and the product or service, but what about the after sales service? If a customer had to contact your support team, ask them for feedback on the assistance they received. This can help you understand how helpful your support staff are, and if they need further training.</p><p>You also need to understand why a consumer decided against doing business with you. Surveys are a great way to get insight from anyone, whether they’ve bought your products or not. They’re completely private and anonymous too, so you can collect more detailed and more honest feedback.</p>

<h2>Offer personalised experiences</h2><p>Research shows that <a href="https://www.epsilon.com/us/about-us/pressroom/new-epsilon-research-indicates-80-of-consumers-are-more-likely-to-make-a-purchase-when-brands-offer-personalized-experiences" target="_blank">80% of customers are more likely to purchase</a> a product or service from a brand that provides personalised experiences. Customers want to be treated as individuals, so it’s important to tailor your messaging in each communication with them as much as possible.</p><p>This is where your customer profiles come in handy. Use the information gathered for your customer profiles to tailor every engagement a consumer has with your brand, from when they browse your website, to when your customer service team are replying to their review. Making your customers feel seen, understood and appreciated at an individual level as you engage with them is a great way to deliver an exceptional customer experience.</p><h2>Show your human side</h2><p>Make your brand, and the interactions you have with your customers, more human. Try to strike a balance between automation and human interaction. For example, if you use chatbots on your website, you may want to automate simple questions to save your customer service team valuable time. However, you still need to ensure you have customer service agents available to take over these conversations when a customer asks a more challenging question or wants to make a complaint.</p><p>Think about your brand’s ethics and beliefs, too. 71% of consumers prefer <a href="https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/strategy/brand-purpose" target="_blank">buying from a brand that aligns with their values</a>. Whatever your passion is, tell people about it and give them a way to get involved. This will help create more opportunities for consumers to have meaningful engagements with your brand and could be the key difference between someone choosing your business over another.</p><h2>Increase your number of customer touchpoints</h2><p>You want consumers to encounter your brand as much as possible before, during and after they’ve purchased something from you. This can help to:</p><ul><li>Increase your chance of converting a browser into a buyer.</li><li>Build customer confidence through the buying processes – they may even choose to spend more with you.</li><li>Encourage customer loyalty, repeat purchases and recommendations.</li></ul><p>Your customer touchpoints will vary depending on your business, but there are several different ways people could encounter your brand, depending on what stage of the buying journey they’re in.</p><p>Pre-purchase touchpoints include ratings and reviews, advertising, content marketing, social media, word-of-mouth recommendations, influencer marketing, PR, organic search, testimonials and case studies.</p><p>During purchase touchpoints include your website, product catalogue, store, brand or office, sales team, ratings and reviews.</p><p>Finally, post-purchase touchpoints cover transactional emails, marketing emails, support team follow ups, feedback requests and subscription renewals.</p><p>If there are touchpoints listed above that you haven’t considered before, it could be worth taking advantage of these opportunities to engage with your customers by adding them to your customer journey map. This list can help you analyse where your business is falling short when it comes to communicating with your customers, so you can improve your customer engagement strategy.</p><h2>Digital customer engagement channels</h2><p>Digital customer engagement is the process of using online or digital channels to interact, listen to and acquire a customer. Whether it’s through your website, app, social media or third-party websites, engaging with your customers through digital channels is crucial. Let’s look at some of the most popular tools for engaging customers digitally.</p><h2>Paid search</h2><p>Pay per click (PPC) search ads are a low-cost way to market your business online. They are the ‘sponsored ads’ that appear on the top and bottom of the search engine results page (SERP). To get the most out of PPC, it’s important to target your ads to ensure they reach the right users, include the keywords that your audience are searching with, and provide clear call to actions (CTAs) to encourage browsers to click on your ad.</p><h2>Email newsletters</h2><p>Emails are one of the most engaging channels of communication. Email marketing provides an excellent return on investment, while email newsletters are the<a href="https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2020_B2B_Research_Final.pdf" target="_blank"> most effective method of nurturing leads</a>. Email newsletters are a cost-effective digital engagement channel, as they can reach all your customers (and potential customers) directly through a single campaign.