<h2>Customer Touchpoints and the Customer Journey</h2><p>Customer touchpoints can be collated and used to create a touchpoint map. This differs from the customer journey, which looks at how customers transition from one touchpoint to another and the steps they take to become paying customers.  </p><p>Examples of touchpoints include a customer scrolling through social media and seeing your posts, receiving a text message to inform them their order is out for delivery, or visiting a physical store, but in most cases, a customer will not experience every single touchpoint. A customer's journey will usually be made up of a select few touchpoints, and each customer will experience a different customer journey as they come across varying touchpoints and have different interactions with your brand. </p><h2>What's the difference between a customer touchpoint and a channel? </h2><p>Customer touchpoints and channels are both essential elements within a customer journey. A touchpoint is when a customer interacts with your business, for example, watching a product demonstration, completing a website form or booking a table in a restaurant. A channel is the environment in which a customer touchpoint happens. This could include your website, a social media channel, or an advertising leaflet.  </p><h2>Why are customer touchpoints important? </h2><p>Customer touchpoints play a crucial role in defining the experience for your customers. Knowing what your touchpoints are can help you improve them and identify areas where you might be missing out on business opportunities. </p><p>How consumers shop and interact with businesses has changed dramatically over the years. For example, 15 years ago, the average customer would use just two touchpoints when making a purchase, with just 7% of consumers using over four touchpoints. Today, customers are using an average of 5 - 6 touchpoints.  </p><p>This increase is primarily due to technological advances, which have provided consumers with more ways to interact with a business. Having effective customer touchpoints can not only improve sales but can also boost customer loyalty. Retaining an existing customer is <a href="https://www.huify.com/blog/acquisition-vs-retention-customer-lifetime-value" target="_blank">more valuable than acquiring a new one</a>, and touchpoints can help. </p><h2>Customer Touchpoint Examples</h2><p>Before you can work to improve your customer touchpoints, you first need to identify which touchpoints your business has. When you set out to improve the <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience/how-to-improve-your-brands-customer-experience" target="_self">customer experience</a> for your retail business, you will locate several touchpoints critical to success. Here, we outline some of the key customer touchpoints and how to use them to improve your customer experience: </p><h3>Website</h3><p>To improve customer experience, your first stop should be your website, as your company's site will act as a hub for many customer touchpoints. Your website is the central focus of your brand and identity, and it needs to project this to your audience accurately. Consider your eCommerce site's functional and visual capability and review it consistently to ensure you are keeping up with the latest customer demands. For example, 79% of smartphone users made a purchase on their mobile in the last six months, so optimising for mobile is vital.</p><h3>Email</h3><p>Email has one of the highest ROIs of all the marketing channels, so while it might be a classic, email marketing is still a significant customer touchpoint. Email marketing is a proven strategy for converting browsers into buyers, and when looking to improve CX, you should always consider your current email marketing tactics. Remember, customers receive a massive number of emails every day, so it is essential that your marketing messages stand out from the competition. To improve CX, focus on email marketing campaigns that add value to your customers' lives.</p><h3>Chatbot</h3><p>The number of chatbots you now see has increased dramatically in recent years, with more and more retail businesses adopting this technology. Most chatbots use artificial intelligence, or AI, to improve customer experience and streamline the customer journey. They are a critical touchpoint that can help convert customers from browsing your site to making a purchase. If you do not already have a chatbot, investing in one is an easy and effective way to improve CX.</p><h3>Customer Support</h3><p>Customer support is among the most popular customer touchpoints in eCommerce and physical commerce. Customer support is the bedrock of CX in retail, finance, health and any sector you can think of, so ensuring you are giving customers everything they need is vital. Whether it is a real-time chat assistant online or a call centre, improving customer support will dramatically improve customer experience.</p><h3>Voice Assistant</h3><p>This is a rapidly developing customer touchpoint, with customers increasingly turning to Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri when purchasing. Optimising your website for voice search and preparing your business for a rise in this channel will help improve customer experience.</p><h3>Text Message (SMS)</h3><p>With an open rate of 98%, text messages are a powerful customer touchpoint. While many retail businesses have yet to use SMS as a marketing channel, incorporating this into your strategy can be very effective.