Never Lose a Customer Again 8 Phases
Buyer's remorse. Nosotros've all been, there right? Later on you initially make a purchase, yous go through a series of emotions. Joy, excitement, and somewhen ... regret. Only why? My theory is, information technology's because you had a poor customer feel. In my forthcoming book, "Never Lose a Customer Once again: Turn Any Auction into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days," I write about how to build steadfast customer loyalty during the starting time three months subsequently a customer purchases your product or service by creating an exceptional customer experience. Read an extract from it in this web log mail beneath. The eight stage model takes customers from the commencement interaction to the signal where they are raving fans. Every client has the potential to travel through all 8 phases, nonetheless most businesses fail to guide the customer all the way through to the cease. In fact, about stall out some -- where between phases 4 and six, missing out entirely on the benefit of loyal customers and raving fans. Each subsequent chapter of this book will dive deep into each individual phase, showcasing companies that are creating remarkable customer experiences and outlining a series of steps you lot tin can take to make your customer interactions incredible in each potential phase of the client journeying. Before that, allow me to offer an overview of the eight phases. In the Assess phase, the customer is deciding if they want to do business organisation with you. They are learning what to expect from your organization and sharing (explicitly and implicitly) their expectations for the relationship. The customer is hopeful that you'll be able to help them, merely it'due south cautious optimism at best. If y'all don't position yourself as fulfilling their needs while wrapping them in a great customer experience, they won't cull to work with yous. If you tin convince them that y'all are the best option, they will motility frontward with the purchase. This dance between the client and the organization is what near people would refer to equally "sales and marketing." The potential customer is assessing their options. The Admit phase begins when the customer admits they have a problem or a demand and believe you -- the visitor or organization -- can solve information technology. As a upshot, they buy your product or sign up for your service. This is oftentimes referred to every bit "the sale," and sadly, in near businesses, this is where any customer-focused initiatives cease. At this signal, the customer is feeling joy, euphoria, and excitement that the search is over. If you fail to acknowledge this, you miss the chance to strongly associate this emotional high with your production or service. If y'all encounter the customer's emotional state in this moment, you can prolong these positive feelings. This person transitions from prospect to client when they admit that they need your product or service. The Affirm phase is more than usually known as "buyer's remorse." The client begins to incertitude the conclusion they just fabricated to work with you. About every businessperson has heard of the buyer's remorse concept, yet few businesses do annihilation to counter their customer'due south feelings of fear, doubt, and doubtfulness. If you don't address these feelings, you will demand to work overtime to get back to the land of joy, euphoria, and excitement the customer felt in the Acknowledge stage. If you focus on these temporary feelings (earlier they become permanent) yous can rapidly shift the customer dorsum to positive feelings. You must speedily affirm the new client'south decision to do concern with you. The Actuate phase begins with the offset major post-sale interaction, when the human relationship betwixt client and organization outset materializes in a meaningful style and the business begins to deliver on the promises fabricated during the Appraise phase. The Activate phase can be marked past the receipt of a purchased product, the beginning of a service, or an initial beginning meeting to get things rolling. The client is excited to become started but somewhat anxious about whether everything will go every bit promised. If you don't showtime things off on the right pes, it will be difficult to overcome that commencement impression. If yous do commencement things off strongly, you can build momentum to deport you deep into the relationship. This phase's title and associated icon should prompt you lot to energize the relationship and propel it forward. You demand to actuate the new relationship in a significant and meaningful way. In the Acclimate stage, the customer learns most (and hopefully grows comfortable with) an organization'due south way of doing business. Too many businesses that have delivered their product or service dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of times presume that everyone in the world knows their particular procedure. For the customer, this is most probable the first time they've ever experienced this particular way of doing things. They are at all-time unsure and at worst frustrated by the lack of familiarity. If you don't properly onboard the customer and get them bought in to your approach, they will never become a long-continuing, loyal customer. If y'all exercise concur their hand along the way, you tin ensure a smooth transition as they comprehend your approach. You must acclimate customers to your way of doing business. The Accomplish phase of the customer feel occurs when the customer achieves the result they were seeking when they decided to practice business with you in the first place. This may be the time they use the production and achieve the desired impact, or the time when your service delivers on the hopes they had at the beginning of the