The difference between a customer journey and a life journey
Customer journeys are important. They help companies to optimize their sales and service processes. The limitation of a customer journey approach is the focus on the transactional relation with customers. That’s why I believe companies should also look into the life journey of their customers. This strategy is one of the pillars of the ‘Offer You Can’t Refuse’ model of my latest book.
In recent times, companies have invested huge sums of money to map out the customer journey. This is the path that a consumer follows to finally purchase a particular product or service. The object of this mapping exercise is to allow companies to better optimise their own sales, marketing and service processes. In due course, this leads to transactional perfection. For this reason, the exercise is a valuable one and it forms the basis for transactional perfection.
But to become a partner in life, what you really need to map is the customer’s life journey. This no longer has anything to do with the optimisation of your operational processes. Instead, it aims to reduce the frustrations and help realise the dreams in the life of your customer. The following box highlights the differences between the two journeys.