</p><h3>Social Media</h3><p>Social media is another channel that offers many different customer touchpoints. With social channels constantly introducing new features, it is a constantly evolving part of the customer journey. To improve CX for your retail business, make sure you are using social media effectively and efficiently.</p><h3>Influencers</h3><p>Online influencers can work as customer touchpoints and improve customer experience by establishing trust for your brand. Influencers can reach a very large, very targeted audience, and utilising them in your marketing can be very beneficial.</p><p>Customer touchpoint examples can provide helpful insight into the common touchpoints that most businesses will have. Outside of those listed above, there are other touchpoints that can be categorised into pre-purchase, during-purchase, and post-purchase touchpoints. </p><h3>Pre-Purchase Touchpoints </h3><ul><li>Online advertising, including display advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) and social media adverts</li><li>Digital marketing, including blogs, infographics and promotional videos</li><li>Word of mouth, including referrals from friends and family.</li></ul><h3>During-Purchase Touchpoints </h3><ul><li>Conversations, including those in-store or at an event</li><li>Product Pages</li><li>Reviews, including review platforms and on-page reviews</li><li>Point of Sale (POS), including merchandising in-store or speaking with a sales representative</li></ul><h3>Post-Purchase Touchpoints </h3><ul><li>Feedback Surveys</li><li>Thank You Emails, including handwritten notes sent with products</li><li>Loyalty Programmes, including exclusive discounts and offers</li><li>Billing, as a negative billing experience could deter customers and result in negative feedback.</li></ul><h2>How to identify customer touchpoints </h2><p>Your business will have a unique set of customer touchpoints. If you have touchpoints you're unaware of, you could miss out on revenue by failing to capitalise on these interactions. Here are some steps you can take to identify your customer touchpoints: </p><h3>Put yourself in your customers' shoes</h3><p>The most effective way to identify your customer touchpoints is to put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself what you would do if you were looking to solve a problem or needed to make a purchase decision about your products. Put yourself on your customer journey and make a note of every touchpoint you find along the way. </p><p>Follow this process until you've completed a purchase. You can align your thoughts on customer touchpoints for your business with feedback from existing customers. Reviews and surveys can help you to understand consumers' real-life experiences with your business. </p><h3>Map your customer journey and customer experience</h3><p>A <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-acquisition/customer-journey-mapping-guide" target="_self">customer journey map</a> is essential because it outlines all the touchpoints a customer could experience while interacting with your business. Take it one step further by creating a customer experience map, which will analyse every aspect of customer experience with your brand and highlight multiple touchpoints. </p><p>Customer journey and customer experience maps are both helpful in identifying customer touchpoints. A journey map is best for focusing on a specific path a customer might take and the touchpoints they encounter. A customer experience map can help you visualise every customer journey and better understand how customers interact with your business.  </p><h3>Categorise your touchpoints</h3><p>Once you've identified your customer touchpoints, categorise them so that you can better understand the customer experience. Typically, touchpoints will fall into one of four categories: </p><p>Products: These include software, hardware and services. Depending on your business, your website might fall into this category because it may be a part of your product or service.</p><p>Interactions: Any customer touchpoint that is a two-way interaction should fall under the interactions category. This could be online (such as live chat), on the phone, or in person. </p><p>Settings: These are places where your products or services might be seen or used by customers, for example, in-store, at an event or on TV. </p><p>Messages: Any one-way communication is a message touchpoint. This could be advertising, product packaging, or any touchpoint where you communicate with customers but where they cannot communicate back.</p><h2>How to improve customer touchpoints? </h2><p>There is no hard and fast rule to improve your customer touchpoints. Instead, once you have collated a list of the most commonly used touchpoints for your business, you will need to go through and review how you can improve the customer experience and devise a strategy to make the necessary changes.</p><p>For example, if someone requests more information on a product through social media and nobody replies, get a process in place where all messages are acknowledged within 24 hours.</p><p>With regards to reviews, that's where Feefo can help. With <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/business-insights/the-quest-for-authenticity-verified-reviews-and-sustainability" target="_self">93% of consumers reading reviews before making a purchase</a>, Feefo's focus on verified reviews can ensure that customer touchpoint is taken care of, from collecting and displaying your reviews to responding to and analysing them.</p>

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What are Customer Journey Touchpoints?

