 Hi, and welcome to this session where we walk you through what the customer journey is and why it's important to start mapping yours now. And putting the customer at the heart of your organization is no longer a nice to have. It's an entry-level requirement to having a successful business in 2021. And today, two out of three companies do not map their strategies to the customer journey, giving you a huge competitive advantage if you take it. So we'll start this presentation by taking a closer look at what the customer journey is and why you should map the journey. And then we will show you how you can map the journey for your organization and how you can use it to reduce costs, increase revenue, and create a better customer experience. And we will give you some examples on what you should prioritize and tips to optimize your existing processes. And this, of course, is connected to how you work in your CRM solution. And we will show you how 360-degree CRM will help you deliver better communication and meet customer expectation at every step of the journey. And at the end of the presentation, we will give you some tips to succeed with the journey in the long run and some information on your next steps after this webinar and where to reach us if you need help from our CRM experts. My name is Jeanette and I work as a customer experience operative in RSAX team in Superoffice. And our goal is to help you get the most out of your CRM solution by showing tips and tricks, new opportunities, and processes. And the customer journey is something I frequently talk about in webinars and presentations and I'm very excited that you're here today to learn more about how you can create great experiences for your customers. And if you have any questions during the presentation, you can use the chat if you log in with your Google account. But of course, you're welcome to send us an email or contact your contact person in Superoffice directly. And we will send out a follow-up email with some more inspiration and a link to the webcast after this session is over. And if you have any questions or feedback, you can also respond to that email as well. And remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell to be notified when we're live or publish a new video. So let's start by talking about the customer journey and what it is. And a customer journey is the complete experience a customer has with an organization. It encompasses all customer interactions across all channels, devices, and touch points throughout every stage of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to loyalty. And the touch points are seen from the customer side and not from the business perspective. And this helps to prevent an inside out thinking. And companies use a wide range of channels to communicate with their customers but often fail to connect each activity with the customer journey. And sales and marketing strategies become isolated from one another, which leads to a disconnected customer experience. And it's important to look at this as a loop and not a funnel or a straight line of steps or activities we think or want the customer to take. This is their journey. And instead of looking at just a part of a transaction or an experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer. So how do you make sure that the customer experience with your company is a positive one? You start by mapping the customer journey. And mapping up the customer journey can be split into three distinct stages. Number one, drawing out the customer journey lifecycle. Number two is identifying company and customer touch points. And the third, analyzing gaps between existing strategies and expectations. And it's important to note that the customer journey cannot be drawn out from your own perspective. It has to be drawn out from your customer's point of view. And this means that you put yourself in their shoes and think like a customer. And to do this, you need to speak with your customers and collect what is known as voice of customer feedback. And here's some sample questions that we use during our own customer journey process in Superoffice. We've asked what happened inside your company that caused you to search for a new product? Or what is your research process for finding a new product? And how did you find Superoffice? How important is a free trial during your buying process? Or specifically, what made you choose Superoffice versus another competitor? And hearing the steps your customers took to make a purchase with you is incredibly valuable. And yet surprisingly, only one in five businesses collect this kind of feedback to improve the customer journey. And if you're not optimizing the journey based on what your customers do, then it's nothing more than guesswork. And here's a great example of when guesswork, as in most cases, goes wrong. In 2015, Superoffice launched a free trial offering. And for more than three years, our main call to action on the website was to promote a free trial. But when our CMO Jennifer interviewed our customers in August of 2018, we found out that free trial is actually not part of the buying process for our ideal target customer. Instead, they prefer to sign up for our live demonstration. And their demo form was actually difficult to find. In other words, we were making it difficult for our ideal target customers to buy from us. And since then, we replaced our main call to action from a free trial sign up to a demo request. And by doing so, we've seen a number of requests from our target audience increased by more than double. And optimizing the customer journey based on direct feedback resulted in 174% more signups from our ideal target customer. Now imagine being able to scale these results across every phase of the journey. This simple interview process helped us understand our customers needs better. And once you understand the needs of your customers in all phases of their lifecycle, you can then meet and exceed their expectations at every phase of the customer journey. But before we go into the discussion of phases, let's take a look at what the benefits of mapping out the customer journey are for your business. And there's a comment saying that you can't understand someone until you walked a mile in their shoes. And that's exactly what the customer journey maps do. They help you put yourself in different customer shoes and understand your business from their point of view. And a journey map will tell you where you are right now and how to get to your desired destination. Imagine being able to predict the next step