Customer Journey Ownership
Owning the customer journey goes well beyond meeting customer needs. It requires aligning a firm’s proposition with a customer’s life, so that they arrive before the party starts, and stay long after the coffee.
We discovered that very few of the most influential real estate firms around the world take a truly long-term customer lifetime approach (sometimes called customer lifecycle, but to certain firms and agents a ‘customer lifecycle’ refers only to a single transaction, so we will avoid that term). This involves a firm capturing a customer journey before buyer intent is explicit, and then maintaining a relationship whereby a firm’s proposition molds around the changing needs of a customer throughout the entire course of their life. This is the ‘customer for life’ dream that makes the keenest of marketers feel cozy inside.
Most prospects/customers need a real estate agent several times throughout their lives.
Consider customer lifestage (and lifestyle) triggers.
Triggers for buyer intent typically stem from changing circumstances, and for the most part, that is relatively predictable because people are...predictable.
It can be argued therefore that firms that decide to go after the triggers that eventually lead to buyer intent, will focus demand generation efforts around these life stages:
• Leaving home for the first time
• Securing a career
• Moving in with a partner
• Having a baby
• Building a family
• Downsizing
• Retiring
• Death and inheritance
