I've written before about creating a map of the different journeys customers can take through your business so you can identify any issues that may be causing you to lose prospective or existing customers, but, once you've done that, you need to start fixing them.

To do that, you need to work out what each fix should be and then redesign your customer journey map to show and highlight all the changes.

Now, you may be expecting me to say that the easiest way to do that is to ask me to sort out your customer journey (and I'd be happy to do that!) but if you'd rather do it yourself, here's a simple process to follow:

Get a few people together for a workshop. Ideally they should be from your business (especially anyone who deals with customers) but if you work on your own why not ask a few other small business owners to help (and then you can do the same for them).

For the workshop, get an A1 version of your journey map printed and put on a wall, then have detailed notes about each issue. Brainstorm potential solutions for each issue in turn. When you think you have enough, ask everyone there to score each possible solution out of ten for speed (the quicker you could deliver it the higher the score), cost (the lower the cost the higher the score) and impact (the more customers it will affect the higher the score). Then add everyone's score up and the solution with the highest score is the one that you should implement.

Sounds like a lot of work? It can be, but it's very worthwhile when you see the results to your profits of the changes you've made. I'll talk more about that next week.

To watch our accompanying video - click here: