Build customer loyalty thanks to journey analytics! 

Nothing is more precious than your customers. You have to reward their trust before even thinking about getting new ones.

Indeed, attracting new customers costs 5 times more than retaining existing ones (Source : Invesp). Moreover, 61% of loyal customers do not even look for alternatives before buying from a specific brand (Source : InMoment). Reversely, 13% of unsatisfied customers directly share their negative experiences with 15 people or more (Source : ThinkJar).

In other words, today’s ambassadors can unfortunately become tomorrow’s detractors. This is why your customers must remain your primary source of inspiration and consideration: trying to understand them is the fundamental objective to reach if you wish to offer the most satisfying experience and, therefore, the most engaging one.

Thus, before taking concrete actions, such as launching a loyalty program or any other rewarding plan, there is one structural decision to make before any other: getting to know each one of your customers.

Leverage your data 

Customer knowledge (CK) is a cornerstone of loyalty. It seems indeed logical to rely on the history that you share with your customers to understand their behaviors and habits. Consequently, are there any better assets than customer journeys – which depict step by step all the interactions between a customer and a brand – to help you evaluate the relationship between you and your own customers ?

Nowadays, the most efficient way to study customer journeys is to follow a data-driven approach. The use of data makes possible to reconstruct, visualize and, in the end, analyze journeys. This pragmatic solution is clearly part of a more important process : leveraging your data.

Analyze your customer journeys 

One of the first leads to explore in order to strengthen customer loyalty is to figure out how your most loyal customers behave. Analyzing the journeys of your “best” customers can help you identify key engaging interactions. For instance, you might be able to assess that a specific event is more valuable or important if it happens across a specific channel. In addition, you could well detect that one or several sequences of interactions, when they abide by a specific order and timing, are more likely to help your customers reach their goal.

Besides, you will also find out that many different routes – sometimes unusual – can lead your customers to the same destination. If you start analyzing your customers profiles according to the journey they go accross, you will be able to define their personas. This will then enable you to prioritize and adapt journeys to customers who come closest to these personas. One simple and recurring examples that can be seen in many different sectors is the use of legacy and physical channels (stores, mail, phone, etc.) by the senior clientele, instead of digital ones that are more popular among young customers (e-commerce platforms, e-mailing, SMS, social networks, etc.).

Examples of 2 efficient buyer’s journeys according to 2 different customer profiles :

Journey 1 : Senior profile

Journey 2 : Millennial profile

In conclusion, promoting one loyalty-building customer journey with a specific customer base must absolutely be done according to their profile and their cross-channel behavior.

The second lead to follow to strengthen loyalty is to focus on churners. Indeed, understanding their motivation can help you anticipate and retain customers who are about to make the same undesired decision. Once again, customer journey analytics stand out as a powerful tool to solve this issue. It will easily identify pain points in your journeys and give you precious insights. You will therefore be able to implement solutions and monitor their impact on customer experience over time.

Thus, loyalty is based on a continuous improvement process. You cannot once and for all achieve your goal if you only punctually try to understand what works or if you sporadically look for the causes of your problems.

One thing is certain : customers are more than ever at the center of this equation. If today’s habits and behaviors are not tomorrow’s ones, they will always end up being dictated by customers themselves.

Simplify analytics 

Of course, analyzing your customer journeys and spotlighting loyalty-building actions or churning causes can be time consuming. This is why we have designed datakili : in just a few clicks, find out immediately influential sequences or pain points in your customer journeys. Experiment your own processes and watch how they perform over time thanks to our “advance targeting” feature.

If you are interested in having a demonstration of datakili, please feel free to contact us through the bottom page form.