What Do Customers Want From A Typical Customer Service Situation

Understanding your customer is vital, if you empathise your customer better, yous tin provide them with a bully user experience for your product, and in turn maintain or fifty-fifty increment customer retention, thereby maximizing profits.

In this article, nosotros're going to discuss the five phases of the customer journeying, to provide yous with insight and actionable points to begin, or improve your customer onboarding feel.

Merely first, allow's take a quick overview of what the five phases are…

What are the v phases of the customer journey? There are Distinct phases in which your potential client passes through and should be guided accordingly in society to be introduced to and "buy into" your product. The five phases are Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Memory, and Advocacy. Each has its challenges which we volition discuss hither.

Just why is it important to provide a seamless onboarding procedure for customers? How does it impact your acquirement?

What is the customer journey for?

Each customer embarks on a journeying towards purchasing a production. From showtime to finish there are five distinct phases a client volition pass through. For each phase there are challenges and hurdles that you will need to guide your customer through.

All these five phases class part of what is called an "onboarding process".

Certainly, when concerning products like CommBox. We had to very carefully consider how we would guide our customers through the discovery, setup, and integration of our CommBox service software.

Here'south what onboarding is, and why considering your onboarding process and strategy is important.

What is customer onboarding?

Customer onboarding is the start to finish process that enables customers to find, evaluate and eventually purchase your products through a sales process. An excellent customer onboarding plan helps customers to first empathize the benefits of your product or service, guides them on setup and employ, and provides helpful ongoing support.

Why is onboarding important?

Yous don't get a 2nd chance to make a beginning impression. Onboarding handles that initial contact, and provides confidence to your potential client almost both the organizations they're dealing with and the production they're considering.

Only information technology doesn't end in that location. Customers can fall off the sales funnel at any point. So the end-to-end road you provide potential customers to menstruation through can accept a huge impact on the perceived value and potential purchase of your production.

Successful onboarding will…

Set a positive tone for both your organization and your product value
Dramatically increment the client LTV (lifetime value)
Reduce loss from the sales funnel
Create long term loyalty from customers
Increase referral rates
Enable margin building and upselling

How to create a client onboarding strategy

Earlier embarking on this procedure, be sure you understand who your customer is, see our earlier article about knowing your client. It's vital y'all build up a persona or multiple personas well-nigh your target audience.

One time you've figured out where your customers are coming from, you can better insert them into a suitable onboarding procedure. For example:

A single user with their own business that is new to your product will non want to be presented with enterprise messaging.

An organization volition often have washed much of the groundwork and usually have laser precision in what they want and need, so showing them messaging about "what this product does" is probably not the ideal start.

In concern, we're all familiar with edifice a campaign. A sales campaign or a marketing campaign. Onboarding is no different. Information technology's about creating a strategy the same as any others y'all might tackle.

You should be very articulate on both your goal, and your plan to attain that goal – at least every bit a starting point, but the customer onboarding journey tin and will change as you discover how your customers acquire nearly y'all, what your product does, once they interact with your organization and your software, and as well, you'll need to shore up holes in the procedure where customers are "escaping" your funnel.

Here are a few points to make sure you lot cover off inside that planning process.

Always go on the idea of your customers and your product introduction equally a seamlessly flow
Aim for early and repeated use of the product. The start week of an onboarding phase is crucial
Understand the patterns of employ made by customers, ask when, how, and why blazon questions.
Aim to make your product so helpful, your client volition detect it hard to be without it
Reduce client frustration, exist on hand, at every moment when a customer has a query or issue
Keep client interaction personal and seamless, using something similar CommBox tin can create that seamless customer experience.

Your strategy will change, and some areas will require more attending than others. But equally the great Steven Covey told us "brainstorm with the cease in mind".

Discover out more than virtually the CommBox smart customer communication solution

Tips and best practices during client onboarding

From our CommBox product experience, we wanted to provide our customers with the very best experience. It wasn't just a sales exercise; we wanted our customers to love our product as much every bit nosotros did.

Then here nosotros're going to give yous some best practices and a few helpful tips to get provide more value to your customers during onboarding.

Customer onboarding best practices

The following best practices will require information from every point of contact with your customers and will help you create a solid onboarding experience.

1. Know your customer's hurting points

It'south a trite phrase these days, but the term "hurting points" withal sums it up. You should not just know what obstacles your customers face, just y'all should besides get in your responsibleness to discover and provide the best solution.

Customers flock to the best solution, news of information technology spreads like wildfire and the best product or solution is the stuff of higher pricing and improve margins – and considering of your determination to provide the best solution – you earned it!

2. The first impression

Don't let your first contact with your customers be a guessing game. Zippo screams a bad start than a customer looking at your website home page or first email and wondering…

What you lot really practise, and
Where they demand to start.

Continue it simple and clear.

3. Qualify what the customer is getting, and why

Your first sales page should brand information technology clear what the product is for, who information technology's for and why it works. You lot should keep to ensure your customers know what they're going to get and why. If there are caveats to using your products then state them, don't let them discover out later downward the process.