</p><h2>Social media</h2><p>Social media is a free, easy to implement and widely used digital engagement channel. Engaging your customers on social media will help increase your brand’s awareness and build an online community of followers who share and engage with your brand. Share your Feefo reviews on social media to keep customers engaged with your products and reply to comments directly to show you value their feedback.</p><h2>Live chat</h2><p>Chatbots and live chat servicing help speed up requests and queries, and many businesses choose to automate frequently asked questions to save time and resources. Customers who want quick answers will reach out to the chat option and will engage with your brand more when their query is resolved quickly.</p><h2>Webinars and events</h2><p>Webinars, talks and live events are a great way to engage customers in an interactive setting. Webinars are a<a href="https://www.ringcentral.com/us/en/blog/webinar-statistics/" target="_blank"> favourite among B2B professionals</a>, with more than half of users participating in them at least once a week. Your business can use this channel to engage your partners, clients and even employees. It’s important to choose a topic that your customers are interested in and try to keep it to 45 minutes or less.<span></span><span></span><span></span></p>

<h2>Videos</h2><p>Video is an effective medium for keeping your audience engaged. You don’t need a big budget to create quality videos, so this is a channel that works well for businesses of any size. If you’re posting videos to social media channels like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, keep them short and snappy to make them engaging and shareable. Quick tutorials and guides on how to use products also work well.</p><h2>Traditional customer engagement channels</h2><p>More than <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/digital-transformation/online-to-offline-marketing/" target="_blank">80% of shoppers still prefer to purchase a product </a>they need immediately from a store, so it’s important to engage with your customers offline too. Consider whether your brand could use some of these more traditional channels to engage with your customers and deliver a great experience at all touchpoints.</p><h2>Create a welcoming environment</h2><p>First impressions matter, so make your store welcoming and inviting for shoppers. Emphasise your brand’s identity to capture your audience’s attention and consider offering in-store perks like free WiFi, allowing your customers to engage with your content while they’re shopping.</p><h2>Offer self-service</h2><p>Give your customers the chance to be independent while making a purchase decision by offering self-service kiosks. Boost engagement and improve the customer experience by allowing them to customise their own experiences in-store. Most stores now offer self-checkout options, which can help customers avoid long queues, making their shopping experience easier and hassle-free.</p><h2>Collect feedback in-store</h2><p>Asking customers for their feedback in-store, as well as online, is a great way to enhance customer loyalty. There are a range of tools you can employ to encourage customers to leave feedback, from touchscreens to QR codes on receipts.</p><h2>Offer referral and reward programmes</h2><p>Your customers can be a valuable asset when it comes to promoting your brand. Offer rewards and referral incentives to encourage your audience to recommend you to others. Brands with referral programmes benefit from higher conversion rates than those without.</p><h2>Customer engagement metrics and tracking tools</h2><p>Reviewing your performance will help you to fine-tune your customer engagement strategy and keep it relevant to your customers. Some of the best key performance indicators to measure when tracking your results include:</p><ul><li>More positive customer reviews – monitor your review website, social media channels, customer service inbox and any other spaces online where customer conversations might be taking place.</li><li>More traffic on your site – software such as Google Analytics can help you to measure how many people are visiting your website.</li><li>Year-on-year increase in search volume for your brand keywords or upward trend – sign up for an SEO monitoring tool like SEMRush, which will help you to keep track of how many people are searching online for your brand.</li><li>More leads or sales – a successful customer engagement strategy can lead to increased leads and revenue. Implement robust tracking so that you can clearly show month-on-month and year-on-year increases across both metrics.</li><li>Longer time spent on page – an engaged website visitor is a visitor who spends more time on your website. Google Analytics will help you to track time spent on page and average session duration, which shows how engaged people are with your website.</li></ul><h2>How Feefo can improve your customer engagement</h2><p>Collecting feedback is an important part of your customer engagement strategy. Feefo has a range of tools you can use to improve your customer engagement.