human relationship. If you don't deliver, the customer'due south emotions can range from unsatisfied to angry. If you do deliver (and the client agrees), they volition vacillate between happy and ecstatic that everything went as planned. In order for the relationship to advance, the customer must accomplish their original goal. In the Adopt phase, the customer takes ownership of the relationship, leading the accuse on deepening and strengthening the bond. In this stage they proudly prove their support and affinity for your make and are thrilled to be associated with your reputation. If you don't make them feel similar they're function of an sectional tribe, receiving unique rewards and participating in a special, shared language, you will never have their complete loyalty. If they practice feel compelled to embrace y'all, y'all will accept a customer for life. Yous want the customer to adopt your way of operating and take an ownership stake in the relationship. In the Abet phase, the customer becomes a raving fan, zealous promoter, and eager referral engine all in one. In this phase, they develop into a congenital-in, unpaid, un-commissioned marketing representative, singing your praises far and wide to other potential customers who might benefit from your product or service. If yous don't persuade them to promote yous by making it worth their while, they will likely continue as a customer merely will never assist you abound the business organization. If they are motivated to promote y'all, your business will grow in unimaginable ways. The ultimate customer is one who becomes an abet for your concern or brand. All 8 of these phases are the same for every business. They show up in the same society, regardless of the blazon of client you serve, the industry you operate inside, or your product or service offerings. All customers become through the initial phases. If you help them along the way, they will continue through the process, somewhen arriving at the terminal phase where they become advocates for you and your business organisation. If you don't guide them along the manner, customers can become stuck in a stage, revert astern, or in the worst case, exit the journey birthday. Depending on the blazon of business, the amount of fourth dimension a customer stays in each specific phase differs. Only the goal is e'er the aforementioned -- keep moving your customer through the phases to finish losing customers and make every customer a client for life. When interacting with your customers, there are six fundamental mediums of communication that, when used together, create a comprehensive and remarkable experience: in-person, electronic mail, mail, phone, video, and presents. Each medium creates a different emotional feel. The touch on on customer engagement depends on which phase the customer is in and how the medium is applied. I am non suggesting you must utilize each medium in each phase -- just that it'due south possible. At the end of each subsequent affiliate, I'll share suggestions and examples for incorporating each medium into that specific phase. In-person interactions are the oldest medium of human communication. Sitting across the tabular array from a customer, speaking to them direct, and looking them in the eyes is the near effective style to create and build rapport in a relationship. In-person interactions allow you to show your level of commitment to the customer and their importance to your concern. These interactions also eliminate whatever of the misunderstandings that can arise in other forms of advice. In addition, the power to read the customer'due south body language in the moment lets you lot know whether the points you make are heard and understood. It also gives the customer the opportunity to read your body linguistic communication and meet your sincerity. In a world where communication is 24/7, electronic mail has become the main medium businesses employ to interact with customers. E-mail is in- expensive and piece of cake to rail. With electric current technology tools, you tin encounter when the customers read the email, how many times they read it, and at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant time to come, whether they understood the content and intention backside the email. Because electronic mail is so cheap as a medium, nearly every business uses it equally their primary method of client communication. Considering it'south so prevalent in business communications, email overwhelm is increasingly common. Very few people are sitting in front of their computers or their phones correct now, saying, "I wish I were receiving more email!" But email can still exist a valuable way to interact with your customers, provided it feels personalized and purposeful. With the proliferation of email, concrete or direct mail (sometimes referred to equally "snail mail") has almost disappeared from the scene. As a result, the empty mailbox is now an even improve place for reaching customers. Because there isn't virtually every bit much competition in the physical mailbox as there is in the electronic inbox, interacting with customers using this medium cuts through the noise quickly. In an increasingly digital globe, physical advice is more valuable today than e'er before. We've all experienced the emotional difference between receiving a handwritten thank-y'all note in our mailbox versus a form-filled thank-you lot note delivered to our inbox (or more probable, captured by a spam filter). The phrase "Reach out and affect someone" was coined in reference to the use of a phone equally a medium of communication that was every bit shut to "in person" as possible. Today, not only is the boilerplate customer personally accessible via a telephone, but most likely you tin can accomplish them at any given time of the twenty-four hours, in any