Welcome to our three-part series highlighting SugarCRM add-ons and how they can enhance your capabilities with the solution. Within this series, users will gain insight on three different add-ons they can add to their SugarCRM platform. These add-ons not only help you boost your overall CRM ROI, but they can also help you identify areas where you can improve your customer engagement and make more efficient and effective business decisions.  

In this first blog, users will gain an understanding of how the Customer Journey add-on can change the way their current business processes operate for the better. Let’s get started!

What is a Customer Journey?

A customer journey defines the path of decision-making your customers take from the start of their buying process through its completion. It encompasses their entire customer experience. A journey is sometimes also referred to as a roadmap that defines touchpoints from when a lead first interacted with your company to when they purchased your product, and even their experiences post-purchase and beyond. Think of how important this is! Focusing on improving your customer journey map can help your business greatly. 

Around 88% of companies are now prioritizing customer experience management within their business. That is huge! Part of building that streamlined experience requires a personalized, repeatable set of processes. This is where the SugarCRM Customer Journey add-on comes into play. 

Sugar builds on customer journey best practices to implement your customer journey map in stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy. Remember, everyone’s customer journey map may look a little different, however the overall idea is still the same. Here’s a breakdown of what each of those stages means in the grand scheme of the customer’s journey:

Awareness: In this initial stage, your teams are creating awareness or spreading general knowledge about your business. This is being directed at a specific target profile you have previously identified. In the awareness stage, you may use social media, organic and paid website traffic, and other outlets to generate recognition for your brand. The goal is to showcase your offerings as an option for a someone looking for your types of products or services. This is the stage of the customer journey where the prospect is starting to understand their needs and broadly researching the available options to fulfill them. 

Consideration: In the consideration phase, prospects have identified a few potential providers, but are now educating themselves on the services or benefits those providers offer to determine which is best for them. This is where your teams begin promotion around your company’s differentiators and benefits – what makes your services or products better than the competitor? This phase is key. You are convincing your customers and potential buyers to identify you as a ‘top seller’. 

Conversion: This is where the magic starts. At this stage, your prospects have all the information they need to make a decision, and they are ready to take a certain action, whether it is making a purchase, or subscribing for more information. Your potential buyers turn into your customers or targeted leads at this time.

Retention: If you are doing your job right, you are able to keep your customers and build their loyalty long-term. Within this phase, you are adding value to the customer through ongoing support, educational webinars, and personalized content that confirms your value to your new client and helps build a long-lasting relationship. 

Advocacy: Loyal customers who are wholly satisfied with your business are key accounts to turn into net promoters. Net promoters are vocal advocates for your business. They reveal the value of your brand to other prospects in ways you cannot. In the advocacy stage, you’ll rely on testimonials, create rewards programs to further expand loyalty, and measure satisfaction ratings to determine who you strongest advocates are and maintain their positive image of your brand. , Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool to market to your prospects and leads, and customers who fit your criteria for advocacy are the ideal individuals to spread the word about your business.

As you can see, the customer journey has designated phases, but how you approach each one is specific to a process you define. Think about all the journeys your customers may take as they research solutions to their problems. Don’t forget to think about the roadblocks along the way; that can be critical when planning out the messaging around your inbound marketing and sales content! 

What is the Customer Journey Add-on?

The customer journey add-on is a paid optional add-on that takes your SugarCRM to another level. With the Customer Journey installed, you ‘ll be able to visualize your business processes in a way you have never seen them before. 

Your customer journey add-on can be utilized within any module of the system, custom or standard. In fact, you can even have multiple customer journeys for a single module. 

Your system admin has the complete capability to customize your customer journey map to ensure all your reps are following a standardized, streamlined process.

How does the Customer Journey Add-on work within Sugar?

Like any other module within SugarCRM, your modules come with standard or customized sub-panels that appear within your instance. The Customer Journey Add-on will appear as the top sub-panel in any module you wish to set it up for. 

With the Customer Journey add-on, admins have the ability to completely customize their customer journey roadmaps. Each module can have multiple customer journeys or paths a customer can take, it all depends on what’s right for you. 

When creating your customer journey template, you can even call on any other modules within For instance, you can create a step via the add-on that requires a team member to schedule call, allowing you to eliminate additional clicks and helping you better manage your department’s time. 

 The Customer Journey add-on can also assign reps or even add tasks within each step. In other words, you can have different steps that require different tasks for specific reps within your team. 

Automation is key, and the customer journey add-on has you covered. Admins can create rules based on each step. For example, once a customer reaches a certain stage, you can create a BPM to assign tasks, create due dates etc. in the background. Neat, right? 

Let’s not forget reporting! With reports, you can directly see where each customer is within each step of the process. Like any other module within the system, the Customer Journey add-on also has standard dashlets that can be added to the module timeline to help users/reps and even managers know what milestones each customer, contact, account, lead, or even opportunity needs to hit before completing their designated customer journey path.

In a nutshell, the customer journey add-on gives managers the ability to monitor, manage, and review standardized processes to build a uniform customer journey map for any team to follow. f certain steps require additional attention or aren’t hitting the mark, they are easily edited. For more information how the Customer Journey add-on can increase your efficiency, contact our Sugar experts here!