</p><h2>Help shoppers find the feedback they need</h2><p>Your website is one of the most important parts of your customer journey, especially if you’re an ecommerce business. Once someone is on your website, you want to keep them there until they make a purchase, booking or enquiry.</p><p>Feefo’s Dynamic Topic Display tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically identify themes in your feedback so browsers can easily find the reviews they’re looking for. Not only does this help save consumers valuable time, but it also helps to keep them onsite, engaged and more likely to convert.</p><h2>Analyse your customer feedback with ease</h2><p>Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight tool can help your business identify issues and successes quickly. It identifies popular themes in your feedback and the emotion surrounding them, allowing you to analyse this feedback internally by automatically grouping them into categories. These categories advise you how to act on each topic, allowing you to quickly and easily see which engagements are positive for customers, and which need improvements.</p><h2>Track specific customer engagements</h2><p>If you know exactly what you want to track across your feedback, Feefo’s Insight Labels allow you to do exactly that. For example, if you tag reviews left after customers have been in touch with your customer service team with the staff member’s name, you can track who’s getting the most positive or negative feedback, so you know who needs additional support or training.</p>

Customer engagement: the complete guide on how to succeed in customer satisfaction 

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Customer engagement: the complete guide on how to succeed in customer satisfaction

<h2>What is customer journey mapping?</h2><p>Customer journeys can be complicated and are rarely linear, crossing multiple devices and channels. By aggregating and analysing your customers' journeys, you can better understand their pain points, behaviours, needs and expectations. The best way to plot out and analyse the data you collect from your audience is to carry out customer journey mapping.</p><p>A customer journey map brings their journeys to life visually, making it easier to see how their experiences flow across your brand's touchpoints - all the places where your customers can interact with you, both online and offline. It's a strategic approach to <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/how-to-improve-your-brands-customer-experience" target="_self">improving your customer experience</a> and can be more effective than trying to understand and improve individual touchpoints at a tactical level.</p><h2>What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?</h2><p>It can improve your overview of the strengths and weaknesses in your current customer journey. By reviewing the journey your customers take when interacting and purchasing from you, as well as their needs, thoughts and feelings along the way, you'll better understand what your customers want from you at each stage and whether you're meeting those needs.</p><h2>When and why is a customer journey map used?</h2><p>Here are some popular examples of when and why you might want to use a customer journey map.</p><h3>To help better understand your customers</h3><p>Creating a customer journey map can be an excellent way to help your business better understand how customers engage with your brand. It can help colleagues across the business see how each touchpoint contributes to the customer journey.</p><h3>To identify gaps in the customer experience</h3><p>Dedicating time to a customer journey mapping project and visualising your customers' journeys can help you review and understand them and their experiences. Customer journey mapping can shed light on pain points or experience gaps you might need to know about.</p><h3>To improve your products and processes</h3><p>By plotting out the various touchpoints in a customer's journey with your brand, you can highlight problematic or inefficient processes that might lead to drop-offs or complaints. It can also help you to refine and enhance your products and services.</p><h3>To deliver relevant and effective communications</h3><p>Creating a customer journey map can help you to recognise your audience’s wants, needs, questions, and expectations. Use this information to create an insight-led marketing and communications plan. Delivering targeted and relevant messages at critical stages throughout the customer journey can help them feel appreciated as consumers.</p><h3>To prevent churn</h3><p>Every business has a churn rate – the rate at which customers stop doing business with your brand. Customer journey mapping can offer insight into where and why your customers might encounter problems or frustrations. By compiling your customers' experiences, you can identify areas of concern and plan to improve them.</p><h3>To close the deal</h3><p>Mapping out the customer journey will provide a clear indication of the touchpoints and experiences that lead up to the point of conversion. By matching your prospects' needs to how they're fulfilled in the moments before conversion, it becomes easier to exceed their expectations and deliver experiences that convert to sales.