Human Experience (HX) Journey Orchestration | *Updated* [The New Science of Winning | Competing on Trust]

From hairline cracks, to gaps, now I'm afraid a widening chasm...?

Purpose.. would be something along the lines of ".. to close experience gaps, one at a time". As you can imagine, that's a never-ending 'journey' aka an Infinite Game. In another article (here) I explore the slight difference/nuance between Experience Design & Service Design; back story = we need to describe what's the atomicity, quantum of (each) dissonance/gap (or positively = Improvement Opportunities) within an episode, and in episodes within a journey. One's inside-out, one's outside-in: what the customer, client, citizen expects/perceives/internalises, diffracted from the rendering/delivery of that said 'service'. These gaps, hairline cracks create friction, inefficiencies, non congruency (differing messages across channels) and more alarmingly, erode Trust - if you sum of the positives, subtract the negatives (recall: each gap can be plugged, but the resulting creation/destruction of value could be accretive or destructive. For most purposes, we just label these gaps as... experience gaps. Remember, the journeys are intertwined across multiple personas, and can be transient, as defined by the 'job to be done' at that point in time. E.g. we don't all need milkshakes after the commute/drive to work/play.?

As we transpose these journeys, or simply just 'lay them flat' on their bellies and study the overlays, we may observe pain-points, gaps made persistent in several journeys, episodes; the concentration/density/weight of these gaps should become our focus areas - "one bird kill as many birds possible.". One reason why these gaps are sprinkled all over the place/journeys = silos. Departmental silos. Simply out, a journey transposed assumes detachment from silos, metrics and measurements (ops) within each dept could wildly differ - or to be more precise, be 'pointing' in opposite (think waves, troughs) directions. Let's give some examples e.g. sales folks 'sell'. Marketers 'market', customer service 'serves';; marketer r driven by acquisition, top line volumes - sales more on conversions, call centers, contact centres may be fixated on keeping CSATs up, AHTs and FCRs down - but each dept adopt localised metrics (of efficiency - haven't even discussed alignment across multiple 3rd party suppliers and FTEs). Then we have tech- the fixers, the platform that's pulled in all directions, busy plugging operational gaps (trouble tickets) across these depts/siloes, throughout the entire journey. You'd have thought these 'Customer360' type issues/problems from the 90s, epochs back would have been solved by now - but the fact is, life in episodes, journeys is a lot harder than we think - without delving further I'd simplify and say it's present-forward bias. How orgs were designed from years back, well we're still trying to get mileage from the 80s. We aren't putting the customer first in customer-centricity (beyond lip service) e.g. would you hang Customer P&L and journeys becoming a Journey-led Organisation? We've toyed with Segment centric structures, and I'd go as far to say it's a band-aid.. ok, 'middle ground'. Clearly, the pandemic now endemic has shone the light on these (hairline) cracks -- it's definitely a widening chasm -- if we don't make the jump onto the new/next S-curve we're done for. Actually, it's a time for renewal, reboot, much like the Internet weeded out quite a few of the icons of the industrial past, we will see the same in the next few years. This epoch we will witness the Low Touch Economy (subset of the Experience Economy) - those companies that don't make the hop will perish. This will be a time of extremities - everything is extreme, at the edges (of Empathy, of Trust, of instant gratification, hyper transparency etc etc). The laws/physics of the past will no longer apply..

On another point re: Journey orchestration. Some immutable laws. If we solve upstream, as far up as we can swim, the interventions/solvers have a broader 'catchment' area - while the efficacy to each gap may be constant - we 'catch' more of these cumulative downstream (remember, they persist in multiple journeys, episodes). Another way to think of it - ripple effect, much like a WiFi signal (if you can picture that in your head.. a small foci upstream will fan out and ripple across more % of journeys/coverage downstream).?

DeFi, NFTs of Experience

I imagine this to b 'far fetched' but I all (at least a growing proportion %) envision experiences to be cocreated, curated by consumers, customers, citizens..

