I have been working at Expat Mortgages as a market research intern for more than 6 months and as my manager always says
“You learn new thing everyday.”
My position is pretty much self-explanatory: research the market. But there is something more than the market – The people. In this 7 months of working at EM, I realise how crucial it is to interact with people, not only the customers, but also the employees, partners and potential clients (i.e. leads). The reason why we have initiated the research project on the clients and non-clients, with descriptive and exploratory qualitative research respective, is that we want to know more about how they think about us.
Why is it so important to create a “customer journey” in strategic planning?
Imagine walking into a store, say LUSH (disclaimer: no paid promotion here), and you try to search for a body lotion. What will actually encourage you to make the purchase? The design of the store, the friendliness of the employees, or maybe the price? This is what a customer will experience when they enter the funnel of your business. Therefore, a business should carefully look at how their customers experience the service and the product, from start to end, through the strategic design of a customer journey.
Customer journey on the Internet…?
Source: mopinion
How about the customer journey on the Internet? That is in fact a very tricky question as different industries vary in their ways of presenting their “digital customer journey” and there are a myriad of theories can be inserted to measure how well a customer journey works for a specific company. Let’s take a financial company as an example as Expat Mortgages is a financial advising firm
Discover
First customers will discover the company through different channels. In our case, it is usually through Word of Mouth, B2B referrals and events.
Explore
After the first touch-point of WOM, B2B referrals or events, customers will explore what a company looks like through the Internet. It can be social media, Google Reviews and testimonials.
Use & Buy
Expat Mortgages adopt the policy of “no cure no pay”, thus, customers will first experience the use of the service, for instance mortgage reports and their interaction with our advisors. It is certainly possible for leads to have 2 – 3 companies with them at the same time and choose them at the final moment, meaning that they will go for one when they really need to submit a mortgage application to a bank or provider. Eventually, some of them will choose Expat Mortgages as their advisor and get in touch with our professionals.
Ask & Engage
Using the service of Expat Mortgages does not limit to taking out a mortgage and get a home. As the name of the company hints, our customers are all expats, they know little about the housing market, the rules and the mortgage regulations here in the Netherlands. Worse still, finding a home is a very frustrating process, especially here in the Netherlands. That is why professional advices and personalised responses are the keys to customer intimacy. Moreover, never wait for the customer to ask you: approach them proactively, ask if they need help. ENGAGE THEM.
New marketing strategies and digital hyper-personalisation
After months of investigation, the team of marketing has devised a new marketing strategy: matching advisors and customers with similar personalities types. We are still working on how we can utilise technologies like topic modelling and voice sentiment analysis to figure out the personality of a certain customer. But we believe with the technologies, we are able to create a more intimate and personalised customer journey for our clients and ultimately turn them from leads to customers.