Business by Hanna Marcus

Understanding Your Client’s Journey

Your Client’s Journey to Your Shop:

Understanding Customer Journey Mapping

As barbers, we typically think about our customers’ experiences as an in-shop or even post-cut thing. Often, we credit our skills, reviews, word-of-mouth reps, and evidence of sweet cuts on the street as the things that drive customers into our chairs.

But is that really the case?

If you’ve never stopped to think about how some of your clients found you—not the referrals, or the family members, or the friends you suckered into trying our your service—we hardcore suggest you take a moment and do that now.

Ask yourself, how are people finding you? Better, ask yourself this question—what is a customer’s journey to my chair?

That’s the million-dollar question, friend. If you’re thinking about why and how clients are finding you, then you’re in good shape. Now, just take it a step further and try to understand both.

Having a solid grasp on the why behind your client’s choice to book with you is a big, important part of becoming a better barber and businessperson.

Having this knowledge—and understanding it—can help provide meaningful insight, transform the way you do business, and even empower you to make positive changes in your shop, your process, and your career.

That’s where this blog comes in. Today, we’re exploring the detailed reasons that your customer’s journey to you matters.

We’ll explain a concept called customer journey mapping while providing meaningful insight on why this matters in the first place, offer up some perspective, and explain how you can kickstart your own customer journey mapping process.

Your Client’s Journey: The Phases That Brought Them to Your Chair

Understanding your customer’s journey from discovering your existence to sitting in your chair getting the best cut of their life is a complicated process, but it gets dramatically less complicated when you opt for a strategy called customer journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping is a process of putting yourself in your customer’s shoes to visualize a client’s journey in a way that helps you create actionable goals and glean important insights.

Typically, client journey maps are visual representations of your clients’ experiences with your business—think of it as a step-by-step exercise to help you truly understand your customers and what they go through in each stage of discovering you and working with you.

These phases aren’t an exact science. In fact, it’s likely that potential customers go through dozens of mini-stages before they get to your chair.

But typically, there are four that are commonly approached, and we’re here to help you dive into each and every one of them.

Phase 1: Awareness

The first phase of them all, awareness. In this phase, the potential customer realizes that you actually exist. They become aware of your presence as a barber and they realize that you’re, indeed, alive and on the market. Of course, this doesn’t mean they have to express interest in you or your skills—they just recognize that you’re alive and out there.

Phase 2: Interest

Consider their interest officially piqued. This phase typically includes some light cyberstalking and a peek or two at social media platforms, websites, and reviews.

Phase 3: Desire

Suddenly, they’re interested in becoming a client. Don’t misinterpret us—they’re not a hard sell yet. You’ve got them hooked, sure, but they’re not quite ready to be reeled in. This phase usually involves some introspective questions (even if they’re sort of subconsciously introspective) where the client asks, “what makes this barber a good fit for me?”

Phase 4: Opportunity

You’ve got ‘em. They’re booked and ready to have their lives (and their hair) changed forever. Now’s the next challenge—giving them a rad cut and seamless in-shop experience that makes them want to come back time and time again.

Why Customer Journey Maps Matter

While it might seem silly to put yourself into your clients’ shoes, it’s ultimately one of the best decisions you can make. Not only do customer journey maps help you grasp your clients better, but they also help you make important changes in your overall process.  

All in all, conducting a customer journey map can ensure that you:

  • Better understand your customers, what drives them, and what encouraged them to book with you.
  • Craft a more optimized, effective, and efficient customer journey so that future clients can move through your process faster and more seamlessly than ever.
  • Identify customer pain points to better remedy these issues and recognize future ones.
  • Create and reach more complex, sophisticated goals while seamlessly innovating new ideas.

But most of all, customer journey mapping offers you something that often gets overlooked— a chance to pause, think, and connect with your clients in a new, meaningful way.

If you’re always seeking insight and advice on how you can become a better, more in-tune barber, then we’ve got good news for you—we’re here to help you.

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