Think a mycelial network, the fungi.. that plants transfer/share nutrients across a 'network' so wide, so far reaching. Imagine NFTs codifying the ephemeral, the artsy, the emotives - capturing the moment when a celebrity's debut, punk art from the heart, soulful musicians sharing a first lyric, poets with a sonnet -- it's infinite, the possibilities. Imagine how luxury/brands will be defined - each LV,. Chanel, Hermes personalised to the next level - literally every owner's valuation fluctuates - beyond just the embossing of names :) You will know how many DeFi designs are in circulation and when ownership is transferred. More importantly, the valuation(store of value) will be fully extrinsic vs traditional fiat/money. NFTs will redefine experiences, much like DeFi and crypto has transcended corporate finance and regulatory bounds/limits - the credit cards of the 50s, the GFCs of 2008, the govts printing money etc etc. The way our children perceive the/their world has fundamentally changed; and they will experience it for themselves in a fundamentally different way - something we might not be able to perceive with present-forward lens. But with innovation, Jobs to done and Futureback, we catch glimpses.. ever more lucid as the events, milestones unfolds and eventuates.?

It’s clear that even our current/today's hyper personalisation (Ultra?) wouldn't be able to cope -- these constructs are again, present-forward (inching along the timeline vs walking the futureback). We have to come up with something - presumably next gen journey orchestration that moves past journeys, episodes and segments - it's going to be massive, quantum even. As in quantum computing.?

Every customer will expect to be treated as an?individual yes,?but more than that transient personas, personalities in real-time. Sometimes multiple jobs to be done. Everything is going to happen at the same time - to create even more tangled spaghettis of life journeys! I guess we could try to call it hyper/ultra individualisation vs personalisation of the 'past'.?

Every customer’s needs, wants will still evolve over time - just near infinitely faster (higher chaos - "everything you can imagine is real"), orchestrating these individualised journeys (of 1) would mean stringing together individual strains/within journeys, each transaction, interaction, experience (and act almost as a Trust reactor).??The principles are still the same, ie. the episodes/journeys are still canvases for all, continuum of interactions, transactions, experiences - just that the orchestration of these DeFi and NFTs would become more complex.?

So what is Journey Orchestration? Notice I refrain from classifying it Customer Journey vis a vis Employee Journey - it's my belief that these are more intertwined than we think.?

Maybe think of the evolution of customer-centric tech over the decades. There's a database, persistent storage (cloud or not doesn't matter). There's logic, processes that interacts with the data, workflows, job flows, automation, decisioning paths, computations etc. That gave us the middleware of the 90s, the messaging platforms of the early 2000s (+CRM don't forget!) and more recently, the CDPs, DMPs, agile/collaborative tech. Maybe to push the analogy further :if we say, combined the capabilities (decisioning, workflow, logic layers) Pegas, ServiceNows, with the X+Os, feedback mechanisms of Qualtrics, Medallias we'd get something close to journey orchestration tech. The verb is Orchestration, not Science or Analytics. If we be talking about Journey Science/Analytics (a sub capability) we'd have makes like Adobe come to mind. There isn't an exact fit or categorisation, but an amalgamation of these capabilities would give us Journey Orchestration.?

Let's give it a face: Journey Orchestration is a unifying platform (made up of people, process, tech) that orchestrates journeys (that are made up of transactions, interactions, experiences) - the fact that it breaks down silos is implied, as we talked about a journey being transposed on it's belly earlier. This generative platform provides individuals (not just customers) with authentic experiences across the multiple journeys, jobs that are DeFi and NFTs. Oh the other big thing - it's inbound. Not sure what word to use, but I described it as 'cocreate' self curate - meaning we're being less prescriptive and more responsive, kinda like my fav Bruce Lee Jeet-Kune-Do analogy (ok here it is again: were striking optimal, usually shortest distances with highest impact). This a paradigm shift. In fact, this is transformational. We are letting individuals concrete, self curate their experiences - on the flip side this means (as I've always lamented) that 'traditional' sales/service/marketing will cease to exist. This is the ultimate if you will, n-th level of customer-centricity (DeFi, NFT). This also means we become 'invisible' - embedded within life journeys more than ever. I explore that here.?

It's definitely going to be 'difficult' - as I mentioned the customer P&L, Journey-led org structure isn't 'natural' for most present-forward companies of today. I kinda think the great experience (dip, economy, low touch epoch) will birth new entrants - and perhaps they're better suited for the next S-curve. It's kinda like ICE vs EV. The great automakers of the past know very well they need to make the leap to EV years back - but profit intent and short termism doesn't make the move easy - now its perhaps (in my opinion) too late vs Tesla, NIO, XPENG etc. And bcos of the Experienceeconomy/low-touch, the EV first movers have at least built up a 10-15year moat/walled garden; that's almost insurmountable in today's what more tomorrow's economic climate.?

What's the So-What?