4. Demonstrate value

Don't oversell the value on text solitary, provide resources that will demonstrate actual value better than sales-speak. Here are a few examples…

Provide a demonstration
Explainer videos
Potential utilise case scenarios
Offer real-world case studies
A call from a product specialist to assess production fit
Supporting documentation
Statistics and/or studies

5. Stay in communication

Beyond the first howdy and interaction. Ensure you maintain your newfound friendship with your potential customer. Use electronic mail or in-app messaging to encourage the customer to keep with the onboarding procedure.

Alison.com courses are 1 example of this, with timely reminders to continue where you lot left off or to dive deeper, I'm sure everyone has had similar prompts before, here's an example…

Email is normally your best option for this as a fashion to keep in contact.

Once your customer is unable to function without your product, they will soon be signing in of their ain free will

6. Guidance is central

It's quite possible that a good portion of your customers can fall out of beloved with your product – and fall out of your sales funnel because of ane simple frustration that they could not overcome. Guiding your customers every step of the fashion, and showing them aspects of the platform or service, you provide means they're less probable to throw the estimator out the window – and your platform along with information technology!

On-screen guides, prompts or messages, labels or intuitive help similar that provided by our CommBox production, is really helpful.

Here'south an example from teamwork.com in how to guide your customers through the process of starting, navigating and using their product.

vii. Customer-driven objectives and goals

Enable your customers to tell you what they consider success to wait similar, then, where possible, tailor your product and it'south milestones to facilitate the journeying to their success points and aims.

Where possible, as with this example from teamwork.com, enable your customers to set their own parameters, even if it'south tracking progress, showing history, analytics. Whatever enables them to mensurate where they are now compared to where they were earlier.

eight. Continue to print

If your customer is impressed with your product upon first sight, that's great. Merely that will wear in time. You demand to seek to impress your customers on an ongoing footing, with new and keen updates, complimentary courses, support, badges or whatever your customers perceive to be new and impressive!

ix. Measure your success

As you lot would with the rest of your business, rails your metrics, get together client feedback – and if you hear information technology more than a few times then don't ignore it!

Encourage comments, bear out surveys and other feedback loop oriented exercises. Monitor your success and tweak your processes where yous need to.

Ask relevant questions at the right points in the customer'south journey. So with that in heed, now we've come dorsum circular to the client journey phases, permit'due south take you lot through what the five points are…

The 5 phases of the customer journey

Some phases of the customer journey are merely fleeting moments, others can continue for days or maybe fifty-fifty weeks.

But they're all every bit relevant as each other and information technology'south difficult to get by whatever i of them and straight to the adjacent. So, I'd encourage yous to address all of them.

The 5 phases are split into two kinds, leading phases (or pre-sales phases) and, of course, post-sale phases. Here'south the outline…

Awareness (pre-sale)

The discovery stage, via various marketing methods, data gathering, inquiry phase, looking for clear messaging and initial problem-solving.

Your marketing will unremarkably denote which entry point your customer arrived at, whether enterprise or individual – the messaging should reflect the phase they're in.

Consideration (pre-sale)

Debating options, peradventure yours vs some other product, considering pricing, which is the best solution, weighing features and benefits.

Brand sensation tin can play an important office here, brand familiarity, known history, and perceived quality and service tin sway a auction to the more familiar or more favored brand. Await to increase brand awareness in this product space.

Purchase (post-sale)

The decision is fabricated, and the purchase has gone ahead, this is now the necktie for immediate action. Practise not leave a void in between this phase and first contact. The customer needs to be acknowledged. Startup your welcome and messaging machine to progress the journeying with a bully experience and a run a risk to movement them into farther phases.

Retentiveness

Retaining a client is difficult, this is where many will fall off the process if they're not sufficiently supported.

Maintain customer satisfaction and "approval rating" by continuing to solve this trouble – and anticipate futurity hurdles you can help your customer with. This is where our customer experience team helps our clients to ameliorate their experience with CommBox still further. Information technology'due south a bully opportunity to look after your customer'south needs.

Constant communication is key to developing client loyalty.

Advocacy

If all the other phases are handled correctly, and so your customers volition become fans, fans will provide the best marketing yous can get. Their influence on the purchasing decisions of others should facilitate further sales. At this bespeak recommendation and reward is a smashing boost to improve sales.

Dropbox grew exponentially because happy customers were able to spread the message and do good from increased product features like additional storage. The business boomed and their marketing budget was boosted through a pyramid blazon sales growth.

Affiliate and referral schemes (where appropriate) mean that customer have already been recommended your production, this can facilitate and expedite the client onboarding process.

To conclude…

Onboarding exists, so accept the guesswork out of helping and satisfying your customer. Create a plan, monitor the results, and aim for the best service possible to create fans that will go on to sell the product for you lot.

We hope this has been a useful do in understanding and implementing a successful onboarding process. CommBox can help to provide a seamless feel for your customers, both existing and new. Accept advantage of our sit-in, and permit us show y'all how good our client experience is for onboarding.

Source: https://www.commbox.io/the-5-phases-of-the-customer-journey-when-onboarding-a-guide/

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