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<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>

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The Ultimate Guide to Customer Journey Mapping

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<p>Gone are the days when you could cast your net wide, hoping to attract customers. In a changing world, customers expect companies to see them as individuals. A <a href="https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/song/human-paradox" target="_blank">2022 Accenture study</a> found 64% of consumers wish companies would respond faster to meet their changing needs.</p><p>Using a targeted customer insight strategy can significantly move you ahead of the competition by turning consumer insight into marketing that really resonates with your audience. You already see businesses from supermarkets to streaming services sending you personalised recommendations off the back of customer insight. And with more tools than ever available to help you understand your customers’ needs and wants, you can use this targeted approach too.</p><h2>What is customer insight?</h2><p>A customer insight is an observation on the behavioural patterns of your customers. You can draw customer insights from analysing customer data and feedback.</p><p>To perform this analysis, you need high-quality, accurate data. At Feefo, we often talk about the importance of using verified reviews. In part, this is because using verified reviews, means you can rely on the data and feedback that they provide.</p><p>Consumer insight research aims to help businesses understand how their customers think and feel. It’s an analysis of patterns of human behaviour, which you can use to drive business strategy and as marketing insight in order to meet your customers’ needs.</p><h2>Benefits of using consumer insights</h2><p>Customer insight allows businesses to understand:</p><p><strong>What:</strong></p><ul><li>Issues their customers face</li><li>Their brand experience feels like to customers</li><li>Areas need improvement</li></ul><p><strong>How to:</strong></p><ul><li>Improve conversations with customers from sales teams</li><li>Increase sales team effectiveness by targeting qualified prospects</li><li>Grow sales to new and existing customers</li><li>Deliver higher returns on marketing and promotions investments</li></ul><p></p><p>Consumer insight is the starting point for a whole range of business decisions. No two businesses will have the same findings, or the same objectives.</p><p>But here are some consumer insight examples of how small, medium and enterprise businesses could make valuable changes using their customer insight:</p><h3>Case 1: Coffee loyalty cards</h3><p>With increasing competition from larger chains, the owners of a small independent coffee shop were looking for ways to keep hold of their customers. By using Feefo’s On-Location Feedback tool, they were able to implement customer reviews and ask their customers questions about their products and service. When looking through the most used terms and phrases in the data, they noticed a reoccurring theme. Customers loved the coffee and the ethics behind the brand but were used to using loyalty schemes at bigger coffee chains. The coffee shop introduced a loyalty card scheme – a simple change that quickly gave them back their edge, and saw the number of repeat customers quickly increase.</p><h3>Case 2: Strengthening any weak links</h3><p>A car dealership, with ten sites nationwide, noticed some disparity in the sales figures they were seeing across the different sites. They didn’t just want to know why some were performing better than others, but they also wanted to bring all the figures in-line with the highest performing locations. The business started collecting customer reviews, and quickly realised that certain dealerships were suffering due to poor customer service. The business sent surveys out to their staff, and the results showed that the staff in the worst performing dealerships felt they could benefit from more training. Customer Service training was rolled out in all the weaker locations, and sales gradually began to rise.</p><h3>Case 3: Reviews highlighted the real issue</h3><p>A holiday company found that they were getting poor reviews for the trailers at one of their properties. At first they assumed that the trailers themselves needed refurbishing and allocated a substantial budget to refresh them. But when they analysed their Feefo review data more fully, they found that the poor reviews were from trailers in one particular location of the park - a more shaded location that didn’t receive any direct sunshine.</p><p>So, they moved the trailers to a different area, where there was more natural light. Review sentiment subsequently improved – saving them thousands of pounds on a refurbishment that wouldn’t have addressed the underlying issue.</p><h3>Case 4: Delayed delivery leading to increased returns</h3><p>A well-known online gift retailer noticed that they were experiencing a sudden peak in returns, so started collecting customer reviews to find out why. After analysing the insight, they noticed that the majority of the negative reviews were about gifts arriving too late, often missing the occasion and then ending up being useless. The business had recently swapped courier companies, so took swift action to return to their previous delivery provider. A few weeks after, the returns had plummeted, and posts from unhappy customers on social media quickly got lost amongst the positive ones.</p><h2>Market research insights vs consumer insights: what vs why</h2><p>One of the major benefits of consumer insights is that it can help you target your marketing activity more effectively. Both market research and consumer insight can provide useful marketing insights, but they look at different questions.</p><p>Market research insight defines the size and shape of the potential market for your product or service. It includes a look at competitors as well as the number of potential customers. It provides you with the raw data about what is happening in your sector.</p><p>Consumer insight also provides knowledge, but it’s linked to an understanding of your customers – their motivations and desires. It provides the rationale behind customer behaviour ie why they are making particular choices. So, consumer insight highlights where you could make changes to your business in order to improve customer satisfaction.</p><p>Packaging specialists, Invopak use Feefo’s platform to do just that, Customer Service Improvement Manager, Stuart Rolfe commented:</p><p>“Feefo give us real insights into customer experience, revealing factors we would never uncover by other means. It gives the customer a voice and provides us with ways of measuring our success we never had before. We have a far greater understanding of our customer experience than we ever did.”</p><p>Read the <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/customer-stories/invopak" target="_self">full Invopak case study</a>.</p><p></p>

