When potential customers look for a business now, it’s no longer enough to find one with good quality products or services and a decent price. What people are increasingly looking for is an excellent customer experience at every part of the customer journey.
They want the right information at the right time as they browse and learn about you. They want to be able to contact you in a way that suits them, whether that’s by direct message on social platforms or a chatbot on your website. They want answers to their questions promptly and a smooth experience throughout searching for the right company, buying, and receiving support afterward. And they really want to be wowed.
That’s a lot to live up to. Without taking the time to talk to both potential and existing customers, you’ll never know where your company can improve in the customer journey and why people might choose your competitors over you.
What you need is a comprehensive customer experience audit to show you where you excel and where your customer journey needs a tune-up.
But what even is the customer journey, how do you do a customer experience audit, and what do you do with the information once you have it?
Read on and we’ll talk you through all you need to know.
What is the customer journey?
Let’s start by defining the customer journey. It might sound complicated, but the customer journey is simply the process a customer goes through from when they first encounter your company through the buying process to the last time they interact with you.
What can make this more complicated is that you don’t necessarily have only one type of customer and nor will every customer find you via the same site, using the same device, and take the same journey.
People might contact you by using a computer, via a phone call, by private message on social platforms, or via voice assistants or chatbots on your website. They might hear of you by word-of-mouth. More likely, they will use Google Search, Google Maps, social media platforms, and directories, such as Google Business Profile, Nextdoor, and Yelp.
You can see why it’s important to ensure that wherever and however a customer finds you, they have a good experience and can find what they want.
What are potential customers looking for from your business?
New customers do tend to take their time and do their research. They’ll look at different companies and compare them, looking at what services or products they offer and price points. Naturally, they’ll also read any reviews with great interest and check star ratings. Word of mouth from satisfied clients has always been a great way to get new clients in, and reviews are another way for customers to see what it’s like to buy from you from people that already have. It’s worth noting that many people won’t even entertain buying from a company with a less than 4-star average rating. When you do your customer experience audit, checking out your own reviews is a vital part of the process.
In addition, people want to see complete and accurate information, quality images, and valuable, helpful content. They want your website to be easy to navigate and the buying process to be smooth. And if they have questions, they want you to be easy to reach, whether that’s by calling you, filling in a form, using a chatbot, or messaging you on one of your social platforms.
Go undercover to conduct an audit
When you conduct a customer experience audit, it’s important to start with your buyer personas. You need to know who your customers are before you can follow their customer journey. Then it’s time to experience for yourself what your customers experience when they search for, find you, and contact you.
Getting customer insights is vital to running your business and ensuring the best possible customer experience. Customers are increasingly putting the customer experience first when choosing a company. If the only differentiator between you and a competitor is that they have an amazing customer experience, many people will choose them over you.
That means it’s vital that you understand what your customer experience is like so you can do more of the things that you’re really good at and improve in any place where your customer experience falls down.
Where to start? As a very famous musical has it, “let’s start at the very beginning.” And where’s that? With a simple Google search of your own business name.
If you’ve never done that before, it can be eye-opening. You might find that your own website comes up first, or it may be that your Google Business Profile, social media, or directory links are found in the top results with your website nowhere to be seen.
You’ll be able to see any ads, what your organic results are like, and if you’re on Google Maps’ local pack results. You may also see reviews in your results, which can contain extremely useful information.
Next, look at referral sites such as Nextdoor, your Google Business Profile, and Facebook. Look at your comments, questions, and reviews. What are people saying? Take particular note if you see any repeated complaints. This can be a great way to find out what customers don’t like about your buying process or any other aspect of interacting with you.
Next, go through your own customer service experience.
- Try calling and see what response you get.
- Fill in a form and look at how quickly you receive a response.
- Sign up for your own mailing list. What types of emails do you receive throughout your journey?
- Go through your website. How easy is it to navigate and find what you’re looking for?
Finally, research your company online. What sites does your business appear on? Are there any sites where you should be listed or mentioned, but you don’t have a presence?
It’s also important to talk to your upper management and see what they think your customer experience is like and what they think needs improving.
Then talk to your frontline staff in customer service and find out what common complaints and questions they get. Where do they think things fall down and what improvements would they like to see to make things better for customers?
Again, this can be eye-opening. You may find that upper management doesn’t necessarily know what’s going on with customer service as well as they think, and you could find some absolutely golden nuggets of information that could really improve your customer experience.