</p><p>A customer purchase journey is the path a consumer takes, from identifying a problem or need to purchasing from a brand and becoming a loyal customer. There are different versions of the customer purchase journey, which you can visualise as a funnel, but we've identified the five stages as:</p><ol><li>Problem or need</li><li>Search</li><li>Consideration</li><li>Purchase</li><li>Brand loyalty</li></ol><p>Our <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-retention/consumer-trends" target="_self">survey of 2,000 UK shoppers</a> found that businesses must listen, learn, and engage consumers at every customer journey stage.</p><h2>How to create a customer journey map</h2><p>Follow our four-step guide to learn how to create a customer journey map.</p><h3>1. List your customer touchpoints</h3><p>Start by creating a list of every touchpoint for your business. Consider where each touchpoint sits in the customer journey – from brand awareness to loyalty – and organise them accordingly. Think about how your audience might feel at each touchpoint and consider each potential obstacle.</p><h3>2. Identify your customer personas</h3><p>Use business data, market research, and your target audience characteristics to segment your customers into important groups and create customer personas. Select a persona to be the focus of your customer journey map. Each persona will have a different journey, so try not to tackle too many personas with just one map. Choose your most common persona (i.e. the one that represents most of your customers) and start from there.</p><h3>3. Gather research</h3><p>It's essential to make the most of the insights, feedback, and data you have about your customers. The more data-driven your customer journey map is, the more valuable it will be in meeting your journey mapping goals. Use several data sources to gather information for your customer journey map, including:</p><ul><li><strong>Customer satisfaction surveys</strong> – Use existing responses or create new surveys to get targeted insights into your customers' experiences. Look for the most mentioned touchpoints or themes across multiple touchpoints.</li><li><strong>Customer reviews</strong> – Customers usually leave reviews if they are happy or frustrated. Analyse your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/product-and-service-reviews" target="_self">reviews</a> to see where these moments take place.</li><li><strong>Customer experience metrics</strong> – If you already use <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/net-promoter-score" target="_self">Net Promoter Score</a>, Customer Effort Score, or another method of collecting customer feedback, <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/advanced-analytics" target="_self">analyse the data</a> you receive to look for themes or popular topics.</li><li><strong>Surveys</strong> – Reaching out to existing customers can be helpful in gathering research for your journey mapping project. On-page <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/surveys" target="_self">surveys</a> can collect insights to understand their website experience better.</li><li><strong>Website analytics</strong> – Analyse how touchpoints are contributing to your website traffic, which ones drive sales, where the most drop-offs occur, and which pages are causing frustration.</li><li><strong>Website searches</strong> – If your website has search functionality, review the results to see which topics or questions your customers seek.</li><li><strong>Competitor research</strong> – Research your competitors and their touchpoints to identify areas where they outperform you and could potentially <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-acquisition/customer-acquisition-guide" target="_self">acquire new customers</a>.</li><li><strong>Conducted interviews</strong> – Sitting down with a panel of your customers or target audience can be invaluable. Ask questions to understand their expectations of your brand and how they found the customer journey.</li><li><strong>Site navigation maps</strong> – Analyse your website navigation, looking at how people move from page to page to complete their goals. It should provide a logical and straightforward experience that turns website visitors into customers.</li><li><strong>Chatbots and FAQs</strong> – Use analytics to see which FAQ pages get the highest engagement and better understand where your customers struggle with their experience with your brand. Chatbot queries also provide valuable insight into common support topics.</li><li><strong>Insights from sales</strong> – Conduct research with your sales team to find out the most common customer and prospect questions, frustrations, expectations and needs.</li></ul><h3>4. Identify elements to include in your customer journey map</h3><p>Your customer journey map can represent different stages in the customer journey. Start by analysing the current state of your customer journeys to highlight how your prospects and customers interact with your business in real-time. We've identified the key journey mapping elements:</p><p><strong>Current state:</strong> Current state journey maps offer insights into how things are currently working and flag any issues or areas for improvement. By starting with the current state, you'll create a benchmark map to improve on, helping you track any wins from your improvements.