Consumer Journey — Theoretical Concept
By: Hamza Nasir
Tags: Digital Marketing, Cxl Institute, Consumer, Journey

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

The concept of the customer journey can be explained in a simple term as the steps taken by a customer to reach the final objective that is usually the end purchase. Although, the concept seems simpler in the theory the literature and research on the topic have been scattered and the articles that we are discussing here will formulate them together to share the key insights for the researchers as well for the marketers. The study by Becker, L., & Jaakkola, E. (2020) has reviewed 136 articles on the topic of customer experience, which were based on eight different literature perspectives and they further divided into two categories of managerial stimuli and consumption processes. This categorization helps them identify the four fundamental premises of customer experience that can be generalized. Firstly, every customer's every interaction with the brand, even the unintentional one, is a part of the customer experience. Secondly, customer experience touchpoints are not bounded, and they can exist at any place while affecting the overall experience. Thirdly, customer experience is subjective to the various factors affecting the outcomes. Lastly, the brand can not create the customer experience, but they can alter it with the help of stimuli. Similarly, the research paper by Lemon, K. N., & Verhoef, P. C. (2016) study the relevant theories and concept surrounding the topic of customer experience from the historical perspective and offers what the key understanding that we have of the topic. The key concepts discussed were from customer buying behavior, customer satisfaction & loyalty, and all the way to customer engagement. Lastly, the blog post by HubSpot identifies the importance of customer journey and lays out a step-by-step approach for the brands to design their customer journey with different relevant templates. Furthermore, we will now try to integrate the learnings from these articles from the brand perspective and identify the key points they need to consider before designing the customer journey.

It is essential for the brands to consider the importance of the customer journey and after going through the literature, it can be considered as the initial step during the business modeling process for any new startup. The concept is quite old if we compare it with the traditional physical stores, and the online element has added more complexity for the brands. Consider a traditional supermart, we can understand how the brands used to place their products and design a store where the customer would go through all the offerings before making their way to the cashier point. The customer experience in the online world is to some extent similar to it, and it's just that brands can know to track the customer activity really closely while putting different stimuli to make the experience more pleasant for them as contributes towards the Consumer Life Value. Looking at a bird's eye view, let's discuss the different learnings from the articles that brands need to consider before going through the consumer journey process. The brand needs to consider that the customer brand journey is an essential resource that is important for the whole company as it gives out the basic needs and touchpoints of the customers and each department play an important role to make the whole experience pleasant. Another point of perspective that the brand should consider is that they need to define the clear objectives for the customer journey, so they are able to capture the rightful experience through it. For instance, if the objective for a brand is to generate leads, it needs to be highlighted in the brand journey. Also, the brand needs to understand that they can not create the customer experience, but they can alter it through the help of stimuli that are quite effective in the journey. Besides that, brands need to consider that the customer journey is rather a non-linear journey where there can be multiple channels and touchpoints involved. The more efforts you can put in order to define the customer experience with the perspective of a common consumer, the more effective the experience can be created. For instance, brands need to consider the importance of smartphones and how they are impacting customer journey and it would be viable for an eCommerce store to focus more on the mobile reference for the store while considering all the touchpoints. To summarize it, we can say that the customer journey is a big task for the businesses to create a pleasant experience which helps in the growth of the business. They also need to reconsider the resources available and required to construct the journey such as the major focus is towards the technological support for the journey.

The topic of crafting a customer journey is quite relevant to my experience while working for an Insurance Company in Pakistan. We launched three low ticket priced life insurance plans for the consumers which they could buy online, otherwise, all the other high-ticket priced life insurance plans the company was offering were sold through an agent. All the product moralities were done by the channel strategy department which includes studying the customer demographics, designing the product offering and pricing, and implying with the insurance security and regulations of Pakistan. Our job as a marketing department was to design the customer journey for the online website and making the customer experience smoother and more viable. The process started with creating the content and aesthetics for the website, and we used the best online practices such as placement of contact details, and many more to make it earlier for the users to navigate through the website and get to the final step, which was purchasing the insurance plan. To summarize, it was a long process of going back & forward with the whole design, but we were able to launch it back in 2019. The results we received from the launch were exceptional and since it is an ongoing process, we still made some changes such as cutting down some processes in the whole journey to achieve a better customer experience. Although, the whole project provides two takeaway points which are that technology plays a greater role in designing the customer journey and it is essential to consider all the touchpoints before constructing the consumer journey. Also, we believed that we were designing the journey for the customer, but in reality, we were creating the stimuli as such content and advertisements which were contributing towards the customer experience.

Note: A big shoutout to CXL Institute. They offer exceptional and resourceful programs in Digital Marketing domains which can you can opt for yourself as well as your team.