Understanding Your Customer's Journey: The Cornerstone of Customer Centricity

As a B2B company, it’s usually difficult to get a clear understanding of your end-users’ experience in acquiring your products or services. However, this is critical information that will help you adapt your products, services and overall “go-to-market” strategy to best suit your customers – and it will differentiate you from your competitors by creating value for your customers.

Understanding the journey of your customers will allow your company to gain a clearer understanding of the following:

• What are their touch points with your brand? When or where are customers in contact with your brand?
• What are the Moments of Truth? Which impressions at these moments lead them to a purchase decision?
• Who are the participants and influencers in the purchasing process?
• What are areas of pain points and dissatisfaction?
• Which digital tools are they using, and which are necessary during their journey?

The Best Advice for Building a Customer Journey

If there were only one piece of wisdom regarding the Customer Journey, it would be “listen to the voice of your customers”! Reasons for selecting and purchasing a product or service are not always fully rational, and are based on multiple factors. It’s necessary to read between the lines, to analyze feelings, attitudes and behaviors. This is why an exploratory and qualitative approach is recommended.

Ideally, the study should be carried out by phone or face-to-face. A typical questionnaire will contain several steps, following the phases of the purchasing journey:

1. Information collection
2. Evaluation and selection
3. Purchasing and delivery
4. Usage and sharing experience

At each phase, the study will uncover customer behaviors, their expectations and unmet needs, as well as their pain points, touch points with brands, and moments of truth.

Such exploratory interviews take 45 minutes to an hour, but the time is necessary to fully understand a customer’s journey and experience. That’s why interviewing individuals in a B2B context requires a particular expertise. The understanding of your customers’ journey, possibly coupled with the identification of your customers’ persona will be the cornerstone of your customer centricity strategy.