Whether you’re in roofing, siding, windows, or gutters, customers may come to you with a wide range of problems. Some people may just want a simple repair, while others will need custom installation options. A customer journey map can help you better understand how they go from initial request to final decision and beyond.
A customer journey map helps you understand how and why customers choose your company, and what you can do to anticipate their needs before they need them. Below, we’ll look at what to consider as you sketch out a customer journey map and why it matters, and provide some guidelines if you’re looking for a free customer journey map in roofing.
What Is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer journey map refers to a visual representation of your customer’s interactions with a company. It starts with their initial awareness, highlights an array of touchpoints, and signals different emotions or pain points a customer may feel before they make a final decision. Customer journey maps encompass a customer’s entire experience with a company, meaning it factors in more than just initial conversions. If you want to inspire lifelong loyalty, you’ll need to make more than promises.
Why Should You Map Out Your Customer’s Journey?
Customer journey maps essentially allow you to zero in on what a customer is looking for. So, instead of creating endless content that they’ll never read or hammering benefits that they have no use for, you can speak directly to them about what they’re looking for and why:
- Perception: Your customers aren’t just looking at your digital touchpoints, like your website or emails, they’re searching online reviews and asking around about your reputation, staff, and expertise. If they perceive your company to be too risky or otherwise unqualified, you can end up losing business you didn’t realize you were up for.
- Cohesion: Customer journey maps clearly show how customers go from one stage to the next, giving all staff a clearer idea of how to handle people in different stages of the funnel. If you’re used to sorting out misunderstandings between staff members and customers (or between staff members), customer journey maps may be able to clear up a lot of the confusion.
- Better ROI: Customer journey maps ultimately help customers turn skeptical customers into lifelong brand advocates. As consumer loyalty dwindles, these maps go the extra mile to tempt customers to learn more about your services, schedule an initial consultation, book a job and, ultimately, come back to your company for every new need. Plus, they’ll be more likely to recommend you to their friends, family, colleagues, or even social media followers.
- Refine your marketing focus: Customer journey maps can reveal your customers’ biggest needs, whether it’s emergency repairs after major weather events or replacement roofs for historical homes. This can help you refine your marketing language, so you’re targeting the right customers.
Customer Buying Journey Stages
Buying journeys can be all over the map (no pun intended). While many people will start their search with a few basic terms on Google, the sheer number of results can cause them to quickly give up — especially if their needs are less than immediate.
So, how exactly can you predict whether a customer will start on a search engine or by browsing business cards on a local coffee shop bulletin? As with most of life, you can’t know for sure, but you can play the odds. Here, we’ll look at the major stages, and how the customer starts to transition from one step to the next.
Awareness
This step doesn’t refer to awareness of your company, it refers to the awareness that the customer has a problem with their property. Whether it’s a landlord who’s casually seeking quotes to upgrade their siding or a homeowner who lost their roof in a storm, the customer is looking for something.
And, while statistics vary, the majority of people search online to start their journey. If you’re looking to create a customer journey map for your roofing business, it needs to include digital touchpoints, including your web pages, blog, and contact information, to help the customer understand how you can help. If your team is known for their expert handling of particularly complex issues, you might consider featuring case studies that illustrate their quick thinking on the job. You can also add in new web pages for more specific scenarios — particularly if your nearest competitors all feature the same generic stock content.
It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t neglect other awareness avenues, such as traditional media, to help get your name in front of the customers’ eyes, only that concentrating on your digital presence may reap more rewards in the long run.
Evaluation
During the evaluation stage, your customers have already gone through the initial considerations and arrived at a more in-depth comparison. This is where they’ll compare your rates to those of your competitors, ask themselves what their deal-breakers are, and lay out what they’re expecting compared to your service menu.
The evaluation stage is when they’re most likely to contact your company, either by phone or by form. In a free customer journey map in roofing, this is an important stop. You’ll have two general types of customers: one who has scoured the website so they don’t have to ask questions that you’ve already answered for them. The other is someone who has casually perused your ratings and pages and doesn’t want to have to get into the weeds on every single company’s website.
Answering FAQs in big letters or clear bullet points on your website, including your services, benefits, competitive edge, and expertise, can help both types of customers. By the time they reach out to you, this is the point in the journey where you’ll want to sell your services. This is the moment of truth where you can step in and prove your value before the customer makes it to the next step.
Deciding
As your customers are ready to make their decision, now is typically when they start parsing through the words of every testimonial and review. In the awareness stage, they’re often checking general ratings and skimming comments. At this point, they’re looking at clues as to how your company treats the clients.
They’re usually looking for the standard red flags: Do you always get back to people? Do you take responsibility for and rectify mistakes? Are there quality control processes that help you prevent mistakes before they occur? Do you respond to clients when they’re unhappy or does the company seem to hope that these frustrations will disappear on their own?
While your clients may not understand all the technical aspects of roofing, siding, or window installation, they understand enough to form opinions about how the company treats its paying customers.
Retention
As you might be able to tell from the previous three steps, the first few steps of the customer buying journey are complex. You’re not just selling your services, you’re selling your services in comparison to every other competitor in the area. If you live in a small town where you’re the only game in town, you may not have to worry much about retention. For most companies, though, getting a new customer is an expensive process, and it’s far easier to retain old customers than it is to get people to take a chance on you.
During the retention stage, you want to engage your customers without pestering them. This typically means organic requests for feedback and regular followup (e.g., a helpful email newsletter, special event invites, etc). Even though certain roofing services, like roof replacement, may only happen once every 50 years, most people need patches or inspections far sooner than that. Or, maybe more importantly, they’ll know people who need services sooner rather than later.
Advocacy
Brand advocates have always been invaluable resources for companies. That’s why some companies provide incentives to their best customers in an effort to reward them for their loyalty. Advocates don’t just come back to the same company again and again, they make sure other people know about the company’s commitment to excellence.
Ideally, you won’t need to offer your customers anything to refer people they know. As you might expect, this can earn you a reputation of trying to ‘buy’ your customers’ goodwill. If you focus on your customer journey map, you’re more likely to organically satisfy their needs and general genuine word of mouth.
Mapping Out Your Customer’s Journey
You don’t need complex or expensive software to create a customer map. It could be as easy as using a free, user-friendly program to plug in the basics to visualize how customers take a buying journey. However, it does take time to brainstorm common scenarios, define target personas, and determine how your customers are most likely to find you.
If you’re looking for a little help, consider how Surefire Local compiles your most important information into a single dashboard, allowing you to gauge and improve your online visibility without having to jump from one account to the next. If you want to see how it works (and how it helps you improve your customer’s buying journey, schedule a demo today!