Customer Journeys describe the path of sequential steps and interactions that a customer goes through with a company, product and/or service.
Customer in this case can be widely interpreted to be customers, stakeholders, donors and other groups whose journeys can be mapped and whose experiences can then be planned, measured and managed. Journeys are typically broken down into stages and sub-stages and journey maps may be represented as full end-to-end journeys and/or individual segments.
Customer Journeys vary in length and scope.
A common end-to-end customer journey represents all the interactions in between a customer being completely unaware of a company through becoming aware, investigating it, buying it, using and assimilating it, through to becoming an advocate - telling others that they should buy it and use it too.
The 5 A's of the end-to-end Customer Journey
There are 5 customer journey stages that cover that end-to-end customer journey that load by default in the Transformation.ai customer journey mapping software - we call them the 5 A’s of the Customer Journey:
Awareness
This stage covers the needs identification and the beginnings of a search for a general solution to that need, as well as becoming aware of the product, service and/or company.
Acquisition
In this stage the prospect becomes to actively consider, try out and ultimately acquire or purchase a product or service.
Adoption
In this stage a customer gains initial success and value from the acquired product or service, getting the desired jobs done.
Assimilation
In this stage the customer becomes loyal through regular usage and value gained over time. The use of the product or service becomes second nature, to the point that they couldn't imagine doing it another way and it would be painful to lose the product or service.
Advocacy
Finally, in this stage the customer becomes an advocate and defender of the company, referring the company, product or service to others. This could also include creating and sharing content about the company, aiding other users on help forums, and sharing their positive experiences on public forums.
