Winery Tasting Room Customer Journey Mapping

As a business, you probably spend a fair amount of time learning how new customers find out about your tasting room and which one(s) are the most useful in building your following. Likely, if you find that word-of-mouth greatly increases your tasting room attendance, you will provide customers with an incentive for them to encourage others to visit. Or, if you learn that a particular social media platform is a valuable two-way communication tool, you will likely post regularly and promote follower interaction. And we have certainly encouraged readers to conduct customer service surveys to learn what visitors enjoyed during their visit and what needs improvement. Those are two essential points in a customer's journey: discovering a business and evaluating their experience, but have you thought about the decision-making process that consumers go through from the time they learn about your business through the point where they are in your parking lot and decide to step into your tasting room through the decision to return in the future, or chose never to visit again.

This process can be rather complex and time-consuming, but the trade-off is that businesses will better understand how consumer segments learn about winery tasting rooms, who they are, why they want to visit, what they want from a visit, and the actions you need to take when you learn about issues or opportunities that are necessary to exceed visitor expectations. While there are different renditions of the process, you will perform customer journey analytics through this exercise.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is the action of “putting yourself in your customers’ shoes,” brainstorming the process they go through, described above, and identifying and summarizing the actions, successes, and roadblocks customers experience when they use your goods and services, access information on your website, buy wine in your tasting room and/or online, participate in a tasting room event, etc. Each of these interactions is referred to as a "touchpoint" and together with the steps that lead from discovering a business to visiting and making a purchase, they create a map that "provides a bird eye view about what customers really face while interacting" with everything associated with your brand.

How does customer journey mapping differ from customer journey analytics?

While customer journey mapping provides a visual based on your and your employees' thoughts about how visitors learn about your tasting room, why they choose to visit, etc., the analytics piece includes:

"1) digitization of as many customer touchpoints as possible, 
2) logging every customer interaction, and
3) collecting and archiving customer interaction data in a single pool that allows data analysis."

What does a customer journey map look like?

If you perform a simple web browser search, you will find many visual examples of what customer journey maps look like. Some are simple timelines and others are sophisticated with figures and visuals. However, they all likely begin with a scenario that describes a customer persona and what the segment needs, is thinking about, is doing, and how they are responding at each step in the "buying decision process" based, followed by a list of opportunities or identifying areas to improve at each step.

What is the buying decision process? 

The following provides some details as to the buying process for a consumer who is going to be entertaining family and friends at home and needs to buy wine to serve to their guests. Customers go through a process, though it is often not something they think about when making a purchasing decision. Even if the customer has bought a particular item in the past or has visited a tasting room before, they rationalize their decision to buy/return again or justify selecting another product or retailer.

Step 1: Problem recognition
 - Consumer is going to be entertaining at home and needs to purchase a couple of bottles of dry white wine

Step 2: Information search
 - Customer researches what is available for purchase and investigates possible alternative products, such as larger-sized bottles, brands, types of retail outlets, no/low alcohol alternatives.
- Customer may read online product reviews, ask friends and family for recommendations, etc.

Step 3: Evaluation of Alternatives
 - Customer decides to purchase Gruner Veitliner and weights the pros/cons for each brand/alternative.

Step 4: Purchase decision
 - Customer decides to purchase a couple of bottles (or not)

Step 5: Purchase
 Sometimes combined with step 4
 - For an in-store purchase, the quantity of bottles the customer needs is in stock, and the customer interacts with a friendly cashier
 - Online, the customer had to create an account, make the purchase, and had limited payment options to choose from.

Step 6: Post-purchase evaluation
 - Customer determines whether the experience met or exceeded their expections with the product and/or shopping experience.
 - Good/great experience may lead to repeat purchases and customer loyalty. Poor/unacceptable experiences are likely to lead to customer churn.

Source: Tallyfy

Other components to include at each step in the buying decision process (e.g., awareness, purchase) are:

• the business's goal at each step (e.g., at step 6: encourage the customer to become an advocate for the winery by posting favorable reviews on social media websites)
• the metrics or key performance indicator (KPI) (e.g., at step 5: number of first-time visitors, like our example customer, who completed a purchase and did not abandon the shopping cart)
• who, or what department is responsible for what action (e.g., at step 2: social media managers ensure that information shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms is consistent with information shared in the tasting room)

What are the benefits of developing a customer journey map?