of your target customer. That's a superpower of the customer journey. In fact, this is the exact reason why 69% of businesses list the customer journey as a top investment priority. An Aberdeen Group research paper found that companies with a formal customer journey program experience year-over-year growth that includes 18 times faster average sales cycles, 56% more cross-sale and up-sale revenue, 10 times improvement in customer service costs, and 5 times greater revenue from customer referrals, and 54% greater return of marketing investments. And the same story by Aberdeen Group found that only 36% of companies have a process to map out the customer journey, making this a huge opportunity to create a competitive advantage for your business. To get started with yours, start thinking about why and how you will use the map. And the map will help you to visualize customer motivations, drivers, and pain points. It will help you to create cross-team alignment around the business and remove internal silos and clarify areas of ownership. And also make improvements and convert more visitors into customers. So here are some tips for you to get started. Before you start, define the purpose of your customer journey map and set the right expectations. And then you have to gather your cross-functional team. And then you have to decide what journey to map, decide who's journey you're mapping, and decide the levels of details in your journey map, like, for example, focus on a certain stage with more details or more general overview of the whole journey. And then using the map to get results, you can use it for innovation and idea generation based on customer needs, for easy collaboration, and as a change plan. So let's start with an easy overview. The customer journey is linked to each instance that the customer comes into direct contact with your company or product. And before purchase, the customer will come into direct contact with online advertising, social media, and email marketing. After purchase, they will come into direct contact with sales teams, consultants, and your company website. And after purchase, they will come into direct contact with training material or follow-up inquiries and future customer marketing communication. And broken down, the customer journey consists of seven phases. It's out of market, trigger, initial brand consideration, active evaluation, purchase decision, and experience and loyalty. And let's take a look at each phase and the customer mindset in more detail, starting with the out-of-market phase. And in this example, we'll be viewing the customer journey from the perspective of a business-to-business customer, like, for example, someone looking for a CRM solution like SuperFace. So we'll start by out-of-the-market phase, and this is the customer that's open to inspiration. The customer attends industry conferences, reads thought-data-ship content, and stays updated on new trends via social media. And in the trigger phase, being proactive, the customer uses Google search, video platforms like YouTube, for example, and reads more niche blogs. And in the initial brand consideration, they will maybe look at a long list of providers, and the customer visits company websites, comparison sites, and review platforms. And then in the next stage of active evaluation, because trust is important, so the customer may download research papers from the vendor, reads in-depth case studies, and customer references before requesting a live demo. And when it comes to the purchase decision, they will deal directly with the sales team, and then the customer will sign the paperwork. And in the next phase, in the experience phase, in this case the implementation phase begins, and the customer is given access to onboarding material, which includes user guides, training documents, and product videos. And in the loyalty phase, the solution is rolled out company-wide, and when needed, the customer has access to phone and email, customer service teams, live chat on the website, self-service support, and a knowledge base. And it's of course a very simplified version of the customer journey and its key touch points, but it shows how important it is for a company to be actively present where its potential and existing customers are. For example, do you actively speak at an industry conference? Is your business listed on vendor comparison websites? Is your website visible in Google search? And if you answered no to any of these questions, then chances are that your potential customers simply won't find you. Said another way, if you don't base your strategy on the customer journey, then you will lose out on new business. So after the phases, the next step is aligning your strategy with the customer journey and optimize your processes. And let's say you've drawn out the customer journey and the touch points from your customer's perspective. You can now map out the touch points you use to try to reach your customers today based on your existing business strategies, allowing you to identify the gaps. And this is a simple table that can work for the gap analysis exercise. For example, today we use direct mail to reach out of target buyers and we use social media as a way to engage with prospects in the trigger phase. And once you've mapped out existing touch points, you can then layer them on top of your customer touch points, providing you with an overview of what you're currently doing today versus what you should be doing to reach your customers. And if you're a customer-centered company, you should get an exact match with your strategies lining up exactly with the customer journey. Sales and marketing teams are aligned, customer churn is low, and your customer base is happy and loyal. But usually there will be a mismatch in activity and expectations. So once you've completed this exercise, what's likely to happen is that you will notice two key points. One, you're spending too much time on activities that don't impact the customer journey. And number two, you're spending too little time on activities that do impact the customer journey. And based on this, you need to prioritize what you do based on what's more important, activities that align with the journey, versus activities that don't align with the journey. And it's easy to think that you have to start at the beginning and prioritize before the purchase phases, working your way from left to right. But it's equally important to give attention to the during and the after phases. And that's why your serum solution comes in handy. Combining people and