Customer Journey

The term “customer journey” describes the path of steps, interactions, and touch points that a customer goes through with a company. Journeys are typically broken down into multiple, sequential stages. Depending on the type of interaction a customer has with a company, their journey may be shorter or longer, and may include more or less steps and touchpoints.

In the world of customer experience, the customer journey is commonly divided into 5 stages, also known as the 5 A’s: awareness, acquisition, adoption, assimilation, and advocacy. Each of these stages might have multiple sub-stages and touchpoints.

1. Awareness: the customer searches for the product/solution/service, identifies and becomes aware of a specific product/solution/service.
2. Acquisition: the customer takes the product into active consideration and acquires the product/service.
3. Adoption: the customer tries out and starts using the product/service.
4. Assimilation: the customer starts using the product/service regularly and becomes very familiar with it.
5. Advocacy: if satisfied, the customer might become a loyal customer, advocating for the company, sharing their positive experience online, and referring the company to their friends.

Know & control your users’ journeys

A way of gaining awareness of your customers’ journeys is to adopt a customer journey management strategy. By understanding how your customers are choosing to buy your product or solution and how others might give up on acquiring it at a certain point of their journey, you can leverage the information to your advantage to improve future journeys and your overall customer experience. This way, you will be able to cut down on fruitless expenses and invest on the more meaningful interactions your customers are having with your company.

Customer journey management includes monitoring customer journeys, learning to predict successes vs. failures, and enacting corrective measures.

The journey is key in turning a user into a consumer

In eCommerce, documenting your customers’ journey means understanding the people who visit your website, browse through your products or services, and ultimately make a transaction. This in-depth level of understanding allows companies to anticipate their customers’ behavior and shape their strategies around it.

The journey is the roadmap to understanding how to turn users into customers or consumers. While users engage with your website, your product or your service, only some of them are going to become actual consumers who generate direct revenue for your business. In order to better understand the customer journey, it’s useful to create a customer journey map.