ABSTRACT
There has been much focus on customer experience and the customer journey— not just the path to purchase, but through post-purchase, usage and beyond. Customer experience has become so complex, and yet so observable, through innumerable channels, touch points and data types. First, it is necessary to identify the broad-brush stages of the customer journey focuses on pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. Second, recognize that not all touchpoints are the same across the customer's journey-and that the firm's ability to control these touch-points differs. Equipped with the relatively simple framing the firm can now begin to design, manage and measure the customer experience. Attribution models help identify critical touchpoints in the pre-purchase and purchase stages-especially for brand-owned touchpoints. User experience (UX) studies inform the post-purchase stage of the journey-especially regarding customer-owned and social/independent/external touchpoints. Operational measures and web metrics are also quite useful to layer on.
