A contributor from the Association for Consulting Expertise recommends how a reader can improve customer engagement now, during the pandemic, and also reap rewards in the future.
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Q: I’m worried that we’ve lost customer engagement during the pandemic. What can we do to enhance customer experience during and post COVID-19?
ACE advises: If you have a “Customer Journey Map,” find it. If you don’t, now is a terrific time to create one.
A Customer Journey Map is a powerful way to find pain points and opportunities in your customer experience which is more important now than ever. A Customer Journey Map tracks your relationship with your customer through time from first encounter to the conclusion of a project.
At the same time, it tracks the customer’s progress from problem identification through resolution. As your customers try to keep up with a rapidly changing world, the map will help you identify what matters most to your customers, anticipating their needs, and meeting them with the right solutions, at the right time.
While revising or creating your Customer Journey during COVID, ask yourself “What changed for our business? What changes are going to become permanent? What changes do our customers like? What changes do they dislike?”
One thing to keep in mind is most business leaders agree that current business models today will be unrecognizable in the next five years, and the pandemic has forever changed the customer experience.
Using a tool such as the Customer Journey will help you stay current with your customers buying behaviors. These behaviors will become newly established patterns, and these patterns will define your post-COVID buyer personas.
Of course, mapping out a strategy is useless unless you create action plans to bolster change — after all, change is the only thing we can count on in the foreseeable future.
For more on this topic, see “Navigating Your Customer Journey” at youtu.be/uvPK4gRYy_U.
Pricilla Hansen Mahoney is the founder of Blazing Trails Coaching, a business management consulting firm in South Portland, helping service-based businesses grow, profit and succeed with the right plan, the right process and the right people. She is a past president of ACE. Priscilla can be reached at priscilla@blazingtrailscoaching.com.