It’s easy to draw a parallel between how social customers behave and how honeybees behave. Think of your customers as honeybees and your business as a flower distributing nectar to the honeybee market. Great advertising may attract a large number of bees to your flower but in order to get those bees to go back to the hive and do a waggle dance for your product/service you also need to provide a great customer experience.
When consider what will deliver a great experience, one should consider the four important stages of the Customer Decision Journey (CDJ):
The Customer Decision Journey
Formulation (Awarness, Consideration)
This is the moment or instance that triggers interest and the steps our connected customer takes to boil down her initial options.
Pre-Commerce (Evaluation)
Based on the initial consideration, our connected customer conducts open research to validate her initial choices and surface new opportunities.
Commerce (Purchase)
When a decision is made, our customer journey is only the beginning. Tools and services unlock to shape and steer the ensuing customer relationship.
Post-Commerce (Experience/Advocacy)
Following the purchase, our connected customers bond with the brand. The extent of this bond is defined by their loyalty and advocacy.
At this point, you should ask yourself two questions:
- What are the story environments that make up the CDJ? (What kind of flowers do we need to nurture?)
- What questions should we be asking about at each stage of our customer’s journey to ensure that we are attracting the right individuals and motivating them to engage with our brand? (Are we attracting the right bees and giving them a reason to waggle for our brand?)
I went ahead and took a pass at answering the above two questions to help you jump start your own thinking on the matter:
Formulation
Story Environments
Television Advertisement Online Advertisement Mobile Advertisement Social Advertising Newspaper Advertisement Radio Advertisement Outdoor Advertisement Flyer Advertisement In-Store Advertising Direct Mail Catalogs Tradeshows/Events
Key Questions
How well is our brand storytelling working? Which story environments are conveying our brand the best? Which audience is resonating with our brand story the most?Pre-Commerce
Story Environments
SEO Corporate Websites Online Forums & Communities Augmented Reality Physical Showrooms Sales Personnel SamplesKey Questions
Are we improving – successfully migrating connected customers to increasingly higher levels of engagement with our Pre-Commerce stories?Commerce
Story Environments
SEM Affiliates & Aggregators Corporate Websites Social Media Mobile ApplicationsKey Questions
Are customers performing conversion actions within our story ecosystem according to our goals?Post-Commerce
Story Environments
Social Media E-Mail Loyalty Cards Branded Communities Custom Publishing Customer Service Corporate Websites Mobile ApplicationsKey Questions
Where/how does our connected customers share their stories about their experience with our brand? Does the brand listen to these stories and respond in a timely manner? How do we cultivate the great experiences and reduce the frequency of bad experiences?
Grounding the Customer Decision Journey as a theoretical framework into practical application will be a profound step for any brand forward thinking enough to adopt it. By understanding the CDJ habitat we maintain for our customers we empower our brand to take the necessary steps to improve/optimize the customer experience at each touchpoint. This will ultimately result in your customers buzzing about your brand to their hive of associates, friends and family. Waggle Waggle!