8 Steps to Build a Detailed, Effective Customer Journey

Building a customer journey is an important factor that helps businesses implement effective business strategies, retain customers and quickly achieve business growth goals. So how to build a complete customer journey? Let's find the answer with 1C Vietnam in the article below!

1. What is the customer journey?

The Customer Journey is the series of processes that customers go through, from searching for information, reading reviews, visiting a business's website, talking to a consultant, to purchasing, using a product/service, and finally evaluating their experience. The customer process can be fast or slow depending on the type of product/service that the business is providing.

In reality, no customer journey is the same, each business will have to adjust its marketing strategies accordingly to meet customer desires, motivating customers to quickly make decisions.

2. Why businesses need to build customer journeys

Building a customer journey is a process that greatly affects the brand of a business. This process helps businesses understand potential customers and customers who have used the service, thereby allowing businesses to develop targeted strategies based on consumer behavior and preferences. As a result, businesses will easily convert potential customers, increase satisfaction as well as retain potential customers.

At the same time, building a customer journey is also a strategy to help businesses better understand the experience that customers have had with the business's products/services. Thanks to that, businesses will collect important information to implement marketing activities to attract and retain customers.

3. Stages of the customer journey

Each business will have different stages of the customer journey, including all the interactions and experiences customers have with the brand at different times. However, basically, the complete customer journey will have 5 main stages as follows:

3.1 Cognitive stage

This is the first stage of the customer journey , helping potential customers know about the business brand through marketing campaigns, word of mouth or online search. This stage greatly determines the customer's perception of the business, strong impressions will arouse curiosity and lead to more in-depth decisions.

3.2 Consideration phase

The consideration stage involves a lot of research and comparison from the customer, this is when the customer begins to evaluate the business's product/service against their needs and other items on the market.

Therefore, providing complete information and highlighting the product is the top condition for businesses to succeed in this stage. Besides, testimonials, reviews and detailed information about the product also greatly influence customers' decisions.

3.3 Decision stage

The decision stage is the “golden” moment in the customer journey . This is where potential customers synthesize and consider all the information collected from the Awareness and Consideration stages to make a final decision. This stage is strongly influenced by many factors such as: Perceived value of the product, price, service and purchase experience.

Therefore, business purchasing processes need to be as seamless and intuitive as possible, helping targeted marketing efforts such as promotions or personalized communications to be highly effective in driving customers to make purchases.

3.4 Re-experiencing phase

After purchasing a product or experiencing a service, retaining customers is extremely important for businesses, helping to save a lot of costs compared to acquiring a new customer.

Effective communication, attentive service and product quality assurance are the prerequisites in this stage. In addition, implementing customer loyalty programs and after-purchase incentives also help increase the likelihood of customers returning to the business.

3.5 Loyalty stage

In the loyalty stage, customers not only return to make purchases but also frequently share their positive experiences with the brand. This is a testament to the ability to consistently meet customer expectations across all stages of the customer journey.

To foster loyalty, businesses need to focus on connecting closely with customers emotionally, through personalized experiences, promotions or loyalty rewards. Loyal customers are invaluable assets, helping businesses achieve sustainable revenue and attract new customers naturally and effectively.

4. 8 Steps to building a customer journey map

In addition to understanding what the customer journey is, businesses also need to master the steps to build a customer journey map below to come up with appropriate strategies to attract and retain customers:

4.1 Step 1: Define your goals

The first step in the process of building a customer journey is for businesses to define specific goals through the following questions:

• What is the central goal of developing a customer journey map?
• Who are the main customers that the business is targeting?
• What are the goals and expected results that the business wants to achieve through building a customer journey map?
• What database do businesses rely on to create customer journey maps?

Through the above questions, businesses will easily identify specific goals as well as guide the research and analysis process, helping to create a customer journey map that matches the business's wishes.

4.2 Step 2: Outline the characteristics of the customer group

Customer Persona is a description of the important characteristics of the customer group that the business is targeting, including information such as demographics (age, gender, occupation, marital status, etc.), interests, lifestyle, purchasing behavior, etc. To sketch a portrait of the customer, the business needs to conduct many surveys, market research and rely on some practical experience. The following questions will help the business:

• What age and gender are the customers? Where do they live and what do they do for a living?
• What values do customers expect when using services/products?
• How to increase product/service or brand awareness to customers?
• What factors do customers value when making a purchase? (price, quality or after-sales policy).
• Have customers ever used your products/services? If so, what are their reviews?
• Do customers prefer online or offline shopping?
• What difficulties and limitations are customers facing when using your products/services?
• How much are customers willing to pay for your product/service?

In general, outlining customer characteristics and portraits helps businesses better understand their customers and develop appropriate business strategies.

4.3 Step 3: Identify the contact point

In a customer journey map, touchpoints are where customers interact and experience the brand, depending mainly on the type of business the business is in. In the process of researching and identifying customer touchpoints, businesses need to implement solutions to help solve behavioral, emotional, and potential challenges to prepare for the next steps.

4.4 Step 4: Collect customer feedback

A customer journey map provides an overview of the customer experience with a business's products/services. The process of collecting customer feedback is important, customer actions can include searching for product information, responding to advertising, emails and making purchases.

Customer emotions are an important factor that influences all of their purchasing decisions and can change rapidly based on customers' needs and desires at different stages of the purchasing process.

