In today’s digital marketplace the global economy is bigger, more connected, and more integrated than it ever has been before. Customers have access to brands all over the world with the click of a few buttons. As such, there is a huge variety of potential customers and audiences that brands and organizations could reach with the right messaging positioned in the right place, at the right time. Understanding the differences between audience groups and market segments can aid in crafting a customer journey that is unique to the organization, suited for the industry, and designed to optimize the customer experience. Customer journey’s already exist in every brand and organization, but how different companies design and utilize these journeys is what truly stands out.
Customer Journey and the Customer Experience
Due to a shift in the overarching mindset across business and consumers alike and the swift acceleration into the digital era that occurred over the last several years; the modern day economy is more consumer-centric. This is evidenced by a few key characteristics that are witnessed across up and coming start-ups and progressive and innovative brands.
For starters, the emphasis on instant gratification and instant satisfaction has only increased over the past decade. This is largely due to the growing percentage of the market that is represented by digital natives. Digital natives, as the name suggests, are those that grow up with smart-technology, internet access, and social media. The last of which, social media, has had a major influence on the way that kids grow up thinking and socializing, and is designed to reinforce feelings of instant gratification, which then need to be replicated elsewhere in the marketplace in order for brands to remain competitive.
Communication and efficiency are also extremely important to modern consumers which in turn, means it needs to be important for modern companies and organizations. Designing personalized communication that is both efficient and impactful is difficult in and of itself, but doing this for a scaling business is a whole different caliber of beast. All of these elements play a major role in the creation of a powerful and positive customer experience.
The Bouquet of Communication Channels
In creating customer journeys that are high-quality and effective, the organization has to respect and address the many different communication platforms that consumers utilize on a daily basis. This plays back into the major societal influence that social media has on communities all across the world, as social-medias and businesses intersect at many crossroads.
In categorizing communication channels, there are traditional channels and modern channels. Traditional consumer communication channels include print mail, phone calls, and even emails. While these forms of consumer communication may not seem all that flashy, they still hold a significant value to a variety of demographics. This means having high-quality communication strategies and well-designed customer journeys in place is important across a brand's full suite of communication channels.
Modern channels of customer communication are social media platforms like Instagram, FaceBook, and Twitter. This category also includes web-applications that facilitate real-time consumer communications, SMS messaging, and brand-based-mobile-apps that have built-in chat or notification features. All of these different branches of consumer and customer communication are vital in creating a comprehensive virtual brand presence that serves the modern consumer with a well-designed customer journey, no matter where they’re coming from.
Why The Customer Journey Matters
How any consumer interacts with a brand over time is going to influence their perception of that organization, and impact their customer experience. As such, many organizations aim to design customer journeys that improve and optimize the customer experience. In turn, this creates value within the organization and boosts important KPIs like consumer-to-customer conversion rates, perceived brand-reputation, and more.
To make the customer journey optimization process easier, especially for mid-size, scaling, and large organizations, brands rely on CCM technology to provide a suite of features and tools that are aimed at boosting productivity, increasing efficiency, and optimizing the customer journeys throughout the organization from start to finish. Sophisticated CCM provides the user with tools that enable cross-channel and omni-channel communication strategies, as well as the ability to create reusable content, and optimized messaging for any consumer across any channel of communication.
Putting it All Together
Taking a look at the bigger picture and how this all fits together, it’s important to remember that the consumer is at the heart of this process. By identifying the different customer journeys that already exist within an organization, decision-makers and brand-leaders can thoughtfully design and craft customer journeys that are effective, impactful, and time-efficient on the consumer’s end of things. By dedicating the time and resources to creating a well-designed archive of customer journeys, brands can show consumers that they care.
The improved customer communications and optimized customer journeys will additionally lead to a more transparent operational process which is also valued by the modern consumer.
Ultimately, the customer journey influences the customer experience, which plays directly into the performance of any given organization.
Wrapping Up on The Customer Journey
The economy and professional landscape look entirely different than they did even five years ago. With a huge movement pushing for full-time remote work environments, and the impressive performance of the digital economy in the last few years, the consumer has become the central focal-point for most modern organizations. Designing and optimizing customer journeys that serve the modern day consumer in the modern day marketplace helps any organization rise above and stand out from the competition.
A sophisticated CCM, like that offered by Topdown Systems, will give you and your staff the tools you need to optimize your communications strategy with features aimed at boosting levels of customer engagement and bolstering the customer experience overall. With shifting communication trends, having a flexible CCM software that offers a reusable content library and a suite of other communication centered features powered by AI, business logic, and automation, is essential to elevate your entire communication strategy.
For more information on document generation software, communication best practices, or anything else on CCM software, keep browsing Topdown System’s content library.
