205. Customer Experience Alignment: Are You Being Intentional at Every Touchpoint? (8 of 9)

Customer experience isn't just what happens when someone buys your product. It's every interaction someone has with your brand, from the first time they discover your brand through using your product, buying it again, and hopefully telling someone else about it.

And depending on where you sell, you won't control ALL of the interactions. A DTC brand has different opportunities than a brand selling through retail or distributors, of course, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be intentional about the parts you can influence.

In this episode, we continue the Food Business Maintenance Check. Clint and I talk about thinking of your marketing plan as a customer connection plan to craft a memorable experience and using the customer journey as a framework to look intentionally at the experience you're creating. We break that journey into awareness, trial, usage, repeat, and referral and talk about how what you want your brand to be known for can shine through along the way.

We also talk about:

• The different stakeholders who experience your brand, from B2B partners to your end customer, and even your internal team
• Why your level of control over the customer experience changes depending on your sales channel
• How all of your interactions and touchpoints can work together instead of feeling like separate activities
• Looking for unnecessary friction and making it easier for people to take the next step
• Why customer experience isn't only transactional and how the details can create a stronger emotional connection
• How a premium, playful, or farm brand might bring its brand strategy to life differently across the customer journey
• Why being intentional ahead of time helps you make more aligned day-to-day decisions instead of reacting as they come at you
• Why this can be a competitive advantage

The Brand Maintenance Check

Look across the customer journey and ask: What touchpoints can you control or influence? Where is there unnecessary friction? Does the experience you're creating reinforce what you want your brand to be known for?

Customer experience brings together so many of the areas we've covered throughout this Maintenance Check series. Your brand, marketing, sales, product, and operations all ultimately influence what the person on the other end experiences.

>>> Get your Brand Checkup Scorecard HERE!

Referenced in this episode:

• Ep 131: Would You Rather Be Connecting or Marketing to Build Your Food Brand?

Want more help thinking strategically about your brand?

>>> Subscribe HERE to my weekly email for a brand insight + 3 practical ways to apply it each week. This week you'll find more details to help you think through your intentional customer journey.

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Have a great week! See you in your inbox Friday, then in your podcast app again next Wednesday.

Let's go shake up shopping carts!

Katie & Clint