Customer journey management

Graphic abstractly depicting a customer journey

What is customer journey management?

Customer journey management is a common customer engagement practice used to optimize or manage interactions that a customer has with a brand across channels and touchpoints in service of a particular outcome. Desired outcomes can include sales, retention, nurturing, customer service, and beyond.

What is the customer journey management framework?

Customer journey mapping

Identifies all the touchpoints and stages that a brand and customer can interact with along their path to a desired outcome

Customer journey optimization

Involves collecting and analyzing data on your customers’ behaviors and preferences and utilizing it to make their journeys seamless and relevant

Customer journey orchestrations

Facilitates the real-time, automated coordination of customer interactions across various channels and touchpoints to create dynamic customer experiences

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Why is customer journey management important?

Effective customer journey management builds customer loyalty, optimizes business resources and tools, and improves critical engagement functions like customer retention, acquisition, cross-sell and upsell, service, and resilience.

Benefits of managing the customer journey

Enhanced customer experiences
With effective journey management, brands can create dynamic, relevant, and contextually appropriate customer experiences that increase loyalty and encourage high customer lifetime values.
Improved customer retention
The customer experience is a high driver of loyalty. Meeting customer needs and expectations reduces churn and helps foster longer, more profitable relationships.
Cross-selling and upselling
Understanding insights and data about your customers along their journey helps to identify new opportunities to connect and meet their needs in the future.
Agility and competition
Brands that manage and adapt customer journeys effectively and quickly can better respond to customer needs and meet marketing changes, giving them a competitive advantage over those who can’t.

How does customer journey management work?

Customer journeys are now non-linear and simultaneous. The speed and variance with which customers move through channels requires artificial intelligence to activate real-time data and know when a customer is most receptive to each one of your messages, trigger outreach based on detected signals, pivot according to customer needs, or immediately intervene in the customer experience for time-sensitive matters.

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Build better customer journeys with real-time decisioning

With customer journeys becoming even more complicated, remove the guesswork with real-time decisioning.

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Best practices for customer journey management

Managing customer interactions across various touchpoints to ensure a seamless, personalized, and positive experience ensures that brands can significantly enhance customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value.

Centralize AI to break down silos
Centralize AI in your technology stack to dismantle data silos, enabling a unified view of customer interactions across platforms. This integration enhances marketing and customer engagement programs, significantly boosting personalization and efficiency
Combine predictive and adaptive analytics
Predictive analytics provides a solid foundation by identifying overarching trends and patterns. Adaptive analytics builds on this by continuously refining and updating these predictions with real-time data.
Leverage real-time personalization
Use data insights to deliver personalized content and recommendations that resonate with each customer’s preferences and history in real time, offering solutions and support exactly when needed.
Measure results
Never sacrifice long-term growth for short-term revenue. Set clear key performance indicators that measure both. These include customer lifetime value, customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, and conversion rates.

Who is responsible for improving the customer journey?

Customer experience (CX) team

Oversees the entire customer experience, mapping out journeys, identifying pain points, and proposing improvements

Marketing team

Responsible for understanding customer needs and behaviors, and delivering programs to reach target audiences

Customer service and support

Manages interactions with existing customers, addresses their concerns, and provides after-sales support

IT, data, and analytics teams

Provide the necessary technological support to integrate various data sources and implement tools like CRM systems and AI analytics.

Personalize every interaction with Pega Customer Decision Hub

As customers engage, Pega evaluates all your options in real time, then selects the next best action.

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Frequently Asked Questions about customer journey management

Changes in customer behavior or preferences can significantly impact the effectiveness of a company's management strategy. To adapt to these changes, businesses need to be flexible and responsive. From continuously monitoring market trends to collecting direct feedback from customers, businesses can gather insights into their customer base and adapt their market strategy accordingly.

In particular, the management strategy for overseeing and improving the customer journey in Pega Customer Decision Hub™ watches for changes in customer behavior or preferences by using AI and analytics. The system continuously collects and analyzes data on customer interactions, preferences, and behaviors. This data is used to update and refine the customer journey strategy, ensuring that it remains relevant and effective. By incorporating real-time insights into customer behavior and preferences, the management strategy can dynamically adjust the customer journey, personalize the next best actions, and deliver a more tailored and engaging experience for each individual customer.

Customer journey management plays a crucial role in customer retention efforts by providing a holistic view of the customer experience and enabling personalized interactions at every touchpoint. By mapping out the customer journey and understanding the various stages and touchpoints, organizations can identify pain points, gaps, and opportunities for improvement. This allows them to address customer needs proactively, deliver relevant and timely communications, and provide a seamless and consistent experience across channels. By delivering personalized and engaging experiences throughout the customer journey, organizations can enhance customer satisfaction, build loyalty, and increase the likelihood of repeat business.

Additionally, customer journey management enables organizations to track and measure customer interactions, gather feedback, and analyze customer behavior and preferences. This data-driven approach helps organizations identify trends, patterns, and opportunities for further optimization, allowing them to refine and enhance the customer journey continuously to meet evolving customer expectations and drive long-term customer retention.

Customer feedback is a valuable source of insights that can be incorporated into customer journey management. Organizations can collect feedback through various channels such as surveys, social media, customer support interactions, and online reviews. This feedback is then analyzed and used to identify areas of improvement, understand customer preferences, and address any pain points or issues in the customer journey.

Customer feedback can be incorporated into the management of their journey in several ways, including:

Identifying specific touchpoints or stages in the journey that need improvement or enhancement
Informing the development of personalized and relevant communications and interactions throughout the journey
Driving continuous optimization of the customer journey

Overall, incorporating customer feedback into customer journey management helps organizations create a customer-centric approach, improve the customer experience, and build long-term customer loyalty.

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