Avionics News February 2014 - 62

series

BUSINESS BASICS
B Y

G R E G

L A S L O

Waypoints

How to manage your customers' buying journey

journey of a thousand miles
starts with one step, and when
the journey involves buying
avionics for an airplane, you should
walk a bit in your customers' shoes.
The experience may change how you
look at your business.
In fact, "experience" is everything
these days, especially when it comes
to delivering service. Even when
everything seemingly goes right on
the technical side of things, customers still can leave unimpressed when
the bumps in the road batter their
expectations. And while you count on
customers to buy from you again if
you provide a positive buying experience, anything less will push them
away; three quarters of customers
who switched service providers did
so because of a poor customer experience, according to B2B International.
That's not lost on company executives
surveyed by O'Keeffe & Company,
who said the potential revenue lost
by not offering a positive, consistent
customer experience can be much as
20 percent of annual revenue.
Qualifying that experience -
and more importantly, shaping it -
requires a clear view of how the
customer works through the buying
process at your avionics shop from
their perspective. In fact, it requires
looking at not only the functional
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avionics news

february

2014

steps of service delivery, but also the
emotional ones, too, because more
than half the experience is determined by the customer's desires,
fears and motivations, according to
customer-experience consultancy
Beyond Philosophy.
This makes tools like "customer
journey mapping" a valuable addition

BUYING JOURNEYS
Sketching the path your customers follow can help you understand
what works in your service-delivery
process, what doesn't, and what you
can do to improve. Unlike a processflow map, which outlines the internal steps your team takes to deliver
a service, the customer map shows

Sketching the path your customers follow
can help you understand what works in your
service-delivery process, what doesn't, and
what you can do to improve.
to your shop. By charting how a customer interacts with you, what emotions those contacts provoke, and how
each matches up with expectations, you
can build a sales process that benefits
both of you. To do so, though, you'll
need to recognize why mapping helps,
how to plot one for your shop, and
what lessons you'll learn. The most
important one may be this: Every interaction matters, and if service is what
sets you apart from your competition,
the path you provide can't be ignored.

how your business practices appear
to the buyer. And it requires that
you consider your touch points, your
moments of truth, and the overall
journey to purchase that you ascribe.
The map - or path, flowchart or
cycle - comprises touch points, or
interactions a customer has with
your shop, from seeing your print
ads in industry publications like the
Pilot's Guide to Avionics, gathering
trusted referrals, and browsing your
website to the order process, deliv-

Avionics News February 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News February 2014