Modern businesses have 100s of potential sources of data at their disposal. From internal metrics to industry insights, companies can reach out and use any number of streams of information. Yet, out of all of these possibilities, turning toward a company’s own customers is typically one of the strongest methods of gathering data and propelling your business toward success.
The customer journey maps every movement of a customer from their first encounter with your business through to the buying stage and onward to retention. A streamlined customer journey will see high conversion rates, high customer satisfaction, and impressive retention rates. But to develop a winning customer journey, we need to refine our offering across the entire customer journey map.
Instead of working in the dark, businesses should turn to customer journey data. Collecting information from every customer touchpoint will point us toward actionable insights that can make the process even better. In a world where 86% of buyers will pay more for a positive customer experience, this metric has never been more important.
In this article, we’ll explore the customer journey, detailing how we can draw insights from customer data and create a winning UX. We’ll touch on the benefits of customer journey data and define how your business can construct a customer data strategy for 2024.
Let’s dive right in.
How To Define Your Customer Journey Data Strategy
Your customer journey refers to every single point of interaction that your customers have with your business. This could be as simple as clicking on your website or as complex as monitoring cursor movement or levels of interaction on specific pages of your site or application.
While most businesses will have some rudimentary level of access to their customer journey data, this pails in comparison to companies that specifically focus on this area of analytics. Instead of settling for brief and unhelpful insights, your business should aim to construct a comprehensive customer journey data strategy.
Here are four steps to success when creating a data strategy:
Secure Your Architecture
Businesses that instantly try to scale into mass data analytics typically run into problems with data fluidity and siloing. To avoid this, the first step of developing a data strategy should be to ensure you can actually achieve one without hitting any roadblocks. Your business should be able to count on core data architecture, like a streamlined data pipeline and a centralized data repository, to store all of your raw data and insights.
For example, your business should understand which analytics databases will be most beneficial to your company. When comparing Clickhouse vs Druid, two specialized analytics databases, you can see that each offers a range of features that may accommodate the specific needs of your company.
Before launching into development and scaling, you should ensure your business has adequate data infrastructure to handle extensive customer journey data analytics.
Outline Goals
For any successful project, whether related to data or any other area of business operations, planning is vital. Identifying your goals should be an early step, as this orientates your project and outlines the pathway toward success. If there is a specific area of customer analytics that you want to focus on improving, this is the stage to voice those goals and note them down.
By outlining your goals as early as possible, you can more effectively plan your movement toward comprehensive customer journey mapping. From there, you’ll be able to get this project up and running with less budget and in less time.
Collect Data
No data strategy is complete without a clear understanding of where your data is coming from and how it enters your business. In the context of customer analytics, your points of data will come from any moment that a customer interacts with your business. This could be quantitative data, like how long a customer spends on your website, or qualitative data from surveys you send out to your users.
Be sure to enable analytics suites and data collection on all of your platforms, including your website and any mobile apps that you run. Once these platforms are continually producing insight, you’ll be ready to continue to the next stage.
Deduce Insight
After collecting your customer journey data, your business can use analytical tools to discover insights. For example, you could focus on points of friction or areas of your website where your customers routinely click off your page. These points of friction could be any number of obstacles, like an unclear menu, an experience that isn’t intuitive, or poor design choices that leave the customer frustrated with your website.
Exploring areas of friction will help you to deduce insight into what may be causing high bounce rates or other issues in the customer journey. Examine any areas where you have a dip in activity to determine what the issue is and how exactly you can remedy it.
Effective, actionable insights meet at the intersection between data analytics and logical thinking. If you introduced a new website design and your website bounce rate skyrocketed in the following days, then it wouldn’t be a huge logical leap to see this new design as one of the leading factors in your declining customer experience.
Deduce insight and then move on to taking action.
Affect Change
The insights you uncover will directly lead to an actionable change that you can make. For example, if you notice that many people are starting the checkout process but stop halfway through, then you should experiment with different payment forms and see which works best for you.
Businesses can implement A/B testing to deduce how effective their changes are, allowing them to continuously refine their UX. Over time, you can directly work on metrics like bounce rate, customer interaction, and engagement to ensure a more fluid and streamlined customer experience.
Final Thoughts
Analyzing the journey that your customers go on throughout the course of their interaction with your business can shed light on areas where your company needs to improve. From high bounce rates on your website to low percentages of return customers, delving into your customer analytics can reveal exactly where your business is going wrong.
By working through the strategies outlined on this list, you can create a more effective customer journey data strategy. From there, you’ll be able to harvest the insight needed to convert your customers’ experience with your company into one that leaves them satisfied and wanting more. In 2024, your customers are your biggest asset – you should do everything in your power to deliver an experience that shows them you care.