Customer Journeys Have a Starting Point, But Not an Ending Point

Netflix users, don’t you love when you sign on to your account and see a list of suggested shows to watch?

For me, the shows are always right in line with what I enjoy watching. After several years as a Netflix account holder, it’s safe to say that Netflix knows me, and I’m a loyal customer. They have done an excellent job creating a positive customer journey to ensure my brand loyalty. Netflix has a constant and continuous relationship with me as a customer. What drives our relationship? Great analytics and a seamless customer journey.

A positive customer journey is what we all work towards – both customer and company. And customers both actively and passively hint at what their ideal journey looks like. In order to craft the perfect journey, businesses need to see all the ways customers are communicating their wants and interests. With the right contact center software, business can track when a customer is interacting with their brand. Customer journey tools can alert companies as to the best way to steer the customer and help guide them through the journey.

"It's not about the destination, it's about the journey."

To successfully map a customer journey, companies need to have full transparency, starting with a customer’s initial interaction on the website. Companies need analytics that drill into all the nuanced actions a customer takes with indicators of when and where it’s important for the company to step in. Once a company has complete visibility of what customers are doing, they can use proactive outreach, and step-in in a relevant way, so that the customer feels welcome.

It’s not easy. Customers often don’t just linearly move through one channel when interacting with a company. They may call, email, text, chat, tweet or interact with a brand in numerous other ways. Customer journey tools must stitch together all these highly relevant touch points for a full understanding of the customer wants.

Why? Analytics fuel recommendations and become better prediction engines when they have all the data.

Without all the pieces, a company can’t see the full picture and their recommendation engine becomes flawed. The more data a company collects across channels, the easier they can recognize choke points and purchase obstacles.

Remember: Customer journeys have a starting point, but not an ending point. Good relationships require constant management, and that starts the moment a customer begins research on your website, and continues to influence their journey throughout their lifecycle.

To learn more about customer journey management, I will be speaking on this topic during a panel session at Enterprise Connect on March 29th at 1pm. The panel is being lead by Frost & Sullivan’s Melanie Turek, and I will join other industry thought leaders to answer key questions such as:

• How are contact center vendors and their clients handling analytics?
• What measurable results have companies deploying customer journey software seen?
• How easy is it to embed customer journey management solutions into an existing deployment?

I’m looking forward to discussing this topic with other industry leaders and learn from their take on experience with customer journey management in contact centers.

###