</p><p><strong>Day in the life:</strong> Day-in-the-life customer journey mapping plots the typical day of your focus persona. This type of map shows you when your customers interact with your brand when they might engage with your products or services, and which problems they might face as the day progresses.</p><p><strong>Future state:</strong> If you know the current state of your customer journeys, it's much easier to plan ahead and identify how to deliver new customer experiences. Future state journey maps are driven by your brand's vision for customer experience, focusing on creativity, ideal scenarios, and ideation.</p><p><strong>Service map:</strong> Service maps focus on what happens behind the scenes regarding delivery and operations. They combine the scenarios the customer faces with scenarios affecting your organisation and are most effective when created by colleagues from different areas of your business.</p><h2>Customer Journey Analysis</h2><p>Whether you use Google Analytics on your website, Facebook Analytics for social media, or track your customer data using another platform, it's important to analyse your customers' journeys. If you have multiple sources of website and marketing tracking, you should be able to collate the data to identify the following:</p><ul><li>Your customer demographics, including age, gender and interests</li><li>Common customer website journeys</li><li>The best-performing sources of traffic and referrals to your website</li><li>Customer contact volumes</li></ul><p>To find out what customers say about your brand, look at your customer reviews and use social listening tools to track conversations involving your brand name. You can also set up short surveys, email follow-ups, or interviews to better understand the journey your customers take with you.</p><h2>Customer Journey Mapping Tools</h2><p>Customer journey mapping tools can help you maximise every <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-retention/what-are-customer-journey-touchpoints" target="_self">customer touchpoint</a> that a prospective shopper has with your brand before buying, helping to improve your conversion volumes and, ultimately, your bottom line. Here are seven customer journey mapping tools to get you started:</p><h3>1. Smaply</h3><p>One of the top mapping tools is <a href="https://www.smaply.com/" target="_blank">Smaply</a>. It offers three tools – journey mapping, persona mapping, and stakeholder mapping – helping you get to grips with the entire customer journey.</p><h3>2. Lucidchart</h3><p><a href="https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/examples/customer-journey-mapping-software" target="_blank">Lucidchart</a> is a purpose-built customer mapping tool that 99% of Fortune 500 companies use. It offers a range of integrations, helping you to import data automatically from your website, social media channels, and analytics.</p><h3>3. Canvanizer</h3><p>If you're looking for a simple, straightforward and free-to-use tool, <a href="https://canvanizer.com/" target="_blank">Canvanizer</a> is a good choice. Choose from various templates to help with customer feedback, SWOT analyses, and social media strategy planning.</p><h3>4. OmniGraffle</h3><p>Although not purpose-built for journey mapping, <a href="https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle" target="_blank">OmniGraffle</a> helps you create diagrams that easily explain complicated ideas. You'll need to manually add information from your data sources, but the tool will simplify your customer journey mapping process.</p><h3>5. PowerPoint</h3><p>Customer journey maps are usually presented as flow charts or diagrams, which you can easily create using PowerPoint. The template below is a good example of how simple your customer journey map can be.</p><p></p><figure style="text-align: center"><div data-img-caption-container="true" style="display: inline-block; text-align: center;"><img src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/SvhQFlwFIK51BIDq9_247FeipWsvferCqXhjyqLuB-MJlq_Y20MinELPAYQYIqWTYwPD_CF6cFQZB-7P4QafMbl4zNv3_DaMBu_yujh6BmgMbrLL80Y8oKMjMTk-2mXOY5iSCcj2TsG3si7SRZYRZkA" width="624" style="text-align: center;" /></div></figure><p>Credit: <a href="https://slidesgo.com/theme/customer-journey-map" target="_blank">slidesgo.com</a></p><h3>6. Google Analytics</h3><p>If you're new to customer journey mapping, <a href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/" target="_blank">Google Analytics</a> has information to get you started. For example, it can show you your customer behaviour flow, which explores how people make the most common journeys on your website.</p><h3>7. UXPressia</h3><p>Finally, <a href="https://uxpressia.com/" target="_blank">UXPressia</a> is another purpose-built software solution that uses customer personas and journey maps in tandem to create a storyboard with commentary, quotes, problems, and customer experiences at each point in their journey.</p><p>Collecting customer feedback is a key part of your customer journey mapping process. To find out more about how you can use your customers' opinions to understand them – and your business – better, <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/enquiry/get-in-touch" target="_self">get in touch</a> with a member of our team.</p>