location. Forenoon, noon, or night, 91 pct of people proceed their phone less than 3 feet away from their body (within arm'southward reach) at all times. Picking upward the phone and having a conversation with your client, or sending a personalized text message, allows y'all to communicate in a tailored way that almost guarantees you volition achieve the customer immediately. Consider the impact of Dr. McCann'due south telephone phone call to me the 24-hour interval subsequently I had my new crown installed (discussed in chapter ii). The communication reached me immediately and allowed for a meaningful and thoughtful connection. In terms of speed of response, text messages are replied to faster than e-mail. According to the trade association CTIA (which represents the wireless communications industry in the Us), it takes ninety minutes for the average person to respond to an email -- just merely 90 seconds for the average person to answer to a text message. Fastened to your cellphone is a video camera that is more than powerful and capable than the best video cameras on the market just twenty years agone. Customers are increasingly consuming information via video on YouTube, Facebook Live, and other online video platforms. Nigh businesses haven't even begun to take advantage of using video equally a medium to communicate with their customers, despite the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes "[w]east're inbound this new golden age of video. I wouldn't be surprised if you lot fast-forward 5 years and about of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a twenty-four hour period-to-day basis is video." Creating personalized, customized letters for customers is an opportunity about businesses overlook. The average business or business owner assumes they must starting time set up a video studio in the role, fix a light-green screen, get the lighting just right, write a script, flick the video, accept it edited, add in sound and animations, and then send or post the video to a specific customer. This belief around the utilize of video couldn't be further from the truth. Research shows that a handheld video, shot using the video photographic camera on your mobile phone, with little to no script, and without much business for the groundwork or the setting, has a higher likelihood of not simply getting through to your customer, but converting them to accept the action you lot want. In curt, the breezy video oft works better than the more polished version. The terminal advice medium, sending or giving your client a present or gift, seems obvious, and yet it is one of the most disregarded means to trigger positive customer emotions. While some companies worry about rules and regulations, and considerations effectually gifting (which, depending on your industry and compliance rules, may exist legitimate concerns), those that observe creative ways to acknowledge their customers with presents build relationships and emotional connections with their customers that the other mediums don't permit. The all-time presents are meaningful and personalized. They showroom a level of care and consideration commensurate with the relationship. In fact, information technology'due south amend not to send a gift if y'all're planning to give a standardized, "bulk" gift that feels sterile and common. Worse still, sometimes companies give "gifts" that really aren't gifts at all. Giving a client a coupon for xx percent off a future purchase is non a present for the customer; it's a present for your company that you lot hope volition be used to increase your overall sales numbers. Giving a customer a mug with the logo of your business organization on the side of it is not a present for the customer; it's a free marketing tool y'all're hoping other people will see. You don't have to put on a greatcoat and go "Super Artistic" to come up with gift ideas, nor do you lot need to break the banking company. Only inquire yourself what you'd get your favorite sibling or your best friend if they were your client. If you like to call your customers "family" in your marketing materials, you should requite gifts that treat them similar family unit, instead of like cogs in your marketing machine. Sending a personalized souvenir isn't virtually as hard as most people believe. For example, if y'all know a client is a regular reader of business organisation books, getting a book signed and personalized past a top author is a cracking way to give a thoughtful and meaningful gift that (1) costs less than $30 and (2) fosters the customer's growth and learning. At this point, because the various phases your customers go through and the tools y'all tin use to heighten their experience might feel a bit daunting. Instead, consider being open to the fact that you may non have considered these phases in the past -- and now you tin. You may only be using two or three of the communication tools bachelor to you (this is the average number in utilise whenever I poll my audiences about their current client experience journey) and at present you lot have more options for interacting with your customers. You lot can enjoy the rest of my book, "Never Lose a Customer Once more: Turn Any Sale Into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days ," past picking up a copy at your favorite bookstore or online bookseller. 
The Eight Phases of Customer Feel
1. Assess
2. Admit
3. Affirm
4. Activate
five. Acclimatize
6. Reach
seven. Adopt
8. Advocate
The Six Ways to Communicate in Each Stage
1. In-Person
2. Email
3. Mail
4. Phone
5. Video
6. Presents
Phases, Tools, and Customers, Oh My!
Originally published Mar fifteen, 2018 eight:00:00 AM, updated June 15 2021
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/service/phases-of-customer-experience
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