So how can technology be both a positive and a negative element in Your Customer Journey? Most people don’t even think about this when considering their customer journey, or their technology tools of choice.
However, it’s a crucial aspect for you to consider when you take the time to map out your customers’ journey, find the gaps, and close them.
Let’s break it down simply.
As business owners, we only have a set number of hours in our day, and we have to decide how to spend those hours. When we choose one thing over another thing, we make a sacrifice in that choice. We do it in the hope that we’ve ADDED to our business and personal success, not detracted from it.
Yet are we conscious in all of our decisions to ensure that what we are choosing to do is actually of benefit for us? My guess (and it’s a guess because I don’t have a statistic on this) is that more than 70% of our choices are made from habits and reactions and not based on conscious awareness.
We use technology to help advance our lives. It provides an opportunity to get help for a decision, action, or process that previously would have taken us time. Now there is a technology tool or app that can do it for us – much quicker, simpler, and without us having to expend much effort.
In our businesses technology is a foundational block of everything we do and how we operate and deliver to our customers. If you were to think of a business that did NOT use technology in some way, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with one! Some businesses don’t need as much technology due to the type of business they are or other factors, whereas others are heavily reliant upon technology to operate and run.
Where does yours fit in the ‘technology-reliant-spectrum’?
For a business like ours that works in the digital and online space, holding meetings online via Zoom and helping our business clients deliver a customer experience utilising technology where possible, we are pretty ‘high up’ in that spectrum or scale.
For other businesses, for example, one providing physical services on the land, may not be as reliant upon technology; however, I can guarantee that technology still is used in their online presence for marketing and managing their accounts or inventory.
We have such a deeply embedded relationship with technology that when it comes to our businesses, I’ve noticed that some people take it too far. What do I mean by that? I mean that they have almost an ‘addiction’ to technology that spills out into how they relate to others and their meetings with people and with their own team. This is where technology can be both a positive and negative element in your customer journey and overall business journey.
Furthermore, this ‘technology-dominance’ can hinder and block any efforts you make to improve and create the customer journey.
There’s nothing wrong with loving technology; what’s concerning to me is when people become so reliant on it that they would prefer to use technology for all interactions in replace of a normal person to person contact. Some people are addicted to the latest technology or apps to tell them what to do in every moment. Many people are reliant on their smartphone 24/7 and are never able to be apart from it.
I could talk about the addiction to social media via our smartphones, but that is a whole other topic for another time!
The fact that we now attend meetings online and have our smartphones beeping during meetings and telling us when to do the next thing is taking away the ability for us to allow pure strategic thought and creative mental processes to operate.
This, in turn, hinders our ability to innovate clearly and organically; again, because we are so consumed by technology.
In regard to pure innovative thinking; all the masters – both current and past – achieved their greatest creative thinking when they stepped away from their distractions and their ‘busy lives’ and were alone. They recommend business owners do the same thing regularly – to be able to think clearly and allow that expansive creative genius to find its way through to one’s conscious mind.
No amount of technology is going to replace your amazing human brain!
How we use technology for our customers is as relevant and important as how we use it in our personal lives and in our businesses.
I understand that many business owners want to expand and grow. ‘Leverage yourself!’ is the catch-cry of most digital marketers and those who offer automation. It’s a desirable outcome for the business owner who is trying to find enough hours in the day to fit everything in AND grow their business while having freedom and time for leisure.
However the ‘leverage yourself’ comes at a massive price for a business owner who wants to scale correctly, while at the same time create a customer journey that works so well that people naturally come into their funnel without having to try hard or spend much money on ads.
You can use technology tools to automate steps of a process for your lead, prospect and customer. However, if you rely on these tools to do all the work for you, at every step, and don’t allow for a genuine and natural human connection, your customer journey will be broken.
That might sound like a strong statement; however, it is the truth. After working with businesses using marketing automation technology for over 12 years, I have seen this happen over and over again.
The marketing automation technology is excellent for automating the marketing and carrying out systematic steps of the process. It’s very effective for some leverage there, and keeping leads and prospects engaged and informed. However, it never replaces a human, and it fails to create the genuine connections required to build a relationship.
Where the magic lies is in your ability to create a seamless experience for your prospect and customer whereby the journey they take is friction less and effortless on their part. They experience the purposeful vision of your business and receive the benefit of your expertise in a valued and enjoyable way.
Hopefully, you understand now how technology can be both a positive and a negative ingredient in Your Customer Journey – and how you can adopt it to be a positive for you, rather than a negative.
Want to find out more information about customer journey? contact us today!
