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funnelchanging the way they research and buy your products. If your marketing hasnt changed in response, it should. Its 2013. Yet, less has changed than should have. Time to start a series on
optimizing the digital and social customer experience in a holistic digital business perspective. A customer-centric and multi-channel view, based upon the customer journey, in correlation with for instance content marketing as its called now, the customer lifecycle value (CLV), touchpoints and persuasion/conversion architectures is not new. In B2B marketing we ve been using it for quite some time. But apparently its rather new in social media marketing and other marketing techniques. And it also seems rather new in consumer marketing to my surprise. On the other hand, I suppose that the fact marketers finally start to connect the dots, in social as well, may be the reason why the customer experience including the journey and touchpoints can be reasons for this increased attention. Social media and business has been siloed rather fast and it will be the same with other new ways of doing marketing. I see it happening in content marketing as well, for instance, the very reason I started a blog on it (and before on email etc.). Anyway, Im glad the increased attention is there and not just because weve always called ourselves customercentric touchpoint marketers. Im most of all glad that the increased attention seems to indicate a growing maturity among social media practitioners and experts. On the other hand, social media has become part of the customer journey in many cases so marketers need to realize that too. We cant ignore social, social conversions (some call it engagement) and the massive impact of social on overall business and marketing. That goes for touchpoints and customer lifecycles too. Many changes in the information gathering and buying behavior of people social, connected have indeed been happening under our nose since several years now. However, despite all changes, despite the increasing importance of personalized and even personal experiences in a social and connected world, in the end the rules for an optimized digital customer experience havent changed that much. Marketing revolves around customer priorities, preferences, questions, emotions, needs, and how to detect these and turn them into mutual benefits, across all stages of an increasingly dynamic customer journey. How much has it changed in a social world? You will read more about it below but also check the model below from Dion Hinchcliffes Forbes post Rethinking the Customer Journey in a Social World below and read what Gartner had to say about the social customer experience. Optimizing the customer journey means putting the customer at the center and aligning your goals with the windows of opportunity when customers are ready to be approached, touched and persuaded. And nowadays its often the opposite: they approach, touch and even persuade us. In a sense thats what inbound marketing and a large part of social media tactics are all about. The
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www.socialmarketingforum.net/2013/02/optimizing-the-digital-and-social-customer-experience/
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customer journey is a connected one and includes peers and trusted advisors as mentioned in this post. We are not the center of the marketing universe, nor are our businesses or brands. The customer is as are all touchpoints where we meet them, including the social ones. This is not a major discovery but its an imperative most organizations dont fully grasp yet as its so all-encompassing. And for many its a true Copernican revolution, when compared to the one-way approach they heralded for so long. Social has not changed this but it certainly speeded up the must of other models than one-to-many in a reality where many-to-many has become one of the social models of interaction. The title of this blog post, optimizing the social and digital customer experience is a contradictio in terminis. We dont optimize for media, channels or tactics in the first place. We optimize for the customer experience so optimizing and the customer experience go hand in hand. When we optimize we think about the customer experience and journey. When we look at marketing from the customer perspective, we cant but do better and optimize. And, indeed, customer experiences are by definition social and interactive. When putting the customer and his journey first, the customer experience becomes the focal point of everything we do as marketers. And its not just about marketing. Its about all customerfacing processes and functions, including social CRM and customer service. And its also the case in business and management where the customer can, for instance, be the employee.
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through communication, human contact or physical or sensory interaction. His definition covers
every experience a customer can have with the brand, product, or service. Brigmans examples include less-obvious touchpoints such as walking into a movie theatre and smelling popcorn, hearing pleasant music when shopping in a store, or being able to understand and easily cash in a coupon. You can imagine that with social media the number of touchpoints has largely increased. The main touchpoint challenges for marketers Mapping potential touchpoints as they occur in the context of the customer journey. Defining the triggers that open a window of opportunity for persuasion/conversion/engagement. Improving the various elements constituting potential touchpoints. Having an integrated and channel-agnostic touchpoint approach since the customer experience overlaps media, channels, business functions etc. Bringing the social and connected dimension into the equation. Moving from a siloed approach to a connected or omnichannel approach, including social, among others in customer service (touchpoints). Mutually valuable touchpoints are the moments of truth where conversions can occur. A conversion (e.g. from click to buy) is any action resulting from touchpoints and leading to (desired) outcomes. Integrated and customer-centric touchpoint oriented marketing is not new but it seems that only now its being discovered in the social media expert space. When you want to work with touchpoint mapping or customer experience mapping you can use a tool thats built to do exactly that. There are several ones on the market. An easy-to-use one I mentioned some time ago is TouchPoint Dashboard. However, you can also use Excel files, mindmaps or the features you find in some marketing software platforms for the enterprise. When you work with touchpoints its important to realize that 1) it requires some thorough thinking and a clear focus on the customer journey and buyers and 2) its not always that easy. To avoid confusion also note that most people talk about interactions and contact moments on the level of channels or real-life contacts (e.g. the branch of a bank). However, others including me look at touchpoints as the actual contact itself rather than the channels. To show how touchpoints are looked upon and how complex they can be below is an image showing typical touchpoints from the channel perspective in healthcare as I found it on the website of ThinkCreative. Ill add
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some Excel files and examples soon myself in the promised follow-up post in this series on optimizing the digital and social customer experience. Note that the model below youll have to click it to fully view it does not represent a customer journey. It doesnt look at a buyer persona nor at the journey of an individual customer. Its a map representing potential touchpoints with a brand in this case in healthcare.
Sample healthcare branding touchpoints including social click for larger version source
www.socialmarketingforum.net/2013/02/optimizing-the-digital-and-social-customer-experience/
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Consistency is about listening to your customers and making things easy for them, about
removing obstacles and any possible doubt about what they are doing at any given point. Its about integrated flows of improving across different steps in the journey. Its about not saying Click here to download our folder in your call-to-action and next sending people to your homepage. And, finally, its about your brand promise and story and how you stick to it.
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There are thousands of tests and studies, indicating how a more personal approach, a more consistent and human customer experience and continuous optimization improve virtually all marketing parameters, regardless of the medium or tactic. However, the basic premise is that 1) customers see our business as a whole that is constituted by all touchpoints and 2) that making the interactions and experiences worthwhile is paid back in hard cash.
www.socialmarketingforum.net/2013/02/optimizing-the-digital-and-social-customer-experience/
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In a next post I will provide some tips and considerations regarding websites before diving deeper into the social and connected customer experience. To wrap up a special word of thanks to the user experience and customer experience community. Because they have been pioneering in the customer journey and buyer persona field as well as you can see in the 2011 buyer persona customer journey map below (click for larger view) as posted on Smashing Magazine in 2011. Finally take a look at this blog post, the findings, the graphs and the slideshare in it. The research data and presentation will make you understand better what customer experiences are all about.
Customer journey mapping - click for full image via Smashing Magazine
Filed Under: Customer service, Relationship marketing, Social business, Social CRM, Social media marketing, Touchpoint marketing Tagged With: Bryan Eisenberg, customer journey, Dion Hinchcliffe, McKinsey,
About J-P De Clerck J-P De Clerck is a customer-centric marketing consultant and trainer. You can follow him on Twitter via @conversionation. Connect on Google+ via +J-P De Clerck.
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