Journey Orchestration is still nascent, but will take it's place (next 2-3 years) as the 'new' Experience Management platform incarnate - observe the convergence from the existing tech players and incumbents in this direction i.e. next gen traits

• Individualised vs personalised, real-time, right-time- ultra contextual Trust catalyst/processor - this will become table-stakes/hygiene
• Transient, intertwining Journeys - laterally, shifting shape/form between say EX and CX/interchangeably, vertically synergies/sweet spots and commonalities between distinct journey strains
• High degree of complexity/chaos as it - data persists in all, some, sometimes multiple dimensions, journeys - therefore the 'logic' must be fluid and malleable to process -> interpret -take action/execute -> feedback loop/iterate
• Experiential data, foundational fabric spanning new/newer spectrums and layers e.g. DeFi, NFTs (over and on top of the structured, unstructured, dark forms that we've not even exhausted today
• Connectivity across ecosystems, connecting across life journeys, with heightened 'invisibility' or so deeply embedded it's seamless.?
• Self learning, adaptive, precognition capabilities - closer and closer to being 'self aware' re: high complexity of life journeys (twists and turns)
• I'm not going to talk about the underlying L2 and L3 tech capabilities like workflows, decisioning, data repository, interfaces etc.

But the impact runs even deeper.?Shifting from a traditional siloed approach to looking at?journeys, episodes?–?across?different departments?– has a breadth of commercial benefits, from reduced ‘cost to serve’, to employee engagement - if you realise, all these are just value realisation accrual at different levels e.g.?

Reduced cost to serve << faster AHT, Higher FCR, ops KPIs << next best action, real-time recommendations, "live" agents NLP [There will be an array of these use cases] - but not all are plausible interventions across all journeys. I guess finding a bunch of journeys with a higher density of 'gaps' would be a good start where to apply/intervene.?

It's hopefully quite clear now that Journey Orchestration is omni-channel. Actually that's not precise. It's channel or touch-point agnostic. Journeys are inherently omni (as they should be) as the primary focus is on needs/wants. What's not so intuitive is that in the optimisation of it all - certain 'channels' might not receive as much 'love' - a common fallacy that low hanging fruits for CX programs should start with the digital experiences. That's going to take me another few articles to discuss. But in summary, Journey Orchestration is holistic and inclusive - remember it's the customer/citizen 'inbound' DeFi NFTs experience, they cocreate, self-curate..

This is a powerful concept with the ability to evolve long-standing KPIs.?

To expound of the discerning traits of Journey Orchestration - breaking down silos. Actually it inverts what we know about sales, service, marketing - the very same org structures of the 'past' that we have been sweating for over a good half of a century. I argue that's too much 'baggage' for us in the new S-curve - that the hop won't be possible unless we jettison these outdated constructs and start afresh (Journey-led Org).?

In summary, we reap benefits and break even with Journey Orchestration right out the gate - today. Cross-sell, upsell conversion ratios improve, call center operational metrics go up, vanity metrics, branding scores, benefit. In reality, all these roll up to a singular, meaningful measure = build Trust. It's a Trust engine, processor - in a brave new DeFi, NFTs world.?

Since 2020, there's been a few articles and report spouting the benefits of Journey Orchestration - Forrester, Gartner etc. e.g Forrester in In its June 2020 Report,?Journey Centricity: Learn from The Leaders (by Joana de Quintanilha), Forrester describes how “Journey centricity leads to higher revenue, reduced costs, and better CX”. The report cites “forward-thinking companies like Bank of Montreal (BMO), The Economist, E.ON, and Lloyds Banking Group…shifting their focus away from channels and touchpoints and toward journeys instead”. Similarly, The Boston Consulting Group?finds?that scaled journey transformation can improve advocacy 20-40%, reduce cost-to-serve by 15% and 25%, and increase revenue between 10 and 20%.

Not doubting any of those factoids - just that IMHO - those are still very 'present forward' in nature - doesn't sound too far from the metrics, engagement levels we've heard in the past 5-10 years. I reckon we should push our thinking further, farther into the distant future. We should start swimming further upstream and reimagine, reboot what Experience Management even is in say, the next 10-15 years. Needless to say, the time decay is hastening (with the pandemic), the gamma, theta factors all crater. In other words, humans are (a) more connected than ever (b) Trust is bucking the down-trend (c) design, human-centred design is sorely lacking - and it's the one thing we need to practise Extreme Empathy.?