Of course, no customer experience audit would be complete without actually speaking to your customers and potential customers. You can add telephone surveys when they’ve finished speaking to your team, send surveys via email, or add quick polls on social media. Another option is to run focus groups and speak to people in person. If you have the right marketing tools, you can listen to phone call recordings of your sales and customer service reps.
Once you have all this priceless information, you are then in a much better position to bring it all together, analyze it, and fix any problems that you find.
Optimize your online presence with customer insights
Go through your information with a fine-tooth comb. Look for patterns. Find areas that need improvement and places where there’s friction on the buyer’s journey.
With your data in hand, you have everything you need to create an incredible customer journey and experience that really does wow your customers.
Just as you did before, go through your own customer experience, but this time, change and improve it where needed:
1) Improve the usability of your website
Ensure your website is usable on any device. Many people now browse entirely on their mobile phones, so make sure your customer experience is great on your website, no matter what device people are using.
Accessibility is another important factor. Too many websites don’t cater to people with disabilities. Just as you wouldn’t set up a physical store without disabled access, nor should your website be inaccessible.
In addition, check your site speed. Not only is it one of the ranking factors that Google uses, but very few potential customers will wait for a slow-loading site. Most people won’t wait three seconds before they go elsewhere.
Once those things are in place, look at your website design, layout, and navigation. Do you present information in an easy-to-understand way? Is there plenty of white space and is the text broken up by images, bullet points, and other items, so it’s easy to read? Is your navigation clear and easy to follow? Is all the information there that potential and current customers need? Are your contact details obvious?
Finally, look at your calls to action. Do people know what actions you want them to take? Do your calls to action stand out on the page? Is it obvious what people will get if they take action? Do you have clear places where people can sign up for your mailing list or request more help?
Create the best website you can with the best experience for your customers and the right information to guide them to the next step in the customer journey.
2) Make sure your listings are claimed and completed
You need to claim your Google Business Profile and ensure your business is listed in all the main directories, including Yelp, Nextdoor, and Angi.
It’s also important to fill in your information fully and consistently on all of these sites. Even the smallest inconsistency in the way your name, address, and phone number (your NAP) are presented can have an effect on your rankings. It’s also likely to confuse your customers if you have a slightly different address on each site.
Fill in every part of your profile and ensure you use keywords and phrases to help with SEO. Add attractive, high-quality images where allowed. These are appealing to customers and provide a view into your business.
3) Get more reviews
Reviews are extremely important, but even more importantly, you need recent reviews. Many customers won’t look at any reviews that are over four weeks old, so you do need a consistent process for getting reviews.
You can add a request and a link in your email signature, ask on your website, use follow-up and after-sale emails to ask for reviews, send out surveys, and post on social media. If you have a physical business address, you can also ask clients in person and have leaflets in your store with review requests.
When you get reviews, it’s important that you respond to all of them, even the negative ones. In fact, especially the negative ones. Definitely say thank you to the people that have taken the time to leave you a great review, but responding to negative reviews shows people how you’d deal with a complaint. Done well, you can leave a great impression on potential customers, and you may even be able to bring the negative reviewer around and get them to alter their review to a positive one.
4) Tailor your marketing messages
If you know your customers and potential customers well (and you should!), you can easily tailor your marketing to appeal to them.
Think about what they want to hear. What pain points do they have? What solutions are they looking for? What do they really need? How can you help guide them to the next step in the buyer’s journey?
Take another look at your email nurture streams too. Reassess them and see if they still reflect the business and give the best impression.
5) Optimize your content
As with your marketing messages, it’s important to review your content regularly and ensure it is still helpful and appealing to current and potential customers.
Can you add to and update any articles to make them better? Do you have any gaps in your content topics that you need to fill? Are there any frequent questions that you haven’t answered yet?
Assess the quality of the writing too, and ensure you have a conversational tone and simple, short sentences.
Finally, update each article to add any relevant keywords and phrases.
Get a demo of our business intelligence marketing software
A customer experience audit is a lot of work, and so is implementing the results and making improvements.
However, you can simplify everything we covered by using business intelligence marketing software. Why not book a demo and see how we can help you? From one simple dashboard, you can update your content, update over 80 directories at once without leaving the platform, manage your Google Business Profile, request and reply to reviews, and so much more.
Why not make your internal customer experience better too with a professional marketing platform that can save you time and get you better results?