Customer Journey Orchestration: A New Approach to Customer Engagement
What is Customer Journey Orchestration?
A customer journey is a collection of interactions a customer has with a brand. The journey starts when they first encounter brands, for example, via an ad, and continues across each touchpoint until they subscribe or make a purchase.
However, like any trip, a customer journey needs a clear path. In the past, marketing and customer experience (CX) teams were different departments. Marketing took care of ads and customer outreach, while customer experience teams looked after the interactions that customers had with brands.
This arrangement often led to incoherent customer experiences. For example, marketing teams were often more concerned with pushing customers through a sales funnel at the expense of a better customer experience. At the same time, customer service teams weren’t always sure what marketing had initially promised the customers.
However, things have evolved in recent years.
Customer experience and marketing teams are joining forces to create a better experience across different channels, like email, phone, website, and social media. This customer-first approach is the best way to build meaningful relationships before, during, and after each touchpoint or transaction.
Think of a story that details an incredible journey. It begins with a protagonist who wants something. Their desire sets them off on a path towards that thing, where they encounter many trials and tribulations. They learn lessons, overcome obstacles, and, in the end, hopefully, get what they want.
A customer journey is just like this. They have a desire or need. It could be something simple like hunger or something more complicated like a product that helps make their lives easier or allows them to perform an activity more quickly or cheaply.
They set off on the journey to solve their wants or needs. In story structure, this stage is called entering the new world. In ways, the interactions that a consumer has with a brand are like the world of a story. They are the strange mystical forest, the inn that our hero stops in for the night, or the memorable creatures they interact with.
While each entity or location is a discreet thing, when stitched together, they make up a coherent whole. Customer journey orchestration is the process that helps build a cohesive story for the consumer. Collecting data and using it to drive the next stage of engagement helps brands drive a new type of customer engagement by predicting what customers need and when they need it.
Previous attempts to drive customer journeys relied on marketing teams supposing that customers take a linear path when engaging with brands. These narratives begin with brand awareness and continue as the customer inches closer through interest, decisions, and ultimately, an action to buy or subscribe.
This process supposes that each customer is the same. Additionally, it suggests each journey is similar. However, with lots of different platforms and channels out there, it’s evident that how a customer interacts with brands is personal.
Some people don’t need a lot of convincing, while others need to access a lot of information, customer reviews, and even different prices points before buying a product or service.
Modern customer journeys need to be orchestrated. Brands need to understand that engagement happens across different teams and departments. Each interaction needs to feel meaningful, or the customer is thrown off course.
A customer needs 8–10 touchpoints to convert depending on who you believe. These touchpoints can be spread across a wide range of channels. For example, your initial advertisement, influencers, customer services, your website, social media, customer reviews, etc. As Mckinsey explains “Failure to optimize digital channels may result in underperformance”
The upshot of all of these channels is the rich and complex data they create and the opportunities they provide.
Journey Orchestration Example and Case Study
There are several good examples of brands that use journey orchestration. One of these brands is the hotel chain called the Marlton.
The hotel has installed and positioned beacons throughout its hotels. They can be found in areas like:
● Reception
● Each floor
● Restaurant
● Pool
● Gym
As customers walk near each beacon, they are greeted with a personalized message in real-time. For example, when a customer enters the lobby, they receive a welcome message (if they haven’t been sent a message in the previous 24hrs).
The application first checks if the customer is a loyalty member. Then:
A) If they aren’t, it sends them an email to offer them loyalty membership.
B) If they are already a loyalty member, the application checks if they have an existing room reservation.
● If they don’t have a reservation, it sends them a push notification with room rates.
● If they have a reservation, they are sent a welcome notification, and if they enter the restaurant within the next few hours, they are sent a push notification with a meal discount.
This is a simple example of journey orchestration where the customer actions define what information they receive. In this case, by using beacons, brands can serve helpful, real-time information to their clients when they need them.
Instead of the client needing to approach the desk or company website, they are served behavior-dependent information.
Of course, while this use of journey orchestration takes place in a physical location, these methods can be used in purely digital environments like eCommerce stores, travel websites, mortgage applications, car insurance, and almost every other commercial interaction you can think of.
Why Journey Orchestration Works for Brands and Consumers
As explained in one of the Mckinsey’s reports:
Whether relying mainly on in-house or external talent, gig-style staffing models — when managed carefully — could give customer care the horsepower and flexibility it needs for today’s increasingly volatile markets.
Customer expectations are high. They expect brands to be able to solve issues and queries instantly in a personalized way. They want the companies they deal with to remember their preferences and the context of their interactions with brands. In short, they want engagement and communication to feel dynamic and meaningful.
For brands, switching to a customer-centric approach has lots of benefits too. If consumers have better experiences, they are more likely to become loyal customers or brand advocates. But beyond customer retention, journey orchestration also helps brands get better results from the marketing efforts.
Here are some of the reasons why Journey Orchestration works for brands and consumers.
#1. Better Interactions
Customer service is one the most critical parts of the Customer Experience. Resolving issues promptly and satisfactorily helps retain users and strengthen loyalty and bonds. However, some of these interactions also present an opportunity to upsell products.
Sometimes the solution to a particular product is a premium upgrade. Customer Journey data helps your brand judiciously recommend products based on customer needs, history, ads, or other behavior.
#2. Dynamic Marketing
Marketing automation can be ill-timed and unwelcome at specific points. If you have a customer that is having a bad experience, an email promoting your service can seem tone-deaf and cause an adverse action.
Customer Journey Orchestration gives you control over what emails and offers your customers receive based on where they are in their journey.
#3. Custom Offers
Customer Journey Orchestration works because it has a good understanding of who each customer is. A small token like a discount coupon can resolve issues when things go wrong. However, some matters require more surgical intervention.
By understanding your customers and analyzing their behaviors, you can make meaningful offers based on their preferences or previous communication. By integrating the entire customer lifecycle, you can make offers that drive loyalty and resolve issues.
#4. Prevent Negative Reviews or Social Media Reports
Reports and comments on social media can have a damaging effect. By connecting various communication channels, brands can understand which customers are expressing their unhappiness on Twitter, Instagram, and more. For example, social listening means that you can identify situations where people feel customer care is unresponsive.
Additionally, it allows you to intervene in or prioritize specific cases and swiftly resolve them. These actions can help you keep customers by improving their experiences.
How to Implement Journey Orchestration
One of the most powerful ways to implement Journey Orchestration is through Adobe’s Journey Orchestration service. It’s built on the Adobe Experience Platform, and it allows brands to design personalized customer journeys based on their behaviors and preferences.
Some of the best features are:
● Using real-time events to trigger personalized journeys that anticipate customer needs
● Pulling together customer data sources (financial, behavioral, interactions) in real-time and using them to personalize engagement across several different channels
● Create maps for customer journeys to help deliver data-driven individual experiences at each stage of the journey
● Track customer journeys for progress and identify paths that work and paths that need improvement in the Adobe Marketing Cloud
Conclusion
The way that consumers interact with brands has changed forever. They want their interactions to be quick, seamless, and personalized — even across different channels.
Companies collect a lot of data on their customers. However, they don’t always know how to use it to improve customer experience. Journey Orchestration is the process of using customer data and interactions to drive personalized journeys that account for preferences and behaviors.
By mapping out dynamic journeys based on customer data, brands can provide a coherent experience across email, SMS, social media, outbound calls, etc.
Customers initiate interactions with clear goals in mind. Well-designed customer journeys help them achieve their needs with a tailored approach that considers where the customer is on their journey. Get it right, and customers will feel seen and heard in their journeys to find the things they want and need.