By learning about visitor experiences and interactions with your tasting room, through brief tasting room surveys, one-on-one conversations with tasting room staff, correlating customers with a profile that documents the frequency at which they visit the tasting room, what they buy, and how much they spend, etc., tasting rooms can:

• "Measure and improve customer experiences...[and] increase loyalty"
  
  • Staff can brainstorm about "what can go wrong" during the online ordering process and develop a plan to correct potential problems.
  • Based on monitoring online shopping cart activity, staff can document shopping cart abandonment rates and implement strategies to encourage visitors to complete their purchases.
• Improve employees' "visibility [as to] what happens upstream and downstream of their interactions with customers…pinpoint issues in real-time…[and] see direct and indirect feedback in one place."
  • Tasting room staff can learn about issues or complements posted on Facebook, Twitter, submitted via the website, etc.
• Streamline services 
  • Staff can identify whether there are processes or tasks that more than one department handles and how to make the customer’s experience as seamless as possible.

How to get started developing a customer journey map

The example, below, is just one way to construct a customer journey map and shows the three components (e.g., customer persona) and the purpose of each. The schematic was adapted from Site Improve.

Step 1: Define the Customer Persona

For this step, you should create customer personas that define a customer segment's goals that are relevant to buying your wine or visiting your tasting room, the pain points (or barriers) that they encounter and that makes the buying process/visit less enjoyable, and what they expect from the purchase/visit.

Most likely, you can segment, or group, customers in a variety of ways, some of which I provided below. I am sure that you can visualize these customers, envision their visit and the conversations they have with tasting room staff, etc.

• High informed
• Ultra premium wine drinker
• Case purchaser
• Festival, event, activity attendees
• Online purchaser
• Local supporter
• Day-tripper
• Loyalty program member
• Sparkline wine consumer

When developing the persona, some of the ways that you can collect data about wine consumers are as follows:

• Informal information gathering online (e.g., Instagram story stickers, Facebook polls)
• Focus group sessions with small groups of customers.
• Surveys (e.g., administered at your tasting room, posted on your website, sent to customer email lists)
• Paid marketing consultant.
• Access reports published by researchers, associations, and organizations that publish statistics and related information. 

After you gather the data, the next step is to build a customer persona that describes the customer segment: their demographics (e.g., generation), consumption and purchasing behaviors (e.g., how frequently they consume wine, the average they pay for a bottle of wine), and their attitudes (e.g., interest in sustainable wine).

Creating a customer persona for Premium Wine Drinkers

For this article, I decided to go through the process of customer journal analytics based on the "ultra-premium wine drinker," as described by Wine Intelligence. I provided examples of how to fill to craft the customer persona using information published by an industry resource and my own assumptions. For your efforts, you should replace these assumptions with what you learn from your tasting room visitors and by reviewing data you collect directly from your customers.

 Wine Intelligence gathered data in June 2014, July 2019, July 2020, and July 2021, from consumers who met the following criteria:

• Were at least 21 years of age
• Drank wine at least once a week
• "Typically spend USD $15+ on a bottle of wine in the off-premise"

From the report: Between 2014 and 2021, the number of premium wine consumers in the U.S. decreased from 23.4 million to 19.7 million. In the U.S., premium wine drinkers consumed 38% of all the wine consumed, by volume, and accounted for 53% of the total spent on wine.

In 2021, compared to data collected in 2019:

• The number of female premium wine consumers increased from 36% to 49%, while the percentage of male premium wine consumers decreased from 64% to 51%.
• There were more premium wine consumers aged 65 and older, and between the ages of 35 to 44, the percentages of those between 21 to 24 and 25 to 34 years of age decreased significantly.

Within the premium wine drinker segment, they identified three subsegments: Popular premium, super-premium, and ultra-premium. The table below provides an overview of some of the data provided in the report: Premium Wine Drinkers in the US Market 2021

 Adapted from Wine Intelligence

Based on the information above, and additional assumptions (which, as a winery tasting room operator, you would want to confirm with data you collect through your own research), you can complete the first column in the table.

Customer persona: Ultra Premium Wine Drinker

Goals

• Enjoys "participating in winery visits, events and publications"
• "Moved to supporting their local or favourite wineries" during COVID

Pain Points

• Wasting time by visiting the "wrong winery"
• Finding unique, local wines

Expectations

• Tasting room staff who are engaged
• can have a customized experience
• Not just pushed out the door after a purchase

Step 2: Outline the Buying Decision Process

After you populate the first panel with the goals, pain points, and tasting room expectations relevant to the target customer, you are ready to go through and define each step in the buying decision process (as outlined above).

At each stage, determine what your customer is (a) doing, (b) thinking/feeling, (c)how they interact with your business (touchpoints)

• Planning a visit
• Customer evaluates options
• Customer visits
• Post-purchase
• Loyalty or Customer churn

For this example, I will focus on three steps in the buying decision process as they might relate to the ultra-premium wine consumer.

