Current State Customer Journey
Current State Customer Journey
[00:00:00] Sarah Noel Block: Let's talk about a current state customer journey. So a current state customer journey is when you discover how currently your customers are finding you. This is the easiest place to start in the future. Which is called a future state journey. You can manipulate this so you can find a more streamlined way to do it, or you can find a better way to do it, or maybe you discover that ads are going to do really well for you.
[00:00:32] Sarah Noel Block: But right now we're going to figure out our current state journey. So when you're developing a current state journey, you map the journey your clients take now. So these are the steps of a current state journey. You need a clear, objective. Defined personas, define stages and goals, touchpoints. At each stage, gather the data and customer [00:01:00] feedback, pain points and points of friction where you can improve the journey.
[00:01:05] Sarah Noel Block: So let's first look at setting an objective. . So what goal do you want to reach? So here are some examples of objectives. Attract more female coaches earn more B2B customers in the tech space. Sell more virtual workshops. Set an objective for this particular customer journey because your customer journey might look different depending on the product or the service that you're offering.
[00:01:39] Sarah Noel Block: For example, if you. Sell courses, but you also sell services. The journey could look different. So set your objective for the journey map first.
[00:01:53] Sarah Noel Block: Now determine what stages you want to focus on.
[00:01:57] Sarah Noel Block: The first stage is awareness. The customer [00:02:00] has identified their problem and began seeking out answers. So what does awareness look like? It could be. I'm gonna go back to this slide. It could be they're finding you on Google. Let's say your SEO is killer and they're finding you on Google. It could be social media.
[00:02:19] Sarah Noel Block: Maybe you have a really great presence on Instagram and people find you that way. Or it could be your podcast or podcast guesting. What you want to do to discover. How your customers are finding you in this awareness stage is look at your Google Analytics. That's the first place you can look. How are people going to your website in the first place?
[00:02:43] Sarah Noel Block: And that's low hanging fruit. Easy way to figure this out right off the bat. The next stage of a customer journey is consideration. The customer has shortlisted your brand, so they're now looking at things like the products or [00:03:00] services that you offer your pricing. Reviews that are online and they're easy to access information about you, your frequently asked questions, they'll be looking at things like that to try and whittle down their shortlist decision.
[00:03:15] Sarah Noel Block: Your customer has the information to decide on who they're going to purchase from. Then they need to look at your frequently asked questions, the terms and details about working with you. This might be the place if you sell to, like if there's a committee to make the decision about purchasing from you.
[00:03:37] Sarah Noel Block: This is when it would be happening is, so this is when you want to use that sales enablement content and discovery calls are happening and proposals are happening.
[00:03:48] Sarah Noel Block: and then last is retention. You've gained that customer and now it's your experience, the experience that you provide for your customer that will decide if they will continue the [00:04:00] relationship or not. So that's a whole other thing. Is creating an amazing experience to retain your customers because it is so much cheaper to retain an existing customer or sell an upgrade to an existing customer than to acquire a new customer.
[00:04:19] Sarah Noel Block: Okay. Let's look at touchpoints. How do your customers interact with you at each stage of the funnel? . So easy way to look would be your Google Analytics, your social media analytics. They're good. They're available to you. So every social media platform has a version of analytics, so make sure to dig into that and see what you can, what information you can glean from it.
[00:04:48] Sarah Noel Block: This is a beginning point. This is you taking a stab to figure out how people are finding you. You don't want to end up. The scatter plot [00:05:00] version of a customer journey right away identify what would be a great place for me to, go all in on. And then once you master that, then you move on to the next thing.
[00:05:13] Sarah Noel Block: That would make sense. Be very strategic about where you're spending your time and money. So if you don't know or you're just beginning, you might need to have some experimental awareness touch. Yes. Remember we're going to be surveying our customers, so ask them what channels they prefer.
[00:05:33] Sarah Noel Block: Review your acquisitions report, see where people are at, and how are you getting your leads. Now, make sure that this question, how did you learn about me is on your discovery call questionnaire or your sales call questionnaire. And then feel free to. Experiment a little bit. When you're brand new, you need to make some assumptions.
[00:05:54] Sarah Noel Block: You don't have customers yet, so do a little digging. [00:06:00] Figure out what channels your preferred customer are on and then start there.
[00:06:05] Sarah Noel Block: Here are some examples of typical touchpoints that you might find. So at the awareness stage, speaking engagements, podcasts, social media, videos, like on YouTube, for example, Google. These are all awareness level touchpoints that you might have. So let's say you're a really great speaker. You might want to do like a, blitz where you are on pod, you're a guest on podcast, you are doing on stage speaking engagements, you're doing webinars with partners.
[00:06:41] Sarah Noel Block: These are great ways to build your audience at the beginning and build awareness around your. while honing in on your expertise what's you are best at, but it's a good place to start. Consideration stage touchpoints would [00:07:00] be your website, so the amount of traffic that you are getting to your website and to those deeper level pages like product pages, service pages, discovery form pages, those are great indicators that someone is in the consideration.
[00:07:16] Sarah Noel Block: where if we go back to awareness phase, you're going to find that it's probably gonna be more external. It'll be podcasts, it will be social media. It won't necessarily be things that live on your website yet. Other consideration touchpoints would be webinars. They have to take some time and effort to be and.
[00:07:38] Sarah Noel Block: Some of themselves into a webinar or a workshop, so that is a good indicator that they're at the consideration point and also email. If they've subscribed to your email list, then it is likely that they either are willing to buy from you at one point when they need that service, or they are already have shortlisted.[00:08:00]
[00:08:02] Sarah Noel Block: Decision level touchpoints would be your website and discovery calls. So you have been shortlisted, you're already about 70% way through the sales process, and they're ready to take the next step and decide if they wanna work with you.
[00:08:17] Sarah Noel Block: and then retention. Retention is the last piece, and that is all about the experience that they are having working with you. So what processes do you have that make it easier to work from work with you? What results are you showing? Make sure to do reports because customers love reports and finding out that they are getting a return on their investment.
[00:08:40] Sarah Noel Block: So the next step of creating a customer journey is gathering data. So use your reviews, surveys, client calls to gather data on the customer experience at each stage of the funnel, and this will help you. I identify where you need to improve that funnel and move you to a future state journey. [00:09:00] Take advantage of those calls that you're having, the sales calls and your client calls, and ask questions about the experience that people are having, how they found you in the first place.
[00:09:13] Sarah Noel Block: Have conversations that matter because this will really help you streamline your systems and gathering new clients and better understand a straightforward way to.
[00:09:28] Sarah Noel Block: next. You wanna look at any friction points once you've gathered data and you can understand, okay, people are having a hard time moving from awareness to consideration because I don't have a lead gen that really appeals to them, so they might not take that leap. Or a friction point could be, it's hard to get a discovery call with you.
[00:09:50] Sarah Noel Block: So when you are gathering that data, make sure to look for friction points that you can remove to make it easier to buy from you.
[00:09:59] Sarah Noel Block: [00:10:00] Another thing that you wanna look like, a couple things I wanna point out right here is you could find out on these calls that your price is too high for the identified customer. , your checkout page lags. Your email confirmation is slow to arrive or your digital products get stuck in spam.
[00:10:19] Sarah Noel Block: These are all friction points that are easy to fix and would result in butter customer retention.