<h2>How to develop your own customer insights strategy</h2><p>In order to make the most of the consumer insight you’ve gained, our seven-step guide walks you through how to create your customer insight strategy.</p><h2>Define your business objectives</h2><p>You need to know what your business is really aiming to achieve from examining your customer insight strategy. This could relate to part of a process – for example, why basket abandonment is high or why you are receiving a lot of returns – or a desire to improve the return on investment of your marketing campaigns.</p><p>Get input from every department in your business to work out which areas you need to focus on as a company, what needs prioritising and where you can make the greatest impact.</p><p>Once you’ve got a clear list of objectives it will help you ask the right questions of the right customers, at the right time.</p><h2>Put a timeline in place</h2><p>Every effective strategy needs some deadlines. In the case of your customer insight marketing strategy, you’ll need to consider:</p><ul><li>How long you’ll be gathering customer insight for</li><li>When you will be analysing the data</li><li>When the results will be communicated to the key stakeholders</li><li>When you will implement any new actions as a result of your customer insight</li></ul><p>Make sure you’re realistic when you set your timelines. Take into account any barriers that might slow down the process, such as resources, budget and any potential slow periods of business.</p><h2>Outline your target audience</h2><p>You’ll need to refer back to your business objectives to work out who exactly you are hoping to collect customer insight from. For example, you might want to know which of your stores is performing best. In this case you’d need to ask customers from a particular region about their in-store experience once they’ve visited.</p><p>It’s not all about collecting data from your existing customers – some of the most useful insights come from those who haven’t dealt with your business yet.</p><p>For example, if you want to get a good idea of how your brand is perceived from an outsider’s point of view, then gathering insight from potential customers is a good way to go about it.</p><h2>Mapping the customer journey</h2><p>The next step in your customer insight strategy is all about putting yourself in your customer’s shoes by creating a customer journey map.</p><p>Knowing how, when and where people come into contact with your brand means you can start to pinpoint exactly when in the customer journey you need to collect customer insight to get the answers you need.</p><p>You’ll need to plot every single touchpoint in your customer’s journey – from the first time they see or hear from your brand all the way through to the customer service you give them after they’ve bought from you. Through each of these touchpoints your customers will have lots of different experiences which shapes their opinion of your business – and that means lots of valuable customer insight there for the taking.</p><p>Every customer journey map will be different, so there’s really no right or wrong way to do it, so long as you’re thorough. Here are a few pointers to get you started:</p><ul><li>Keep your different customer personas in mind. Not all of your customers are on the same journey. If you have lots of different customer personas, start with your most common</li><li>Get the whole team involved. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-acquisition/customer-journey-mapping-guide" target="_self">Customer journey mapping</a> isn’t just about how customers interact with your website – it includes everything from paid ads to customer service and sales calls</li><li>Make a note of all the actions your customers have to take. This helps you to understand what you expect your customers to do to achieve their goals. If you can simplify this journey, that would be a positive result</li><li>Collect insight as part of the process. Using <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/send-adhoc-surveys" target="_self">surveys</a>, for example, can help you add some reasoning and emotion to your customer journey map to help you realise why your customers are making the decisions they’re making; whether it’s clicking away from your website too soon or taking the long way round before they hit the checkout</li></ul><h2>Collect your customer insight</h2><p>You’ve homed in on the areas that you need to improve and the right places to ask for feedback – now it’s time to start collecting your customer insight.</p><p>There are lots of different ways of collecting customer insight, all of which can be grouped into two main categories; quantitative and qualitative.</p><h2>Quantitative customer insight</h2><ul><li>Helps you answer questions such as who, what, where and how many</li><li>Data can be easily transferred into numerical values and displayed as charts, graphs and tables</li><li>Customers often don’t need to spend as much time providing data as other methods, as it usually involves questions that are quick to answer</li><li>Answers are standardised, so comparing and analysing the findings is straight-forward</li><li>Surveys are a good way of collecting quantitative data. By asking closed-ended questions, such as ‘How old are you’ or ‘Where did you find out about our business’, you can quickly gauge anything from who your customers are, to how satisfied they are with your customer service, all on a numerical scale.