What is that thing businesses need to do to stay ahead of the competition? The solution to this will also answer some of the top priority business questions.

• How to influence a customer’s buying behavior?
• How to increase inbound calls?
• How to make customers fall in love with the brand?
• How to make customers buy a product or service?

The disruption in customer experience is happening at a rapid phase where companies become obsolete if they still treat the customers the same way. Here is an opportunity that businesses can leverage to influence customer behavior through their moments of intent, which is Micro-moments. In this blog, we define micro-moments and describe

• How to identify the moments that matter most
• How to develop a product strategy based on micro-moments

Google coined the term micro-moments based on consumer behavior and identified how a business needs to be relevant and immediate in their customer journey. Micro-moments are intent-rich, contextual, and immediate moments for which the customer turns to a device/product/brand – to take a specific action. These moments are the critical touchpoints in a consumer’s journey, and when added together, they determine how that journey ends. Being aware of these touchpoints in the journey is not only critical for marketers, but also for product strategists and experience designers, to make the product successful.

To understand micro-moments, it is necessary to understand the paradigm shift of the decision-making process. The linear way of decisions made in the past is different from the fragmented way of decision making in today’s digital world. This fragmented journey happens over a period of time across multiple channels and the intent keeps changing with context to help them make the decision.

As a brand or as a product, it is essential to understand the journey of micro-moments. In the experience economy, to retain or acquire new customers, businesses need to be present in a meaningful way in all the key micro-moments. Now, the decision making is in the hands of the customers, and if businesses fail to empathize with their needs, companies are going to lose out. According to our inhouse experts:

• 50% of users purchase from a brand other than the intended one because the information provided is useful
• 90% of users leave and never return on a mobile site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs
• 69% of online consumers agree that the quality, timing, or relevance of a message influences their perception of a brand or product.

Being in the micro-moment is when brands are ideally focusing on three essential parameters

• Connectivity: to be there and present in all the targeted customer touchpoints
• Convenience: to be useful and relevant in their usage/access
• Speed: to be quick and on time, in terms of product/service delivery

Key aspects of micro-moments based design includes:

• Identifying micro-moments that matter to your brand: Know the existing communication touchpoints and enhance it by providing the missing moments in a customer journey
• Understanding the customer journey and touchpoints: Experience what it is like to be your customer in the whole journey and uncover much-needed insights
• Delivering user needs by focusing on behavior within each micro-moment: Identify what the customer is requiring at that point of time and provide only that information to move them from one funnel to the next gradually

Micro-moments shape preferences and assist in decision-making. This is because consumers instinctively reach out to their ubiquitous digital devices to satisfy a specific need – be it learning a recipe or comparing hotel prices or browsing for a new Wi-Fi plan. In this context, any efficiently completed action defines a positive experience. With this perspective, the customer journey can be broken down into four types of moments

• I want to know: Customers explore different options of a product or a service
• I want to do: Customers look for instructions online to perform a task/work
• I want to Accomplish: Customers compare and make a decision
• I want to experience: Customers evaluate and share the experiences

Imaginea offers to design products and experiences based on it’s own m360 degree framework according to the above strategies. This framework is the moments driven design framework that helps businesses to understand, map, prove and measure the impact of micro-moments. Here is an overview of m360 degree design framework:

Here is a guideline to define your product strategy based on m360 framework

With all the insights provided, build micro-moments for your company, accelerate customer’s buying behavior, and get ahead of the competition. Now is the only time and relevance is the only solution for businesses to succeed. Brands are expected to deliver instant solutions and if they fail, they go extinct.