How to Capitalize on Every Client Interaction

The ways for a customer to experience and engage with your construction company are endless. Understanding when, how, and why a customer (prospect or client) would interact with your company may seem daunting but the benefits are infinite. Step out of your role - and into your customer’s shoes. What are they attempting to accomplish? How do they get there? What could they encounter along the way? Walk through the customer’s experience with your brand then map out how that journey looks now and what you want it to look like.

Consider any purchase you make from a company and how you interacted with them. Touchpoints come in many types and sizes with each being just as important as the next. A touchpoint is any scenario in which your construction company comes in contact with your client (before, during, and after your project). For your company: customers may find your business online, see past clients and projects you have previously worked on, call your office, and share the details of their project with someone. Seems like a long list, and that’s just the beginning of your relationship together.

FINDING YOUR TOUCHPOINTS

Identifying your unique set of touchpoints is the first step in creating a positive and comprehensive customer journey. Be sure to think about each and every touchpoint to avoid missing an opportunity to engage with your customers and strengthen your relationship with them. Consider taking time to create a list of all the places and times where your clients might interact with your company. Here’s a high-level example:

BEFORE

• Gaining insight on your company via your website

• Seeing your projects being built in the community

• Hearing about your firm via word-of-mouth or public advertising

• Attaining proposals and negotiating a contract

• Executing preconstruction & budgeting services

DURING

• Handling subcontractors and suppliers on your client’s project

• Managing the day-to-day details of their precious project

• “Playing nice” with the clients design teams and consultants

• Conducting progress meetings

• Distributing progress updates to decision makers and your clients staff

• Executing within a budget and schedule

• Administering billing processes and relationships with client’s lender

AFTER

• Completing punchlists and closeout documentation

• Closing out change orders and other cost matters after project completion

• Overseeing grand opening events and final marketing photography

• Training the client and its staff on the operation of their facility

• Taking care of warranty matters as the appear

MAPPING OUT YOUR TOUCHPOINTS

You may think a client is engaged when really this may not be the case. Think about the hiring process a current client utilized. Who was part of deciding to hire your company? When was the last time you had an engaging interaction or conversation with these individuals?

To put your client engagement into better perspective consider developing a journey map. A journey map focuses on a single persona (stakeholder), each opportunity they have to interact with your company, and the perception (good and bad) they may have through each stage of their journey. Simply put, a journey map looks at how your customer thinks, acts, and feels throughout their relationship with you. When creating a journey map:

1. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. How do your customers interpret your relationship? Take that perspective when thinking about the customer journey overall. This journey should be a series of stages where each stage represents a goal your customer is trying to achieve. So, how would your customers define these stages?
2. Capture their goals. For every stage, there is a goal that allows you to progress along the customer journey. Capture these goals for each stage so that you can determine how well the customer journey is – or isn’t – fulfilling each of these goals.
3. Define your touchpoints. Document each time your customer should have an interaction with your company to meet their goals and needs. Every touchpoint is a contributor to both a positive customer journey and project success and each is as important as the next.
4. Understand how your customer feels. To bring everything full circle, take time to think about how your customer feels (their emotions) through their journey with your construction company. Knowing how they react to stages, goals, and touchpoints is essential to understanding their experience.