Creating chemistry with your customer helps you build much more meaningful and productive interactions – which can benefit you and them.

The more you develop that connection, the more you’ll be able to give your customer exactly what they need – whether they realise it or not. You’ll understand what they’re looking for, and you’ll deliver it and more, by using the insights you’ve built to delight and surprise them.

Let’s say you’re looking to have a room in your home done. 

Imagine a scenario where instead of telling your interior designer exactly what you want done, the designer asks about you. They might ask what your hobbies are, whether you have a pet or not, what your favourite colour is – they don’t ask what you need, they ask who you are.

This is them building a connection with you, so they can use that connection to design the room you need with a few tailored touches and additions to delight you along the way.

That’s what customer chemistry is all about, and if it’s done right, you can create brand champions of your customers – people who shout about you from the rooftops and to anyone who’ll listen. It’s a symbiotic relationship where everyone wins.

But don’t just take our word for it – here’s a couple of stats about why customer chemistry works:

• Companies who focused on customer connection grew by 5 times more than the average company.
• Companies who connect consistently at every stage of the customer journey saw 19% more growth. 

So customer chemistry drives growth – but how can you build that chemistry across millions of customers?

It all starts with the buyer journey. 

How to change the buyer journey to build customer chemistry

Discover

From search to social

Once upon a time, or about five to ten years ago, most people used to actively search for products and services online. They’d go straight to Google or Bing, type in what they were looking for, and then scroll through pages of listings until they found what they wanted.

But things have changed. Nowadays, a lot of people are discovering new things before they’ve even loaded up a search engine – all through social media. 44% of business buyers say they use social media as their primary source for discovering new products before they search.

Whether that’s direct from brands or through the influencers they follow, users are being targeted in the places they live online, like Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.

And the most successful businesses are moving the top of their buyer journey from search engines to social platforms in response. They’re finding their customers where they are and cutting out social altogether.

Consideration

From clicks to conversations

When you move onto the consideration, there’s a similar change happening – but this time, on brand websites themselves.

Customers used to head to a website, filter and sort, and then go through all the products, opening tabs, closing tabs, bookmarking and browsing. That meant hundreds of clicks, endlessly tab switching and comparing different listings to find what they wanted.

Compare that to an AI language model like ChatGPT. With an LLM-based chat bot, you can get everything you need from a single conversation. No clicks, no sorting, no tabs – just answering questions and describing what you need.

The info you get is helpful, insightful and just like talking to a real person in a shop – and the best part is, you get what you need instantly.

And it works – 99% of B2B marketers say AI chatbots increase their conversion rates.

Save your customers clicks, give them chat.

Buying

From personalised to personal

When it comes to buying, a tailored approach still pays dividends – 92% of marketers say customers expect a personalised experience – but we need to be more personal, than personalised.

What we mean by that is this: people are tired of being asked questions about themselves. They’ve probably answered the same questions time and time again to different vendors, and the whole [FIRST_NAME] variables are getting a bit old.

It’s time to be smarter about how we tailor our content.

You’ve likely already got loads of information about your customers, so it’s not collecting the data that’s the problem – it’s what you do with it once you’ve got it.

Use a data AI model to extract insights from your customers that they’ve never heard before. If you’ve seen they’ve bought a lot of kid’s winter gear recently, send them a blog about five winter activities to enjoy with the kids. If they’re from Germany but have expressed interest in one of your UK events, send them an email with similar events in their country.

Remember, personalised is too templated, personal is tailored. Put more effort in and get better chemistry back.

Using

From reactive to proactive

Once your customer has the product in their hands, it’s all about helping them get the most out of it – whether that’s solving any problems or giving them hints and tips on how to use it. 

That’s how loyalty is created and that’s where our connection comes into its own – 3 in 4 consumers will spend more with businesses that provide a good CX.

But too often, our support is reactive rather than proactive. We wait for the customer to come to us. If they have a problem, we wait for them to submit a ticket – and then there’s a constant back and forth.

But with AI, we can be far more proactive. When things go wrong, customers expect to be frustrated by customer support – but using chatbots that actually answer their questions gives us an opportunity to delight them instead.

Customers remember these moments. They remember when their frustration has been turned into something more positive – and they’re far more likely to become brand champions because of it.

So let’s be proactive with our support. Let’s anticipate their problems and answer their questions quickly with AI, so that we can go above and beyond what they need.

The big takeaway

The need for information has given way to the need for intelligence – and what that intelligence lets us do is build a real connection with customers, to develop chemistry that converts them into brand champions.

And the best and most reliable way to do that is to transform the buyer journey, so that your business can better connect with customers at every stage.

To do that, you need to go:

• From search to social
• From clicks to conversations
• From personal to personalised
• From reactive to proactive