Top 9 Questions About Customer Journey Management

All the digital channels that companies are implementing are satisfying customers, but also creating multiple paths to the call center.

Users expect to be able to choose the channel through which to communicate, and when organizations meet that expectation, the need for proper customer journey management is generated.

Top 9 Questions About Customer Journey Management

1) What Is The Customer Journey?

A customer journey is the path a person takes while trying to achieve a goal with an organization. These goals may include buying a product, hiring a service, and getting help, among others.

Journeys are made up of touch points and transfers between them. These common touch points include a business website, social media, customer service, and email marketing. Transfers occur every time a customer moves through them. For example, a transfer occurs when a customer clicks on a link in an email that takes them to the organization’s website.

There are different types of journeys. For management purposes, companies can categorize them as purchase, setup, support, etc.

2) What Is Customer Journey Management?

Customer journey management is a disciplined and ongoing approach to measuring; optimizing and orchestrating the experiences customers have as they try to achieve a goal with a company. It seeks to predict what users need at each stage of the journey and proactively engage with them to meet those needs.

Customer journey management efforts should focus on entire journeys from start to finish, not just individual touch points. Going back to the example where a customer clicks on a link in a promotional email and is taken to the company’s website, both touch points (the email and the website) can be great, but if the web does not recognize the user and does not automatically apply the promotional discount, this aspect negatively affects the trip.

3) What Are The Objectives Of Customer Journey Management?

The demands of today’s consumers are clear: they want speed, convenience and ease of use. Consequently, a primary goal of customer journey management is to coordinate all parts to make it as easy, quick, and enjoyable as possible for customers to achieve their goals.

Regular analysis also helps companies identify the most valuable journeys as well as determine predictors of success, allowing organizations to make informed investment decisions. Achieving these goals can have a significant impact on business results.

4) Why Should Companies Manage Customer Journeys?

Customer experience (CX) has become a differentiator, and according to Gartner, more than two-thirds of companies compete primarily based on it. This focus on CX is driven by customer expectations. Brand experiences impact customer loyalty and spending behavior. For example, a PwC study found that 32% of consumers would leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, and that 73% of them point to experience as an important factor in their purchasing decisions.

• Journey Optimization: Constant monitoring and measurement allows companies to identify what is working and what frictions need to be removed.
• Proactive intervention: Travel management identifies indicators of travel success or failure, allowing companies to intervene before things go wrong.
• Prioritization of investments.
• Tracking journey performance: Customer journey management practices allow companies to always know how different trips are performing.
• Cost reduction: Smoother, hassle-free travel reduces customer service volume.
• Improving the quality of call center interactions: Travel management can provide valuable contextual information to contact center agents, so they know where customers have been and what they need help with.
• Increased revenue: CX influences purchase decisions, so when customer journey management consistently results in better experiences; it has an impact on the bottom line.

5) What Are Some Tools And Techniques For Managing Customer Journeys?

Companies that go all out with customer journey management create dedicated customer journey teams and treat journeys the same way they treat products.

Customer journey management teams have the following tools and techniques at their disposal:

• Mapping of the customer journey.
• Customer journey analysis.
• Orchestration of the customer journey.

6) Should All Customer Journeys Be Managed?

There are too many paths for customers to follow and not enough resources to manage them all. Companies should prioritize the trips they manage based on criteria such as business value, strategic importance, and frequency of use. Optimizing touch points and transfers should benefit all channels, even those that are not actively managed.

7) What Is The Role Of The Contact Center In Managing The Customer Journey?

While a dedicated team may be responsible for the overall management of the customer journey, call centers play a vital role in the overall success of the effort. The support journey is critical, and the contact center is the primary point of contact and owner of handoffs along this journey.

As part of optimization efforts, contact centers may be required to:

• Offer omnichannel experiences.
• Personalize interactions.
• Reduce waiting times.

8) What Are The Keys To The Success Of Customer Journey Management?

Managing the customer journey is a critical and complex task. Companies will get better results if they follow these keys to success:

• Make the most of data to understand customers.
• Take a holistic approach: It’s not just about marketing or the website.
• Invest in technology.
• Set goals and regularly measure progress.
• Choose the right journeys based on what is important to customers and the business.
• Align and involve the entire organization.
• Implement a unified source of customer data.

These keys will help ensure customer journeys are fast, convenient, and seamless.

9) How To Measure The Success Of Customer Journey Management Programs?

The best way to measure success is to capture journey performance from start to finish, rather than just individual touch points. For example, travel analytics software can calculate a travel excellence score (JES).

A JES is designed to measure the quality of the customer experience from the perspective of the customer journey, across multiple channels and over time. It takes into account hundreds of touch point attributes along with variables like satisfaction scores and customer sentiment.

Comprehensive metrics like JES allow organizations to spot deficiencies, measure the effectiveness of improvements, and assess trip performance over time.