From Touchpoints to Timelines: How to Begin Mapping Your Client Experience [Client Experience Series Pt 2]

Last week, I covered my CRM audit process in full and introduced a brand new self audit quiz that I have available on my website. So if you didn't listen to last week's episode, or you haven't taken that quiz, you can go to coleyjames. com slash audit and see if you are stuck in manual mode inside your CRM. But this week, we are going to take a. 30, 000 foot view of your client experience and actually map out what you want your process to be.

While the end goal here is to eventually translate this into workflows with actions and triggers, we're actually going to start with a piece of paper and a pen. I know I've said this multiple times before, but really, the process of figuring out what you want to do with your clients does not begin in your CRM, although you end up creating it mostly inside of your CRM.

So there's a lot of value in simply laying out what you want your entire process to be so that you can cover everything from what we will do inside your CRM and what you will need to do externally. Okay, so let's get started.

To begin mapping out your process, I first want you to make a list of every touch point that you want to have with your client. Now, I'm going to lay on the family photographer example, just because, you know, I started my own family photography business in 2012 and it's what I'm most familiar with. But what I am going to talk about today translates to wedding photographers, website designers, copywriters. Basically, if you are running a creative service business, this will apply to you.

So here's a few examples of touch points that you might have with your client. First, you want to have a consultation call. Second, you want to actually offer them to book your services. Then you might want to confirm that they're actually booked.

In the case of photography sessions, you might need to choose a location for the session, offer styling tips, ask them about their family and who will be present at the session, ask for final payments, send payment reminders, send last minute tips for the session, send a reminder of your editing timeline.

Send an image gallery, request a Google review, or if you have a referral program, you might want to let them know how they can earn session credit or actual money from referring their friends and family to you for a session. Now I know I just said all of those and that's a lot, but literally I want you to get a piece of paper and write down what those touch points are for you and your client. It might be helpful if you pause this episode, write them down and then continue.

But just in case you want to listen to the whole episode in one go, we're going to keep going.

Now each 1 of these interactions, or these touch points you want to determine. Whether or not you need an action or a response from your client. Sometimes you're just sending them FYIs for your information only. Other times you're sending them a form that needs to be completed or you are sending them your booking form in which they need to sign the contract and pay you money. But for each one of those touch points that you have previously written down, you need to determine.

Whether or not that client themselves need to take an action after it's done. Now, then you need to ask yourself what you need to do, whether they've taken the action or not. And again, I know that it's like, Oh, well, how do I lay that out on my CRM for workflows? We are nowhere near touching your CRM yet. This is simply on paper and it might help if you do it visually. It might help if for when you put book your services, you have. A conditional like aspect to it.

And on the left, you say, if they book your services, then you say, what happens if they don't book your services, then you say, what happens. Okay. So, for each 1 of these touch points, you want to know number 1, is there an action or a response that's required and if yes, what happens next? If no, what happens next. And you are going to follow that process until you have answered that for every single one of the touch points that you have written down.

Now, once that is done, you've probably expanded your list from like a list of 12 items to, I mean, some of you have probably doubled it, if not tripled it with, you know, if you're going to send many reminders. All those kind of things. But once you have your second list, which has, you know, all of these things that could happen, whether they take the action, they don't take the action. If it was just a reminder.

Now, we need to get into the nitty gritty of how that touch point actually happen. So in the case of a consultation call, is it an actual phone call? Is it a video conferencing call? Like that's your next step is write where this touch point takes place or in what manner you send it to. Is it an email? Is it a text message? Are you sending them a proposal form inside of your CRM? So now you're going to have.

The initial touch points, you're going to have some secondary items, depending on what happens when you do those touch points. And now you are identifying what kind of touch point it is. If you are feeling overwhelmed, maybe you start with some of these touch points and then you expand as you go. I mean, there's always a bare minimum setup versus a full setup.

And so, if writing all of these things feels very overwhelming, write down the ones that are absolutely critical for you now, and you can add in the rest of them later.

Now we need to talk about timelines because timelines are important. So once you've got all this laid out, I want you to write down the optimal timeline in which these actions will take place. So when do you want a consultation call to happen? I personally want it to happen no more than three days after their initial inquiry in my business. I don't want someone to fill out my contact form and be really excited to work with me and then delay having a consultation call for two weeks.

Because they are going to lose the thread, they are not going to be as excited, and they might actually find someone else to hire in that two weeks. So I want that timeline to be very quick, three days after the inquiry. Now, then you're going to write down when you want these things to happen. And there's a couple of ideas on how you can start to actually identify these timelines. For me, there's going to be certain actions that happen within a certain amount of time after they inquired.

Or after I took an action by sending them an email, sending them a form. And then there are actions that are going to need to happen based on the session date. So I might want to send some of those session reminders. One week before a session, three days before a session, 24 hours before a session.

The purpose of writing down the timeline at this point is once you have everything laid out and you look at it, you are going to be able to see if there are significant gaps inside of your client experience where you are basically ignoring your client. Now, newsflash, I'm going to tell you when this happens. For most photographers, and honestly for most creatives, it happens between booking and the actual service. Like it feels like you're sending them email after email after email.

You're having phone conversations with them. You're sending them forms. You're sending them blog posts. And then once they've paid you money, it's kind of silent. Or, instead of sending them multiple touchpoints, you maybe send them one single email in between the booking process and when the session actually takes place. But you won't know if you have these significant gaps until you map out your process on a piece of paper and you see exactly when each of these touchpoints are taking

place. I feel the need to recap. So first you have written down every single touch point that you are going to have with your client. The second thing that you've done is determined whether or not that client needs to take an action or respond in any way to the touch point. Then you need to determine what action you need to take if they do the action or they send the response. Or if they don't, then you are identifying what kind of touch point it is and where this interaction will take place.

Last, we just talked about identifying the timeline on which each of these touch points will take place so that you can make sure that your client experience is consistent from beginning to end with no significant gaps. And guess what? That's it for the initial process of mapping out your customer journey or your client experience.

Once you've gotten that part done, that is when you are ready to kind of transition this and start creating workflow actions and triggers that can be put in place inside of your CRM to streamline and automate your client experience. But we are not going to cover that in this podcast episode.

I feel like I've given you enough to think about now, so I just highly recommend that each of you block off a 30 minute block of time so that you can sit down and begin the process of mapping out your processes. Now, can anyone guess what comes next week? Next week, we are going to talk about how to take the process that you have mapped out and translate those into workflows and automations that you can set up inside of your CRM.

I hope that this has been helpful and I hope that you tune in next week for part three. That's it for this episode. See you next time.