What are the stages of customer relationship?

The dangers are very important because they are a way for you to take this and go back in your own work and prevent yourself from making critical mistakes.

– Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO, MECLABS Institute

This excerpt is from Session 5 of MMC5259: Customer Relationship and Effective Lead Management course. The full session aims to introduce students to the unique and unprecedented nature of the web and how it can be used as a living laboratory to study the cognitive decision process of our customers and predict their future behavior.

TRANSCRIPT

Flint McGlaughlin:  In front of you right now are the four stages in a relationship — to meet, to know, to trust, to agree. Now that's something you should be able to recall instantly, and it should sort of come natural because you can almost discern it from the logic of how relationships develop, but not just because you've heard it said in separate words. The connections between the concepts are natural.

So meet, know, trust, agree. Now, as you think about that, ask yourself, "What was the most important thing we learned about the meet juncture, the first stage? You'll notice that we described something called the “moment of initiation.” In fact, we said there were two critical moments in a relationship. Can you remember the second?

If you really step back and just think through the underlying rationale, it's pretty easy to discern that the two key moments in any relationship are the moment of initiation and the moment of culmination. So what you should remember, as you think back over what we've done together, is right now these four steps, and then we talked about the moment of initiation and the two key actions — capturing attention and converting attention to interest.

There are five steps in the trust trial — the observation, conclusion, decision, expectation and experience — and three dangers. Now the dangers are very important because they're a way for you to take this and go back in your own work and prevent yourself from making critical mistakes. If you learn these and if you work with these in the exercises coming up, you're going to be much more effective going forward.

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They represent the journey a customer takes to move from first learning about a brand to being the one telling others about it.

Stage 1: Awareness

The first of the customer lifecycle stages is where your relationship with a customer begins. when they first become aware of the existence of your brand, product, or service. But in most cases, your work will have started long before this, because while consumers see an average of 362 marketing messages each day, they only notice 86 of them. And the old marketing rule of thumb is that a consumer has to see your message seven times before they’re even aware of it!

Today, though, consumers are just as likely to first hear about your brand via a word-of-mouth recommendation from friends, family members, or social media influencers.

Stage 2: Engagement (Optional)

Customers making a more significant purchase—say, buying a new car or planning a theme park vacation—will often take this optional step of engaging with a brand. Once they’re aware of you, they’ll start seeking out your marketing content by following you on social media, signing up for your emails, etc.

In addition, they’ll start paying attention to what others are saying about you and how you respond to service requests and complaints. Brands that publicly engage and provide customer service through social media have an advantage at this stage.

Stage 3: Evaluation

Every customer goes through some version of this stage, whether it’s months of research and comparison or just a quick “gut check” before making a decision. One of the most effective ways to stand out from your competitors at this point is by offering robust digital self-service. Just like customers seeking support, consumers who are evaluating products or services start by trying to find the answers themselves.

It’s also important to give your agents and store associates access to the same knowledge base that backs your self-service. Over 90% of consumers expect to receive consistent information over multiple channels; giving conflicting answers could easily take you out of the running.

Stage 4: Purchase

Stage 4 is crunch time in the customer lifecycle, when consumers make their final decision. Providing the help that your potential customers need is critical at this point: 83% of consumers require some degree of support while making an online purchase, and 53% will abandon that purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question.

In addition to self-service, live chat could make the difference between making or losing the sale. Over 40% of consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer. Consider using intelligent escalation to proactively offer chat assistance to customers who seem to need a final push to move from considering your product to actually purchasing it.

Stage 5: Product and support experience

Attracting a new customer is six to seven times more expensive than keeping an existing one. With that calculation in mind, it’s easy to understand why some say that the customer lifecycle doesn’t truly begin until Stage 5.

Now is when consumers start to form their lasting opinion about your products and your brand. On top of the obvious—delivering a quality product—you can ensure success at this stage by providing exceptional service and support. Every interaction is an opportunity to prove that you’re interested in building a relationship with your customers, not just making a sale. In fact, 76% of consumers view customer service as the true test of how much a company values them, and 97% say it’s an important factor in deciding which brands to choose or remain loyal to.

Stage 6: Bonding and advocacy

This final stage is when you cement your relationship. You should be continuing to provide quality service and support, nurturing a connection with proactive engagement, and taking every opportunity to create an emotional bond.

If you do those things well, you’ll see your customers jumping back into the lifecycle by buying again, buying more, and—best of all—encouraging others to join them.

Emplifi's unified customer experience platform can help you meet your goals at every stage of the customer lifecycle, from awareness to bonding. Request a demo to learn more.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on astutesolutions.com. Any statistics or statements included in this article were current at the time of original publication.

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