Preparing the Experience Stack: Holistic Consumer Journeys
To become a Brand-driven Business we have to build our Brand Stack. Here, we see that understanding the Brand strategy and how it effects the business and operations is only the first step in the journey. We have to take action and build an experience engine that brings the brand and the customer relationships to life.
BUILDING USER JOURNEYS
THE AUDIENCE
Learning about and segmenting your audience, even down to the individual, is a crucial element to building an effective brand growth strategy. By understanding who they are, what they want and why they do what they do, we not only have the insight to build better products and services, but a better experience engine.
The development of segments and personas is a process in and of itself, but a few questions you’ll want to know to build your experience engine are:
Who are they?
Who do they want to become?
What do they like? What do they dislike?
Where are they?
What do they expect?
What do they currently buy?
How do they buy?
How do they want to buy?
What are their offline and online behaviors?
What content to they enjoy? How do they enjoy that content?
MAPPING THE JOURNEY
Each consumer’s journey with your brand will be different based on how they interact with you, what they expect and what value they’re looking for. So, we have to be prepared for the dynamic nature of managing multiple relationships with our consumers and help guide them to the outcome they are looking for. This is where it becomes so important to understand the entirety of your holistic experience from many different perspectives. From unaware people to the most loyal advocates you have in your consumer base, the journey map allows you to prepare to engage, but also to understand how your brand should react in any given situation.
To best map out your holistic and ideal journey, you might want to answer these types of questions for the consumer segments and personas identified above.
How do they hear about you?
How do they find you?
How do they learn about you?
How do they trust you?
How do they purchase you?
How are they serviced by you?
How are they rewarded?
How are they engaged?
How do they repurchase with you?
How do they share you?
SERVICE DESIGN
Using the inputs from the User Journeys and the Journey Maps, we are now empowered to build a service design model that not only fulfills and exceeds the audience expectations, but also fulfills the Brand Promise and Strategy. Think of this as a MMORPG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), where the consumers and employees of the brand interact under the roles defined by the brand. It not only requires the tools and information needed for employees to take the appropriate action, but also requires the rules and methodologies for the consumers to interact and play.
This idea of Service Design helps you identify what needs to be built to execute within the experience stack based on the audience segment that is playing the game. To execute effectively we’ll have to define:
- Experience Principles: These principles solve the brand strategy and become the “Rules of the Game”
- Front-End Consumer Tools: What platforms will the audience participate and engage with our brand from unaware to purchase through to service and repurchase
- Back-End Employee Tools: What insights and tools will the employees need to execute the Brand strategy to ensure we’re engaging the consumer correctly and fulfilling the brand promise accordingly.
Using this information, we’ll be able to build the most effective Experience Stack for your brand and consumers. The layer where the brand comes to life for the consumer and for the world.