We are happy to join the world in celebrating the 31st year in customer service. All businesses exist to serve customers by meeting their needs and wants. For a positive experience in their purchase journey, customers need support when interacting with the products and services of a business. This article highlights needs, expectations, and frustrations at different stages in a customer journey map and how business owners can manage them. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the points that a customer interacts with a brand. A clear picture of the customer journey map helps to understand customers’ expectations at every touch point.                      

As we celebrate our customers for sustaining our businesses, we need to ask ourselves these questions;

1. Do we attend to customers’ concerns at every touch point?
2. Do our teams understand their responsibilities in supporting customers? 
3. Do we reward our service teams for the support they offer our customers? 
4. What do our customers say about us? 
5. The last two and a half years have been challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses shifted to operating online. How did you keep the fire burning?

To achieve excellent customer service, document your customer journey map for the different buyer personas to make it simple, concise, and standard. The documentation must include ways of collecting customer feedback like feedback forms or online reviews because when you know what your customers feel and how they view your business, it is easier to identify gaps or pain points in your sales process. Additionally, train the customer service team to empower them with customer service skills and knowledge. 

Every individual in a business interacts with customers at one point. As your business grows, your team should also be at pace with the relevant skills and knowledge to handle growth. Besides, automating repetitive tasks relieves your team of some activities so that they can focus on customers. It is advisable to use tools like chatbots that handle repetitive tasks and free the staff of some responsibilities customers’ needs and expectations keep changing over time. There is a need to review the map and adjust it regularly. 

Happy customer service week!

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Lucy Moragwa is a Business Process Analyst with dynamic experience spanning several industries including construction, technology, retail, media, advertising, and branding. She is specialised in helping organisations develop operational efficiency and increase revenue, business process improvement and using root cause analysis to identify issues and develop process improvements. The heart of her work is to help organisations achieve cost savings through exceptional planning and implementation of business processes.