The great mistake: losing customers at the decision stage

Don’t let your customers out the funnel at the last minute! Most businesses make this one great mistake and lose customers at the decision stage. Here’s how to avoid it.

Congratulations! You have successfully navigated your customer down from the awareness decision, through consideration, and now, they are ready to make a decision. You might think, well, what more can you do? They either decide at this stage, or leave the funnel. But this is a mistake almost every business makes.

Your awareness and consideration stage content might well be wonderful. But can you guarantee it has answered every single question your prospect has? That it reassures every worry or complaint? Customers are unique. So are their needs, and use cases for your product or service. Don’t fall into the same trap a lot of companies make by being arrogant enough to think your customer wont have a question at the decision stage.

Crunch time

Crunch time is decision time; when prospects are weighing up the numbers between your product and service, your competitor’s, or perhaps no purchase at all. What will make a difference between you and your competitor at the decision stage? More than likely large and tangible considerations such as price, dimensions, number of software seats, or even cupholders (because when we say large, we mean whatever occupies a large amount of space in your buyer’s head when weighing their decision). It’s essential that you clearly display these items with absolute transparency. But what happens when you haven’t listed something that is important to your client? After all, it can be hard to anticipate every single requirement for every single prospect. We dare say impossible.

The key to the decision stage trap door

You’ve gotten your customers so far and they are perhaps a single click or signature away from adding revenue to your bottom line. So why do so many companies lose customers at the decision stage?

It’s simple. Without being able to display a completely catered product or service guide that meets every need and over turn every objection, businesses don’t make it easy enough for customers to reach out and ask an unanswered question.

We’re not just talking about an info @ email address or a contact form that may as well go to nowhere. Today’s customers expect answers quickly, just like they would in a brick and mortar store. It’s expensive to take phone calls, and low on the customer’s contact preference list anyway. What you and every business needs is a way to manage inbound messages, that are contextual, real-time and frictionless for your customers.

How do you achieve a frictionless experience for customers?

This one is simple too. That is, if you have the right provider. A frictionless experience looks like this: a customer can message a company on any channel of their choosing. This might be Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp, to web chat, or even Twitter DM and SMS. When they do so, no matter what customer service agent they are speaking to, the agent has access to a centralised store of data on the customer or prospect that empowers a contexual conversation. This makes the customer’s life easier, with their questions more easily answered. Making your inbound as accessible as possible is essential. This will lower the effort for your customers to buy. And effort will always be an obstacle to get prospect through the decision stage, and into the trap door of customer, where you can start to work on retention, and upselling. More on this next week.

All of this is easily achievable for a company of any size or scope. But it’s essential to pick the right omnichannel provider who will make it easy for you to integrate this strategy into your business, or you wont just create a headache for yourself, but for your customers too.

See also: Messaging strategies in your awareness stage and consideration stage content

Want to see for yourself how an effective omnichannel messaging strategy can skyrocket conversion? Book a demo today.