How customer journey insights build vendor trust

When I toured a coffee roastery recently, something struck me. You could see every step of the process: the green beans arriving, the roasting, the grinding, the packaging. Watching it unfold makes you appreciate how much thought and craft goes into a simple cup of coffee. It made me realize how rarely we give our clients that same visibility. Most of the time, the people we serve only see the finished product of the report, the deliverable, the campaign, the insight. They don’t get to witness the expertise, preparation, and decision-making that bring it all to life. But when customers understand the steps behind your work, they value it more deeply. They begin to see the layers of experience that make your results possible and the thinking that separates your process from anyone else’s. Every professional, whether you’re in consulting, design, education, or tech has a unique way of doing things. Those steps might feel routine to you, but to your clients, they can be fascinating. It’s how they start to understand the “special sauce” that makes your work distinct. Mapping out your customer journey isn’t just an internal exercise. It’s a way of telling the story of your expertise. It shows how you gather insights, make choices, and translate ideas into outcomes. When you make that process visible, you invite your clients to come along for the ride. They feel invested, aligned, and more confident in your approach because they can see the logic and care behind every stage. That transparency turns ordinary transactions into long-term relationships. It builds trust, fosters appreciation, and reminds people that your value isn’t just in what you deliver—it’s in how you do it.

Years back, we lost one of our early customers, a super-impressive drinks brand whose name you’d recognise. It really hurt. I was miffed, couldn't work out what we'd got wrong. After we lost that contract, the mystery deepened. We heard that they'd gone ahead and made the main change the Uncrowd platform had recommended, and that the change had worked big style. They'd trousered millions in benefit, but not stuck with us. We looked back, trying to understand what had happened. They’d asked us for clearer reporting, and we'd made what we thought were clearer reports. Loads of them. We even hired in a shopper marketing guru to write them. More to the point, we liked and respected the team there and thought they felt the same way. Then Em here suggested we drink our own medicine and do some customer journey mapping on ourselves, highlighting frictions and rewards along our user experience. What we found was a revelation. The pain point that lost us this client wasn't in the reporting at all. Banging out all that extra work had been pointless. It was treating the symptom, not the cause. Instead, the issue had been input. Back then, Uncrowd was too protective and 'black box' about the science behind our method. That meant our customers couldn't build confidence in that method, even for this customer that had used the output to win a critical argument internally and make a change that raked in big bucks. There was a gap between how we delivered on trust and how rivals did the same thing. If we’d known that at the time, we’d have been able to fix it. Lesson learnt.  That’s the power of looking at frictions versus rewards along the customer journey. It overturns entrenched beliefs you have about your own business and shows you how your customers really experience it. It should also tell you how your rivals deliver their competing experiences too, so you see the gaps. They call this 'dogfooding', don't they? Not especially keen on the phrase but I get it and it's right. #customerexperience #customerjourney #who

More trust = more revenue. 81% of B2B buyers say trust is the biggest factor in their purchasing decision.  Why does this number matter? In B2B prospects have almost unlimited options these days. Decision-makers are swamped with potential vendors with almost identical features. Every vendors says they can save you time and money and drive revenue. But prospects are skeptical of these claims and they all start to sound like noise. What solution they ultimately choose usually comes down to who they trust the most. IE which vendors can credibly prove, beyond a doubt, that they've delivered results in the exact same scenario (same industry, same company size, same problem/use-case). So, how do you build that trust? The two easiest ways I have found: > Clarity and consistency: Be upfront about what your service can deliver and follow through. Own who your solution is NOT for, and where your comparative strengths and weaknesses are. Show an honest snapshot of what it's like to be a customer. Not a curated Instagram real. > Lower the risk: Share customer evidence like competitive proof (why customers switch from other vendors, what makes you different), relevant, specific examples of common use cases from your customers, and quantifiable statistics about product impact and ROI. Substantive and comprehensive customer proof helps buyers trust that you can deliver on what you are promising. The more relevant, specific, and detailed, the better. Trust isn't a nice-to-have anymore; it's a must-have. Trust is the currency that drives transactions. Build trust, close deals.