processes and technology to support each stage of the journey will help you create a better experience, a better service, and simply utilize your resources more efficiently. And if you're having trouble choosing what part of the customer journey to start focusing on, here are some guidelines. Pick a customer journey where you can have an effect on important KPIs, and the result can reach the customer, and the actions are within your mandate. Remember, you can start small and show results rather than trying to convince colleagues to completely change how they work. And if we look at the SuperFest CRM, the solution can help you put the customer first and at the core of your business to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships. A customer-centric way of doing business is focused on providing a positive customer experience before and after a sale in order to drive repeat business, enhance customer loyalty, and improve business growth. And here's some example on how this might look like with SuperFest. And if we start looking at the before stage or the active evaluation phase, we can offer a chat on the webpage to be present and to make it easy to convert leads into customers. And then we can connect SuperFest with an app like Digital Signature to close the deal faster and make the process smoother. And the core of CRM is to have customer data in one place. And in SuperFest, everyone has access to all history under the company card, which also create a better experience for customers and employees. And then, of course, we can segment data with selections and make personalized follow-ups and create customer programs to make sure your best customers get attention. And this also means you can send the right message to the right people at the right time with email campaigns. And as the customers move from the experience phase to the loyalty phases, we can also collect sign-ups, update data and get important feedback with web forms. And we can use this to improve your journey and then deliver even greater experiences. And SuperFest service helps you to keep track of and answer all inquiries as soon as they come in and solve your customers' problems no matter whether they come by phone, email, chat, or web forms. Or you can help customers to help themselves 24-7 by building up a library of frequently asked questions or view requested history, ask questions, and search the knowledge base in the customer center. And out of the box dashboards will help you to understand what they struggle with and what you need to do to make your service even better. And when you have a process that delivers great results, then you can automate parts of the workflow with scripts or automation apps like Zapier to make the journey easier both for your users and your customers. And when you put your customer at the core of your business and combine it with a customer relationship management system like SuperFest, you collect a wealth of valuable data which gives you a full 360-degree overview of the customer. And this data can then be used to enhance your customer experience. But it's important to note that this is not a one-time thing. The map needs to be reviewed frequently just like you repeat the cycle of the journey to increase customer lifetime value and a reduction in turn. And here's some final tips to help you succeed with the journey mapping in your organization. Start by mapping the customer activities or situations first and then the touch points. Because if you map touch points first, then chances are you're trying to fit the journey into your existing process. And secondly, focus equally on what to start and stop doing. And scrap all the activities you're currently doing that have no impact on the customer journey and double down on activities that do. Thirdly, spread maps across departments. Co-create, share and engage to get everyone on board. Don't consider maps as only one department's property. The customer success is everyone's job. And also have mandate. Don't push on a specific experience if you don't have mandate. Start small and where it's possible to get started easily and with high impact. And make decisions and take actions based on customer journeys and consider the map as a change plan and not a static document. And remember to review and update as the need of the customer change. And also remember to align your business strategy and important KPIs with the customer journey. So what's the next steps if you want to start mapping the customer journey for your organization? There's many ways of doing this. Keeping the phases in mind and get the customer feedback first. Then start mapping the touch points and doing the gap analysis. And it gets be as easy as using post-its. You can put information in an Excel sheet. You can make easy flow charts or a program like Miro. Or there's also a specific software that can help you map the customer journey. Or maybe you consider doing a full workshop to map every step of the journey and also to align it with your strategies. And this is something our consultants and partner can help you with. Our team of experts can help you to define goals and KPIs, map business processes, create customer programs, set up measurements, and ensure end user adoption. And once your business processes are defined, we will configure the system to reflect how you do business and ensure that it streamlines all your activities for maximum business impact. But remember also that we have a community for our existing customers to learn more about super office and the different modules, to learn the essentials. We also have inspiration and an app store. And also the blog, which will give you much more insights and research on different business strategies. And we also recommend booking a meeting with us or with one of our partners to discuss parts of your customer journey and how we can align that with your CRM strategy. And if you're looking for useful tips related to CRM and inspiration on how to boost your sales, marketing and customer service performance, then you can attend one of our webinars or seminars to learn more about the possibilities with new apps and the latest features in super office. So check our webpage for upcoming events and I will also link to some useful resources in our follow-up mail right after the webinar. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us and I hope you're looking forward to starting mapping your customer journey and deliver great experiences. And remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tips and videos. Have a great day.