IT and MSP businesses nowadays have more competition than ever. That's why smart IT professionals have realized that in order to set their business apart from the competition, they must first provide an exceptional customer journey.
Consumers today have higher expectations of their MSPs, so if you want your IT and MSP business to enjoy success, you need to create customer journeys that demonstrate that your products and services are highly beneficial to your clients' business. But how exactly do you do that?
Define Your Customer Journey
Before you can improve your customer journeys, you need to be able to define them. The first step in any compelling customer journey is knowing what you need your customers to do as their journey progresses. That's why it's vital to be clear about what problem you're trying to solve. From there, you need to understand and define what the next steps along that path will be.
Your customers drive your business forward, so part of defining their journey is researching their wants and needs, plus their expectations from your MSP business. It also helps if you have a clear understanding of how your customers are interacting with your business within the context of their needs.
When conducting customer research, you need to be able to ask and answer these three main questions: Who? What? and Why? More specifically, asking the following questions helps define your ideal customer in order to create the perfect journey for them:
Who are your customers?
What do they want from your brand or product?
Why would they choose one MSP solution over another?
Answering these questions clearly will help you understand what motivates your customers. It can also further establish who are your target buyers and their personas in order to improve their customer journey.
How To Design Your Customer Journeys
Designing a main customer journey for your business is fundamental.
A well-designed customer journey will consist of several steps and touchpoints that lead to conversions and repeat business. These steps will be the main interactions between your customers and your company's products and services.
For instance, a potential new customer has a small business that needs help with their task management. They search online for an MSP solution that can help them at an affordable price. After researching and interacting with several companies, the customer interacts with your business online via a free trial or a newsletter signup and begins a journey that reveals how your MSP business will help them reach their goals.
Because the interactions presented by your customer journey are value-focused, and informative, this new lead converts and becomes a paid customer. This entire process represents one complete customer journey from awareness to consideration, and finally: Purchase.
Because different customers will have different needs at each touchpoint along their journey, each customer journey you design for your MSP business must consider each persona, such as new buyers versus repeat customers. That being said, most customer journeys should follow these main goals:
1. BUILD CONSUMER TRUST
Building trust is a crucial element of any customer journey. This can be achieved by making your brand more human and relatable. To build trust, think about how you can create an emotional connection with the people your business serves. This will make your customers feel like they know your MSP business and believe in what you can do for them.
For example, new leads typically need straightforward guidance and information that answers their questions about what makes your product better than the competition. In contrast, repeat buyers usually have specific needs solved by your products or services. Repeat buyers are also more likely to recommend your business to their friends and colleagues. This is why it's so crucial to ensure that your customer journeys and brand experience are purposely built for your different personas in order to create the most positive interactions possible. This is how consumer trust is built.
2. MINIMIZE CUSTOMER BARRIERS
Given that most of your customers will be coming to your site from a search engine, it's essential to minimize barriers between them and their goals. Improving your customer journey includes designing a simple, and easy-to-understand process that allows new and existing customers to navigate your website easily. Reducing the number of steps to complete conversions will be hugely beneficial for improving your customer journeys.
For example, instead of requiring people to fill out lengthy forms to sign up for your newsletter, you can use a single sign-on system that allows customers to create a login only once without confusing navigation or pathways to purchase or communicate with your techs.
Likewise, you don't want to force users on your website to complete multiple steps before they can get what they came for or make a purchase. Fewer barriers to interacting with your company will improve your customers' journey and help increase sales for your business.
3. KEEP IT SIMPLE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND
When writing for your customers, make sure that you speak their language, not yours. Do this by ensuring that your website and social media use terms that are easy to understand and not jargon. This helps with content sharing and organic SEO as your customers will understand what they can expect from your brand.
How To Keep Your Customer Journeys Simple
• Use a common language and avoid jargon.
• If you find yourself using words commonly known in your industry (jargon) but not widely known outside of it, use an asterisk with an explanation, so potential customers can easily understand your message.
• Provide visuals, analogies, or examples that help readers grasp information quickly and easily.
Improve Your Customers' Experience
B2B customers have certain expectations when spending money on SaaS or MSP products or services. They expect your product or service to be of high quality, delivered on time, and with minimal inconvenience for them. So if you want to improve your customer journey, you need to understand your customers' expectations.
But how do you understand your customer's expectations? This can be done through customer research or by simply asking your customers directly. Once these expectations are identified, focus on fulfilling them by delivering a high-quality experience from start to finish, thereby ensuring that each step along the way aligns with what your customer expects.
The main goal of improving your customer experience is to tailor and personalize your customer journeys for your ideal customers. Your ideal customers want quick responses to their questions or concerns. They also want an easy-to-understand and simple pathway to become your paid customers in order to resolve their IT issues. Focusing on improving your customer journey will set your IT and MSP business apart from the competition.
Are you ready to take your customer journeys to the next level? Your business's bottom line will thank you for it, and so will your customers.
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