Your customer’s journey through your company is vital to a successful business. How can you create one that works for you, your team, and your clients? The first step is, TRY your product. Go through the steps yourself (fill out a contact form, a client profile, meet with your team. This isn’t a “gotcha” for your team. It’s OK if they know it’s you, but tell them to treat you like they would anyone. Of course they’re going to be on their best behavior but this is the best way to find glitches and to identify what’s going well! While you’re going through the process write it down! Make notes about what you liked and what you didn’t. It’s important to get into the details. Did they reply to you within 1 hour? Same day? Same week? Does that work for you? Is within 1 hour practical for everyone, even at scale? For my company it’s not. Most of our managers/admin team do at least some dog walking. We’re not likely to reply to an email while we’re walking because we want to provide the first service. It is important to us to reply within a couple of hours though because we don’t want to lose the chance of competing for their business. We make sure we always have someone who can look every hour or two even if it’s just to get new clients started.
What else happened? Did your staff give you a pitch meeting? What went well? Did you like their fancy presentation better? Or was it their knowledge and easy conversation? Every single step is a way to brand your customer’s journey through your company. Once you’ve looked at what you’re currently doing, sit down with your team and talk about what you could be doing better. Is there a step you should take out? Do you need to add a contact in between first contact and meeting setup? What should you say? When should you say it? Go through every single step. If your company offers multiple packages, do it for each one. Ask one of your staff members to do one as well. Perhaps the person who does the most customer contact. It’s super important to sit down with your team and discuss all the ways you can improve this process. Both for your customers and your staff. You don’t want to promise something you can’t deliver.
Once you have the system worked out, write it down. Keep a list (spreadsheet, database, notebook) so that your team can track what’s been done and what hasn’t. Make sure that you’re following up when promised (have a follow up list) and that someone is checking that list at least every week and making sure that each client gets what they need, based on your metric. Make your plan, and follow it. You will be shocked at how happy those around you are. If they’re not, make a new plan.