An interesting - and cautionary - tale came out of a business meeting recently.

One business owner had done a ton of work in the first half of this year mapping out (in great detail!) the Customer Journey through their business.

He’d thought of everything and it was all beautifully captured on a massive whiteboard.

So we were quite surprised when he shared in the session that his customer ‘churn’ – the percentage of customers leaving compared to joining, had gone up in the second half of the year, despite all the work that he’d done on the customer journey – which had the aim of reducing his churn.

“Are you sure it’s all been implemented properly?” He was asked.

“Oh yeah” he said “It’s our marketing that needs fixing. We’ve just got to bring in more of the ‘right’ people and less of the wrong ones”

“OK” was the reply “But how do you KNOW that your customer journey has been implemented properly? How do you KNOW that what you want to happen is happening?”

He looked puzzled.

The thought that his existing customers, his new prospects, or his new potential customers might not be being handled properly in the entire funnel hadn’t occurred to him.

So, there and then, in the session, four of us in the Group became prospects in his business.

One went on his website and enquired. 

Another clicked a Facebook ad.

Another sent an email in and another rang up. 

Four prospects. Four different sources/ways in.

All four ‘customer journeys’ mapped out in great detail. 

By the end of the day, the guy was bereft. 

Not one of the four enquiries had been handled in the way he’d mapped out.

It wasn’t a complete Horlicks. But it was nothing like what he’d designed.

And he never knew. 

He had made the ever so easy mistake of assuming that just because he’s mapped out a process, his team would follow it.

I've been telling people for years to get somebody, a trusted friend, family member, to call their business and act like a customer and see what happens, and how they're handled. 

The smart business owners record those calls and then the business owner listens back to them and usually feels sick when they hear how people are actually being handled.

It’s very costly for all of us to get someone to submit an enquiry or to pick up the phone and call our business.

So you definitely want to make sure that everything is handled properly when they do.

And this applies to your entire marketing funnel. 

Inspect what you expect  is a great lesson for all of us.

If you're expecting things to be handled a certain way, you better inspect it.

Done properly, a great customer, or prospect, journey can be transformative for a business.

But the sad truth is that often those journeys are not properly executed – but the business owner has no idea.

Couldn’t be happening in your business could it?

Inspect what you expect – a lesson in ensuring your customer journey matches your vision. For more ways to refine your marketing strategy, get expert guidance in Eastbourne.