One poor customer experience can erase one hundred positive customer experiences, because the last impression is the most memorable. When a prospect leaves your property, they will quickly forget the details in your apartment homes, but they will never forget how you made them feel. This is why the customer experience is so important.
Our biggest area of weakness in the customer experience is a pretty big one. We tend to fall short on how we respond to residents when their experience does not meet their expectations. If we handle it correctly, it is a huge opportunity to convert an unhappy resident into a huge advocate.
Or better yet, don’t ever let the problem happen. I know… It is incredibly difficult to predict every situation where things could go wrong. And frankly, it is not a good use of your time. Instead, use a customer journey map to prepare for the moments where you could fall short.
What the heck is a customer journey map? It is a way to identify the different customer touch points that create the moments of interaction between the customer and you or your services. A customer journey map is a big web of occurrences that all work together and influence each other. None of these customer touch points stand alone.
It sounds much more complicated than it is. Your customer journey map is all about the customer’s experiences. In the exercise of creating a customer journey map, you are thinking from the outside in.
Ask yourself these four questions to get your customer journey map started.
- What is your prospect doing at each stage? What is the action?
- Why is your prospect motivated to continue? What are their emotions?
- What questions do they have during each stage of the journey?
- What barriers are preventing the close or slowing the progress? (This could be cost or availability, among other things.)
There is no right or wrong when it comes to your customer journey map. And it will definitely not be linear. Your customer journey map will be unique to your property and ideal prospects. Developing a customer journey map is definitely an asset in building a great customer experience.
Misty Sanford
Social Insight Thought Leader
Renter’s Voice