Tools

Customer Pathways Guide

For many entrepreneurs, to create a detailed customer pathway can be a very revealing experience. Understanding how customers engage with your company can help founders identify areas where service can be improved, made more efficient, or made more appealing in order to attract new users and buyers.

Customer Pathways, as well as Customer Personas, are particularly important for young companies that are already trading. Founders often start with an idea of who they serve, but in reality, the customer base is very different.

The Customer Pathway Canvas directs founders to examine the pathway their buyers follow, from the time they recognise a need to making a purchasing decision. Along the pathway, customers go through a series of six steps. Understanding the decisions customers make in each stage will help you as a founder tailor your messages to your customer and target them more effectively.

Founders recognize that each customer persona may have a unique pathway from realising a need to purchasing. Hence, smart companies tailor their outreach and messaging to each unique customer persona as required.

Customer Persona Guide

One of the challenges companies face in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic is to understand how changes in both behaviour and the economy in general will change the relationship between a company and its customers. Many underlying assumptions of business models have changed abruptly, and we are still unclear on what impact those changes will have on many businesses.

To use an easy example, restaurants have been built on an underlying business model assumption that people can physically go and eat at a particular place. And while one would assume we will someday eat in restaurants again (we certainly hope so!) we have more questions than answers on what dining out will look like next month, three months and even a year from now.

In this guide we look at three stages customers are going through: their status today; what changes they may experience during the transition out of the COVID pandemic, and finally, what the "New Normal" might look like for you, your customers and your industry