At UNBOUND this year, one of the main stage talks ended with a simple homework assignment: go through your own customer journey yourself and find the exact moment you’d give up. It stuck with me because almost no business does it, and it costs nothing but an afternoon.

You know your business from the inside. Your customers only ever see the outside. Walking through it the way they do is one of the quickest ways to find what’s costing you business without you knowing. Here’s how to do it.

Step one: how would someone find you?

Start where your customers start. Search for what you do in your area the way a customer would (“bookkeeper near me” or “eye exam Mesa”), and then search your business name.

Notice what comes up. Are you there at all? Is your Google profile complete, with current hours and recent photos? Do your reviews look recent? Does anything look outdated or just wrong?

Why it matters: this is the first impression for most new customers, and it happens before you ever know they exist. If something’s off here, you never get the chance to make up for it in person.

Step two: what happens on your website?

Click through to your site from that search, on your phone. Give yourself ten seconds. Can you tell what the business does, who it’s for and what to do next? Then try to do the thing you want customers to do: book, call or fill out the form.

Why it matters: you know where everything is on your site. A first-time visitor doesn’t, and they’re often on a small screen with limited patience.

Step three: reach out like a stranger would

This is the step most people skip, and it’s the one that usually turns up the most. Call your business at a busy time, and again after hours. Send a message through your contact form. Email your general inbox.

Then pay attention. Did someone answer? Was the voicemail current and friendly? Did the form confirmation say what happens next? Did your message actually arrive, and where did it land?

Why it matters: by the time someone reaches out, they’ve already chosen you over the alternatives. Losing them here is the most expensive place to lose anyone.

Step four: how long is the wait?

Time how long it takes to hear back. Then think about what the customer is doing in the meantime. Often, they’re contacting the next business on the list.

A day or two might be completely reasonable for your industry. The question is whether the customer knows that. A simple auto-reply that says when they’ll hear from you changes how the wait feels.

Why it matters: silence reads as “nobody’s home.” A clear expectation reads as “they’ve got this.”

Step five: the first real interaction

Think through what happens next from the customer’s side. What do they need to bring, fill out or know before the first appointment or meeting? Is that written down anywhere, or does it live in someone’s head? Would they get the same answer from everyone on your team?

Why it matters: a confusing start makes people second-guess a decision they just made. A smooth one tells them they chose right.

Step six: what happens after?

Once the work is done, what does the customer hear from you? A thank you? A check-in to make sure everything went well? A request for a review? Anything at all before the next time they need you?

Why it matters: the end of a job is where referrals, reviews and repeat business start. It’s also where a lot of businesses go quiet.

What do you do with what you find?

You’ll probably end the walk-through with a list. Resist the urge to fix all of it at once.

The same UNBOUND session made another point I agree with: fix one journey before you launch another campaign. Pick the single spot where you’d most likely have walked away, fix that, and check it again in a few weeks. Spending money to bring more people into a journey that loses them halfway through just makes the leak bigger.

Why it matters: one real fix, done well, usually does more than five half-finished ones.

Where to start

Block off an hour this week. Grab your phone, search for your business like a stranger and go as far through these steps as you can. Better yet, ask a friend who has never used your business to do it and tell you honestly where they got stuck. Write down the moment you’d have given up. That’s your first fix.