Customer Journey Map: Customer is planning a visit, a.k.a. Problem recognition (Step 1)

• Doing: Ultra-premium wine drinker wants to visit a winery tasting room and needs to identify which one to visit. Searches for events at the tasting room. Considers what other activities in the area interest them. Seeks recommendations.
• Feeling/Thinking: Hoping for a fun, pleasurable, relaxing day
• Touchpoints:  Tasting room websites, tasting trail brochures, social media sites, word-of-mouth, recommendations, etc.

Ask customers for their insights and if they have experienced any issues with these and other touchpoints.  For example:

• With the number of consumers accessing websites on mobile devices - ask customers if they find it easy or difficult to view your website on their phones.
• Are customers able to easily find you on Facebook, Instagram, etc.? Do you have direct links to these social media platforms on your website, listed on tasting room signage, tasting sheets, etc.?
• How did new customers first learn about your tasting room? Did they research your business and search for reviews on Google, Facebook, BBB, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and similar? Check that you are listed on these sites and monitor user reviews and respond accordingly.

Customer Journey Map: Ultra-Premium Wine: Consumer visits, a.k.a. Purchase decision (Step 4)

• Doing:  The ultra-premium wine consumer is on-premise and ready to start the tasting room experience.
• Feeling/Thinking:  The visitor is evaluating whether the actual look and feel of the winery property meets or exceeds their expectations.
• Touchpoints: Signage, parking lot, tasting room design, layout navigation, displays, interaction with staff, bottle labels, additional products, ease of paying, etc.

For this step in the buying decision process, evaluate how easy it is to find the parking lot entrance, if the outside of the buildings are clean and the signs and plants highlight the tasting room entrance, how visually appealing your tasting room is, how approachable your tasting room staff are, etc. Does the visitor feel that this is the "right" type of winery tasting room for them?

One strategy you might consider is inviting another tasting room owner/manager to be a "secret shopper" and identify any issues, as well as what you excel at, and that you designed the tasting room experience to foster customer satisfaction.

Cornell University researchers looked at ambiance, tasting protocol, service, retail execution, and tasting experience on customer satisfaction. Results revealed that ambiance (e.g., tasting room cleanliness, lighting, sounds, view), followed by service (e.g., pourer knowledge, friendliness, appearance), and tasting protocol (e.g., number and variety of wines offered, tasting fee) contributed "to overall customer satisfaction," and that and that "level of customer satisfaction influences the decision to buy, the amount of dollars spent and the number of bottles purchased in a shopping occasion" (Shaprio and Gomez, 2014).

Customer Journey Map: Ultra-Premium Wine: Post-purchase evaluation (Step 6)

• Doing:  The ultra-premium wine consumer is reflecting on the experience.
• Feeling/Thinking:  The visitor is evaluating whether the visit met or exceeded expectations, which in part can promote loyalty, or if the visit was not as expected and the customer "defects," which leads to customer churn.
• Touchpoints: Consumption of wines post-purchase, interactions on social media, emails/communications the visitor signed up to receive from the tasting room, etc.

Loyalty

• What can you do to encourage repeat purchases and build "loyalty?"
   - What new experiences could you offer to entice visitors to return more often?

Customer churn

• What will you do to reduce customer defections?
   - Ask customers to participate in follow-up surveys

With both outcomes possible, tasting room owners and managers should document loyalty and churn rates, and why they experienced the outcome they did. Even if customers return for additional visits/loyalty rates are exceptional, it is still important to survey tasting room visitors, loyalty program members, etc. to document what really appeals and what needs to be amended.

Yes, there will always be some consumers who do not want to respond to survey questions, but…

• 88% of consumers surveyed indicated that asking for feedback makes a positive impression on them about the business
• 75% responded that "it shows that the retailer cares"

 According to one report, the top factors that encouraged customer brand loyalty and drove engagement were:

Percent of survey respondents who selected each Factor*

 *Percentages for each year do not sum to 100% as participants could select more than one response.

Step 3: Identifying opportunities and areas to improve

The final step in the process is to fill out the last panel and provide:

• Solutions for the needs you identified for each consumer persona.
• List ways that you will evaluate if your solutions improve the customer's experience, including the key performance indicators you will consult, and the sources of data you will access to help you assess if you are meeting or exceeding your goals.
• Decide how you will improve the interaction with customers during their visit.
• What you will do post-purchase to shirt first-time visitors into loyal customers and reduce churn.

Identifying opportunities and areas to improve

Needs

• User-friendly mobile website
• Relevant social media content
• Referral program

Evaluation

• Competitive analysis
• Well defined point of differentiation

Visit

• Train staff, ensure staff can convey the brand's story
• Third-party property evaluation
• Evaluate point-of-sale system

Post-purchase

• Communicate via email, newsletter, text
• Advance notice of events

Continue creating customer journey maps for your other significant consumer segments and revisit each regularly and make any necessary adjustments or additions (e.g., new touchpoints, key performance indicators).