4.5 Step 5: Understand the customer's problem

In the process of building a customer journey map, businesses need to clearly understand the problems customers are facing when using the product/service. These problems may include difficulties accessing the website, complicated payment processes, long delivery times, unprofessional staff attitudes, etc. At that time, businesses need to plan to promptly resolve them.

4.6 Step 6: Identify key elements in the map

Typically, a customer journey map will show the following four key elements:

• Customers' thoughts, feelings and actions when experiencing a business's products/services. This helps businesses improve the customer journey continuously.
• Customers’ thoughts, feelings and actions when performing daily activities. Thanks to that, businesses will have a multi-dimensional perspective on daily life and the problems that customers are facing to come up with appropriate solutions.
• What customers think, do, and feel when interacting with a brand from a business perspective.
• Experience factors such as people, technology, processes, policies, etc. help businesses identify the causes or steps needed to map the customer journey.

4.7 Step 7: Assess existing resources

A customer journey map is only complete if it involves every aspect of the business. In particular, re-evaluating existing resources is a mandatory requirement, including human resources, technology, finance, and management systems.

At the same time, businesses can propose solutions (if necessary) such as: Applying new technologies, organizing programs to improve product/service quality, establishing management processes and evaluating performance. This not only helps bring good experiences to customers but also helps optimize costs for businesses.

4.8 Step 8: Create customer journeys through complementary tools

Finally, businesses need to synthesize information and evaluate the collected data to create a complete customer journey map. In the process of building the customer journey, businesses can apply the 1C:ERP solution.

This is an enterprise resource planning solution, providing comprehensive management efficiency with many subsystems, of which the most prominent is the customer relationship management subsystem (CRM & Marketing):

• Allows tracking of customer interactions via notification system.
• Identify each customer segment, keep contact information.
• Track customer retention rates, control processing times, and assist customers in every transaction.
• Analyze the reasons why orders cannot be closed, monitor customer complaints.
• Store competitor information as well as their pricing policies,...

With powerful tools and utilities, 1C:ERP will be a long-term customer and partner relationship management system, supporting businesses in building detailed customer portraits, while attracting and retaining buyers.

5. 4 popular customer journey models

Each customer will have different characteristics and personalities, so each person's customer journey will also be completely different. So which customer journey model is popular? Let's find out with 1C Vietnam right below:

5.1 Model 5A

This is the 5A model pioneered by McKinsey, with a proactive approach to the customer journey. At the same time, this model also helps businesses emphasize the non-linear nature of the customer journey , while promoting the connection between businesses and consumers.

The 5A model includes 5 main stages as follows:

• Awareness: The initial stage of the model, where the customer becomes aware of the brand or product.
• Appeal: The customer will begin to develop emotional concerns.
• Ask: Is the act of actively seeking information or making suggestions.
• Act: Is the stage where the customer makes a decision or makes a purchase.
• Advocate: Where satisfied customers promote the brand through reviews or word of mouth.

5.2 ACC Model

This model is suitable for businesses with simple sales cycles, helping to emphasize the importance of sales stages.

The ACC model simplifies the customer journey with three main stages:

• Awareness: Focuses on attracting customer attention through various marketing campaigns.
• Consideration: Turn interested customers into leads with practical offers.
• Conversion: When a potential customer upgrades to a loyal customer.

5.3 ACCSR Model

Considered an improved model of ACC, ACCSR includes two main stages:

• Service: Focus on providing after-sales services to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Retention: Emphasizes the importance of retaining customers, encouraging them to experience the service again and increasing loyalty.

Through this, the ACCSR model reaffirms the importance of post-purchase experience in retaining customers and determining business success.

5.4 ACCRA/ACPRA Model

This model builds on the original ACCSR model and adds the “Retention” and “Advocacy” stages. This model highlights the lifecycle of the intimate relationship between customers and businesses, from initial awareness to active promotion, emphasizing the role of customer advocacy in the business development process.

• Retention: When customers are satisfied and want to come back to continue using the business's products/services.
• Advocacy: Is when current customers refer new potential customers to the business.

6. How to optimize customer journey maps?

The Customer Journey optimization process needs to be continuous and constantly improved to ensure customers always have the best experiences in all stages of the customer journey. To do that, businesses need to pay attention to the following issues:

• Have a clear vision of what you want to achieve

To improve the customer journey, businesses need to clearly define the goals they want to achieve, and clearly distinguish between the present and the future. Based on what they see, businesses will plan in detail for their customer journey and take appropriate actions.

By understanding customer attitudes and needs, businesses will be able to modify their actions to better meet customers, and thereby develop contingency plans to deal with the event that these needs can no longer be met.

• Organize your customer journey map

In order to provide customers with optimal product/service experiences, businesses need to take more action, map the customer journey in real time to adjust strategies when customers make decisions. This helps optimize customer experience and improve customer usage behavior during the time of making information data.

• Improve employee experience

Businesses need to enhance the employee experience by providing tools that positively impact the customer experience at key moments. This empowers employees and empowers them to take ownership of their roles to help customers.

Thus, in the above article, 1C Vietnam has sent to your business important content about the customer journey and the steps to build a detailed customer journey map. To support the process of building the customer journey, businesses should use 1C Vietnam's 1C:ERP software - a comprehensive management solution on a smart low-code platform. Contact 1C Vietnam via hotline (+84)247 108 8887 for advice and support!