How to think about the Customer Journey as a Product Manager

To be the best product manager you can be, and to satisfy your customer, you have to start thinking like a customer and not like a product manager.

“…maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent but also to lift revenue by up to 15 percent while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20 percent. ” — McKinsey

Do you know what the customer thinks along their journey to purchase your product? If you want to provide the best product to your potential customers you should learn what the customer journey is.

There are three steps before a customer purchases a product, Awareness, Interest and Research. In this article you will learn more about the stages the customer passes through on the way to your product and after the purchase. You will learn to understand your customers better. Moreover, you get information about possible content you can provide to your users before the purchase.

Understand the Customer Journey

Awareness

What the user thinks: He knows that he has a problem, an issue. Nothing more, nothing less and especially not how a solution could look like.

What to do next as a Product Manager: Arouse the customers interest. Let him know that your product or company exists and give him the first information and let him get in touch with your product the first time. For this you can talk with your marketing team and develop a strategy on how to communicate.

Interest

What the user thinks: If you made everything right at the first step, the user knows your product now. You have aroused his interest and now he wants to know more about your product.

What to do next as Product Manager: Make sure that your are findable online and/or offline. Give the user further and more detailed information.
It is a must to make user research to get to know how to catch and keep the user´s interest.

Research

What the user thinks: He knows that he doesn’t want to buy the first product he sees. The user has a clearer picture of what the solution could look like and now he wants to compare different products and companies.

What to do next as Product Manager: Show him that your product could solve his problems and satisfy his needs. What to do if your product doesn’t fit his problems? Don’t worry, your product will fit to someone else!
Also, make sure that your product solves a problem in the first place.

Purchase

Congratulations: The user wants to buy your product. You should design the purchase as easy as possible for him. A fast, easily understandable and self-proclaiming process is the most comfortable for the customer.

Experience

What the user thinks: The user makes his own experiences with the product. He has the chance to influence the customer journey of other customers, e.g. posting on social media or writing reviews.

Did you know: 76% of customers read online reviews a minimum of half of the time before purchasing the product.

What to do next as Product Manager: You should make sure that someone communicates with your customer and makes him feel cared for and safe.

Moreover, you should ask the customer for a review, if there are any indicators that the customer likes your product.

This indicators can differ depending on what kind of product you sell. For an app it could be constant use of the app.

Re-Purchase

What the customer thinks: If the customer made positive experiences with your product and trusts in your company, he could be interested in using more of your products or in upgrading his already used products.

What to do next as Product Manager: Stay in contact with your customer and give him the chance to buy more of your products or use more of your services.
There are many ways to offer your customer more of your products e.g. an offer in a newsletter or a separate page in an app.

Provide the right content

Most of the time, your customer has a problem or a need and he is looking for a solution to solve this problem. Now it’s your turn. You as a Product Manager can influence how the marketing team creates the content for your product. Make sure that they create the right content to give your customer the right information at the right time. Because of the content the customer could decide whether your product fits his needs or not.

This passage will focus on two different kinds of content. The awareness content, before the customer knows your company and the research content, when the customer wants to have more information about your product.

Awareness Stage Content

Goal: Inform the user and show him how a solution could look like. Lead him to the Research Stage without giving him the feeling he is compelled to buy.

How to do: Focus on the users problems and issues and get him to trust in your product and company. Avoid aggressive promotion of your product. Don’t start your content with promoting your product. Create content which shows the user how a solution could look like and tell them gently that your product can help them to reach this goal.

The right content: The most powerful channels during this stage are searching engines, official websites and newsletter or emails.

Research Stage Content

Goal: The user has a clearer picture of what his problem is and how a solution could look like. But he still hasn’t decided which product he wants to buy. Get him to decide for your product.

How to: Show your user why he should buy your product. Give him more information that in the Awareness stage and let him know what you can offer him and why you offer the best product for him.

The right content: You can link from the Awareness Content to the Research Content or a landing page. Moreover, you can provide your leads downloadable resources like ebooks, guides and templates. Another type of content you could provide are comparisons to show why your product is a fantastic choice compared to other products and companies. Demo versions of your product are also great. They give the customer an insight of what you offer.

How UXCam can help you: To fully understand your users´ journey, you need to know exactly what he is doing and how he is behaving — click here to find out how we can help with that

Originally published at uxcam.com.