‘If you can’t design your customer experience, what can you do to influence it?’
Geek Squad founder, Robert Stephens
Customer journey mapping isn’t just for brick-and-mortar
Whatever your industry, whatever your business, mapping out your customer journey is a valuable exercise that can help you understand your customers better, reduce frictions and improve their overall experience with your business at every touch points to ultimately increase their loyalty to your brand.
Customer-centric businesses don’t let their customers wander in search of information or help; instead, they provide customer experience excellence. They guide their customers through a carefully planned series of interactions called a customer journey. A customer journey comprises experiences which are, in turn, made up of touch points — human, physical, sensory or communication, either in person or virtual — and which are influenced by factors like price, convenience and location.
Ever faster change, greater customer choice and channel proliferation are realities every business faces today. NO, NO,NO, customer journey mapping isn’t just for brick-and-mortar or call centres; as a Keynote Speaker, an event host (MC, Master of Ceremonies, Emcee) or any event organisors, in this still challenging time with rising competition globally, developing an excellent caring customer experience programme is more crucial than ever; as a service provider you need to focus your attention across multiple touch-points to enable you to build loyalty so you can grow your profit.
Who is your customer?
First you need to know who is your customers, in reality any business only have 2 customers to keep happy, your employees and your customers. As an EMCEE, it can get a little more complex, as you could have several stakeholders to take into consideration:
- The direct client
- The event organisors
- The speaker bureau
- The audience
- The sponsors
- The AV team
- Your own team
Connect on an emotional level
You will need to understand each of their behaviour, experience, expectations and emotions throughout the journey with you. The ‘journey’ is associated primarily with the physical interactions (behaviour) – contact strategy and reducing customer effort – whereas the ‘experience’ is a concept that deals primarily with how customers feel with ‘delighting customers’ and creating distinct experiences. Our emotions shape the attitudes that drive our decisions.
95% of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind-
Gerald Zaltman
To help you out in developing an exceptional experience and create an emotional connection with your customers before, during and after.
Here is my 6-stage STAR method:
Want more EMCEE secrets?
Take those 6-stage and start adding steps underneath each stage, use post-it and write your own steps when you are done, use a pink post-it and pin-point when and how you connect on an emotional level. Get this right as an EMCEE and get booked again and again, get recommended throughout the industry, increase your visibility and open doors you’d never thought could open!
If you are already an experienced emcee and looking to bring your skills to the next level in the new normal, join me on 30th May for a virtual webinar: The Emcee Experience: Secrets to Success in Hosting an Event where we will deep deeper into those stages together!
It may be a walk in the park for you speak in front of an audience, as a speaker or an event host. BUT how do you truly shine like a star on stage and radiate that energy and keep the mood high in front of your audience consistently.
