The Design of Buyer Experience
These monumental shifts occurring are calling for organizations to think differently and to design buyer experiences that create long-term buyer retention and buyer loyalty. As products and services are subjected to increasing entry into the level playing field we call commodity, differentiation is made in designing innovative buyer experiences. In the Buyer Experience Innovation framework, the design of buyer experiences is one of its most important elements. There are three central aspects to Buyer Experience Design that provide the necessary roadmap:
- Confluence of Buyer Insights, Buyer Persona Development, and Buyer Experience Journey: This is the bed rock of understanding that offers insight on whom your buyers are, the buying journey they take within their own organizations as well as yours and competitors, and the sequential views that are critical to understanding the current buyer experience. In this series, I have presented the Seven Principles of Buyer Experience Journey Mapping and the Seven Stages of the Buyer Experience Journey as primers.
- Buyer Interaction Modeling: For every stage in the buyer's journey, interactions that correlate to a buyer's journey lead to successful buyer experience design. Interaction modelings not only embodies the touchpoints encountered, such as web sites, channels, selling teams, and call centers, but involves modeling end-to-end processes that are designed to create adaptable buyer experience journeys for buyers who pull the levers on different paths to take. Interaction modeling, as described in the brief Buyer Interaction Shapes Buyer Experience Design, allows for the ability to shape buyer interactions to the different buyer personas, channels, and industries.
- Buyer Experience Ecosystem: Originally presented in the article The Four Elements of Buyer Experience Ecosystem Thinking, this aspect of Buyer Experience Design seeks to provide integrated thinking on four experience planes:
Relationship: the design of relational capability that directly correlate with the different relationship avenues that exist such as existing buyers, prospective buyers, and renewal buyers
Engagement: the design of direct, indirect, digital, and social engagement that not only enhances the buyer experience but helps buyers to move along the value-chain and create loyalty
Brand: integrated thinking on how to incorporate brand experience along the buyer experience journey and the buyer experience interaction model that is inclusive of strategies related to thought leadership, content marketing, public relations, sales messaging, and packaging
Technology: identifying enabling technology that enhance the overall buyer experience and can be inclusive of digital as well as social mediums for buyers, technologies related to sales enablement, marketing automation, demand generation, and interactive media technologies
