Yesterday, I had the opportunity to lead our company's leadership team through our quarterly strategic planning process. It's always encouraging to see how we've improved as a team each quarter, and yet we always leave being inspired to make a bigger impact in the lives of those we serve.
One of the things I'm always thinking about is the experience that others have with our organization. The challenge is helping our team appreciate that the experience doesn't begin once they become a customer or client. It also doesn't end with simply how we treat them during our interactions and transactions.
Instead, we must appreciate that there are many phases to the customer/client journey, and their experience and how we are managing it matter in each of those phases. Here's one way to think about the different phases:
1) Reach is the first stage of the customer/client journey. This is where we are making initial contact with customers/clients and creating awareness.
2) Acquire is the second stage of the journey, where the odds of a prospect becoming a customer/client are significantly enhanced through direct, personalized communication.
3) Develop is the stage of the journey where you work to gain the trust of customers/clients after the initial sale to build a long-term mutually beneficial relationship.
4) Retain is a critical juncture in the customer/client journey, as it takes more to obtain a new customer/client than it does to deepen a relationship with an existing buyer and develop a level of trust.
5) Inspire is the most challenging step of the customer/client lifecycle, as it can be tough to get customers/clients to be advocates for your brand.
In our company, our value of "Remarkable" will simply not allow us to ever be content with the status quo. How about you?
How do you define the different stages of your customer, patient, or client life cycle and what are you doing to create remarkable experiences for them in each phase?
-Clay