Elevating Your Customer Journeys in the Age of CX Innovation

Advanced data analytics and AI have changed customer experience forever. Not only has it provided businesses with a deeper understanding of customer behavior, but it has also given them the power to leverage these insights to deliver individualized experiences in real-time.

According to McKinsey & Co, customer-centric journeys have the potential to reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 percent as well as increase marketing ROI by up to 30 percent. Beyond that, they are proven to improve customer engagement, drive up CSAT, improve customer loyalty, and boost conversions.

By connecting all touchpoints and systems, businesses can deliver truly consistent and relevant omnichannel experiences to customers at every stage. Moreover, connecting touchpoints and systems helps to eliminate data silos and improve transparency across the business, allowing teams to see and understand data faster and more easily, using fewer resources and with less effort.

This is why so many of the world’s leading brands have already embraced an omnichannel approach, a move that’s enabled them to deliver seamless and consistent cross-channel experiences to customers and continue edging ahead of the pack.

Customers expect brands to anticipate their every need. To achieve this, businesses are adopting cutting-edge technologies that utilize AI to predict the path individuals are on and decide and deliver the next best action to serve them based on their unique needs.

Alex Thompson, Alterian’s Product Director, states, “Technologies such as Alterian’s Real-Time CX with predictive capabilities provide businesses a huge advantage. Using the power of AI, these platforms help businesses proactively address individual needs in the moment it matters most. This is critical to keeping customers engaged and moving along the journey towards their goal.”

By proactively addressing customer needs, teams can:

• Reduce costly calls to agents and encourage self-service actions.
• Solve problems efficiently before they escalate.
• Create more opportunities to cross-sell and upsell relevant products or services.
• Increase conversions and boost revenue.
• Improve customer loyalty, retention and CSAT.

Journey mapping is a valuable first step in improving any customer journey. By visualizing the journeys that you think your customers are taking, you and your team get a more holistic view to analyze rather than looking at events in isolation.

This makes it easier to identify new opportunities, make strategic CX decisions with confidence, and tailor journeys to different needs.

The more you know about your customers, the better the experience you can provide them. Harnessing the vast amounts of customer journey data that is available is key to achieving this goal. Three key steps to doing this:

1. List out the different data touchpoints you have.
2. Identify the data that will help you to better understand your customer journeys, along with their formats and where it is captured. Be sure to include things such as demographic data, behavioral data, and interaction data.
3. Use advanced data analytics tools like Customer Journey Analytics with AI to rapidly collate and analyze cross-channel journey data at scale. Customer Journey Analytics enriches journey maps by providing more accurate data and allowing better understanding of actual behavior.

Armed with these valuable insights, you can more easily identify patterns, trends, and friction points and fix critical issues, optimize customer journeys, and improve overall results.

Unify the customer experience across all channels by incorporating technologies like Customer Journey Orchestration into your tech stack. These solutions leverage AI to deliver personalized and meaningful interactions regardless of how your customer engages with your brand.

When choosing any sort of solution, look for ones that can easily integrate with your existing tech stack and are able to complement and enhance its capabilities. Ask what out-of-the-box integrations they have and what connectors they have that can reduce the resources needed to integrate with your existing setup.

You can set up the technology, but if your team doesn’t believe in what you’re working to deliver, true success will never be achieved. Ensuring leadership is aligned on business and CX goals and getting their buy-in is vital to creating and maintaining a customer-centric culture. Leaders need to be advocates for customer-centricity, embodying the values of exceptional customer experience and championing them throughout the business.

Not only does this mean leading with conviction, but it also means making the effort to break down departmental silos and encourage cross-functional teams to collaborate on customer-focused initiatives that solve customer challenges.