</li></ul><h2>Qualitative customer insight</h2><ul><li>Looks beyond numbers and figures into the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’</li><li>Often provides the reasoning and context behind the data, giving you rich, descriptive data</li><li>This insight is better when looking at human behaviour</li><li>Collecting qualitative data can take a little longer than other methods</li><li>Surveys can be used in this way too. A mixture of closed and open-ended questions can be the recipe for well-rounded customer insights. Your closed questions are there to give you the hard facts, whist follow-up, open-ended questions are designed to go further to explore the reasoning and gain some context</li></ul><p>Collecting customer reviews is another great way of getting plenty of qualitative insight from your customers.</p><p>You can choose what to collect feedback on – could be the products you sell, the service you provide or individual stores and branches. Tools such as Feefo’s Feedback Request Manager tool  supports you to pinpoint exact moments in the customer journey to ask for feedback and when to send those requests. Giving your customers the opportunity to share their thoughts in their own time means you’re likely to hear how they really feel.  </p><p>Another tool to support with collecting customer insight is <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/nps" target="_self">Net Promoter Score</a>. This asks your customers whether they would recommend your business on a scale from 1-10 to determine if they’re ‘detractors’, ‘passives’ or ‘promoters’ when it comes to your service. This can be sent out as part of your feedback requests, so not only can you plot where you stand on the scale, but you can also take a deeper look into the sentiment behind the scores by checking what your customers have said in their reviews.</p>

<h2>Analyse your customer insight</h2><p>Once you’ve gathered your customer feedback, analysing the data is straightforward with the right tools to support you.</p><p>Use the following principles to help you sort through the data:</p><ul><li><strong>Analyse everything - both positive and negative</strong></li></ul><p>You need to include all the data in your analysis. While sifting through your negative feedback may not be pleasant, negative reviews can actually work wonders for your business as they can highlight where there’s room for improvement. Find out how to make the most of them</p><ul><li><strong>Categorise your feedback</strong></li></ul><p>Categorising your customer insight into themes helps provide structure to the feedback. Identifying the most reoccurring themes in your feedback, whether they’re mentioned in a positive or negative light, will help you figure out what’s being talked about the most. Putting your customer insight into categories may even highlight some areas that you didn’t even know were causing issues.</p><p>Every business is different, and the right categorisation tags for you will depend on what you provide, and what your business objectives are that you set out in step one.</p><p>Feefo’s Insights Labels tool allows you to tag and track themes across your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/collect-reviews" target="_self">customer reviews</a>, so you can discover what people are saying about your business and make the changes that matter.</p><p><em>“Insight tag reporting across all our customer feedback has given us fantastic insight into our business. It lets us recognise trends, quickly identify customer concerns, and monitor customer experience initiatives across the business”</em>.</p><p>Adam Cornish, Customer Experience Manager, Expedia</p><ul><li><strong>Identify the trends</strong></li></ul><p>Identifying trends is where you discover exactly where you’re hitting the mark, and which touchpoints could do with some work.  </p><p>So, how do you go about spotting these trends in your customer insight? If you’ve got time to spare, then you can sift through the content manually. But it’s probably best to let software do the hard work for you. Not only is the process infinitely quicker but it also eradicates the chance of human error and bias.</p><p>Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight tool automatically analyses your customer feedback, identifies sentiment and gives you an at-a-glance view of the main issues that are affecting your customers. Performance profiling can instantly analyse your customer insight with:</p><ul><li>Sentiment score: your sentiment score shows the level of positive and negative emotion that’s within your review content.</li><li>Performance graph: this groups your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience" target="_self">customer feedback</a>  into four sections; advertise, focus, monitor and potential, so you can see which areas of your business you should promoting in your marketing and which need more attention.</li><li>Automated sentiment trend analysis: track how your sentiment score changes over time as you receive more customer insight.</li><li>Review snippets: find out which common keywords are used in your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience" target="_self">customer feedback</a>, and use them to build more engaging PPC ads.</li></ul><p><em>“We wanted the ability to show we listen to our customers and Customer Sentiment Insight has given us the perfect opportunity to connect and demonstrate our fantastic customer service. It has helped us to see what we could do to improve our delivery processes and opened up some really interesting conversations between us and Our Customers. The conversations were fed back to the relevant decision makers, who were then able to take action and improve the customer experience”</em>.</p><p>Rachel Lewis, Customer Response Co-Ordinator, Iceland</p><h2>Take action</h2><p>All the insight in the world counts for nothing until you turn it into action to improve your product or service for your customers.</p><p>But your decision-making process should be a whole lot more straightforward with the data to back up any changes you bring into your business.</p><p>In conclusion, customer insights are perhaps the most valuable thing that you can own as a business. Having them means you can:</p><ul><li>Find out how both potential and existing customers perceive your brand</li><li>Take a deeper look into your customers’ buying decisions</li><li>Build long-term relationships with your customers</li><li>Make meaningful changes in your business, which your customers will love</li></ul>