Put Customer 360 in the Driver’s Seat for Customer Journey Management

Customer 360 and Customer Journey are joined at the hip. Learn how to utilize insights from your Customer 360 program to guide the diverse routes of your customers’ journey.

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine,” says Jim Barksdale, Netscape’s CEO. It’s a quote that often comes to mind when in the midst of discussing Customer Journey Management (CJM) — documenting the steps consumers take during the buying process. Many brands rely on perceptions, rhetoric, opinions, personal bias, and (some) data to understand and manage customer journeys. But you cannot pre-determine the path nor timeline for when and where consumers experience key moments during the buy cycle.

No two consumers follow the same journey. Learn to let the signals that you receive from your customer/prospect data dictate how your brand manages customer journeys.

Let’s demystify how a well-planned and executed Customer 360 (C360) strategy — centralizing pertinent customer data to derive actionable insights — helps lead the way for an always-on customer journey management experience.

Different Customers, Different Paths

CJM is a two-way street: you reciprocate to the signals you receive from customer interaction at various touch points to help them seamlessly navigate through different stages of their journey with your brand. The five stages of the customer journey (Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Retention, and Advocacy) remain relevant. However, customers will design and follow their own path along their buy cycle with your brand.

Here’s an example of two different customer journeys:

The image is a depiction of two customers and their hypothetical path to conversion. Let’s say both these potential customers become aware of your brand’s products and services on the same day. However, while both start at the same awareness threshold, Customer 1 takes a much shorter time to convert than Customer 2. Note that modes of interaction, such as devices and channels, also differ.

After day 15, persisting with pre-conversion communications to Customer 1 not only will NOT elicit any influence on the decision-making process but may also potentially negatively impact their experience with your brand. To continue to add value and meaning to Customer 1’s experience, they need to be treated with post-conversion messages. However, Customer 2 needs further pre-conversion messages, such as additional product/service information and/or incentives such as promos or discounts, to complete the buy cycle.

Forcing these two customers to standardized treatments along a brand’s predetermined journey leads to misalignment as to how, when, and where they experience key moments, thereby rendering such treatments less relevant and less impactful. This causes friction between customers and your brand, negatively affecting their overall experience and satisfaction.

But if you let your customers decide when and where their key moments occur and treat them with right communications accordingly, the opposite will occur, leading to better customer experience and therefore happier customers.

To optimize the success of CJM, your company must be ready to read different signals from various customer interactions, touchpoints, and juxtaposition messages at a point uniquely determined by your customer’s readiness to receive these key messages and next best-action treatments.

An effective CJM is dependent on the C360 strategy. A well-implemented C360 strategy creates a holistic view of, and provides you with, actionable insights to segment and proactively tailor communications relevant to your customers’ key moments with your brand.

Components of C360 Strategy and Implementation

Einstein’s words, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted,” remain relevant to our world of data today. The volume of data every company collects is unimaginably large. Just because brands have all these data points doesn’t mean we need it all to create an effective C360.

Every effective C360 strategy and implementation must exhibit some basic signature strengths:

• Strategic Alignment: Data is universally used across the organization. C360 not only aids marketing teams but it also aids decision-making and operational efficiencies across multiple departments including IT, Service, Retail, Finance, etc. Participation and agreement from all stakeholders on business objectives, intent, and outcomes for C360 is a critical first step.
• Data Collection & Centralization: “Selective” customer data points necessary for achieving business objectives and outcomes must be centralized in one platform. This includes data collected from various touch points including online and offline sources, as well as those collected prior and those you will collect in the future. This platform will act as the central source to create and promote data access and democratization throughout the organization.
• Profile Unification: Application of automated and dynamic identity stitching and resolution to create a complete view of the customer is vital to the C360 creation and implementation.
• Insights Derivation: Deriving and acting upon insights from customer data relies upon robust analytics and data science practice. Using these data-driven insights to facilitate the customer journey adds value to both your customers and your brand. Consider the example from Image 1 (above). On Day 15 of these two customer journeys, while you are still providing pertinent pre-sales information to Customer 2 to aid their path to conversion, Customer 1 can be treated with post-sales information that they will value in using the product or service that they just purchased.
• Data Policy: It is the responsibility of every brand to ensure you honor the trust that customers place in you when providing you with their information. Every C360 strategy should define, socialize, and continuously monitor how an organization controls, uses, and manages customer data. These policies must ensure that data usage complies with not only legal rules but also ethical and moral principles.
• Data Literacy: To be truly a data-first company, data literacy across functions is a necessity. Using data to think critically and make decisions should be widespread throughout the organization. While the degree of data competency required varies depending on job functions, all individuals must be enabled to understand and act upon data.

Yes, there are several technologies that promise to solve the challenge of building C360 database. Remember however that not every business challenge needs a shiny new technology to solve it. Performing the right assessment of your current state will guide you in the right direction for finding the appropriate technology solution.

Let Data Guide Your Brand in Managing Customer Journeys

CJM without C360 assumes the risk that large groups of consumers tread somewhat similar roads on their journey, and as a result, treatment at various touch points can be relegated to standardized communications.

By contrast, a well-wrought and well-managed approach to C360 will allow the company to identify the right signals and actionable insights to both describe and prescribe the right communications. Let the insights from a well- implemented C360 be the champion of your brand by allowing you to enable an always-on customer journey equipped to add value to consumers at every interaction point.