Part 2: Data and the Customer Journey

Yesterday I posted the first of a 3 part article on the Customer Journey . Today is part 2.

How is a journey assembled?

The customer journey, once a nebulous concept, has become a strategic imperative for businesses seeking to understand and optimize their interactions. But how do we assemble these fragmented insights into a cohesive map that illuminates the path to customer satisfaction and loyalty?

Demystifying the customer journey demands a strategic toolkit, packed with essential tools and methodologies. Let's explore the key components that empower businesses to map and optimize their customers' experiences:

• Data-Driven: CRM systems, web analytics, and surveys form the foundation. These gather valuable data across touchpoints, painting a detailed picture of customer behavior and preferences. Don't forget to layer on qualitative insights from surveys to capture the human element.
• Personas: Segmentation is key to personalization. By crafting personas that embody the unique needs, expectations, and motivations of different customer types at each stage, businesses can tailor messaging and interactions for deeper engagement.
• Tracking Touchpoints: From social media interactions to brick-and-mortar visits, meticulously map all touchpoints, both online and offline. This reveals friction points, missed opportunities, and paints a holistic picture of the customer's dynamic journey.
• Visualization: Transform data into a compelling story. Journey mapping software and visual tools create clear, concise maps that highlight key patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. This shared visual canvas facilitates communication and collaboration across teams.
• Collaboration: Building a successful map requires a fully aligned approach. Involve marketing, sales, and customer service teams to capture diverse perspectives and ensure a holistic, customer-centric approach to engagement.

Consider the following tools and methods as contributors.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: Track customer interactions and preferences.
• Web Analytics: Analyze website and app usage patterns.
• Marketing Automation Platforms: Automate and personalize marketing campaigns based on journey stages.
• Surveys and Feedback Forms: Collect direct customer insights.
• Journey Mapping Software: Visualize and analyze the customer journey across touchpoints.

The challenges however are not inconsequential.

• Data silos: Integrating data from different sources can be complex.
• Privacy concerns: Balancing personalization with data privacy is crucial.
• Dynamic journeys: Customer behavior constantly evolves, requiring continuous updates to the journey map.
• Attribution challenges: Accurately attributing conversions to specific touchpoints can be difficult.

Barriers to a Unified Journey

Looking deeper into the barriers for a successful customer journey identification and mapping initiative we find the most common issues needing to be addressed.

• Data silos and fragmentation: Data often resides in separate systems across departments (marketing, sales, customer service), hindering a holistic view of the customer journey.
• Lack of unified identity management: Inability to identify customers across different touchpoints leads to disconnected experiences.
• Legacy technology limitations: Outdated systems may not be designed to integrate and share data seamlessly.
• Organizational silos and misalignment: Different departments may have conflicting goals and priorities, hindering collaboration around a unified customer journey.
• Privacy and security concerns: Balancing personalization with data privacy remains a challenge, requiring careful consideration.

You would be tempted to think that existing technologies utilized in the capture of journey data can be reused to perform the analysis and help build better, more accurate maps.? The reality however is that there are shortcomings, even with the most popular and widely used products in this space.

Existing technologies and their shortcomings:

• CRM systems: Primarily focus on managing sales activities, often lacking features for marketing and service interactions.
• Marketing automation platforms: Focus on campaign management and lead nurturing, but may not integrate well with other systems.
• Customer service platforms: Designed for case management and resolution, but may not track the complete customer journey.
• Data integration platforms: Integrate data from multiple sources, but often lack advanced analytics and personalization capabilities.

What's needed:

To avoid the shortcomings of existing approaches, marketers should be encouraged to adopt and embrace a variety of newer technologies and programmatic ways of thinking.? The following are all coming of age and proving invaluable to those who’ve harnessed their power.

• Customer Data Platform (CDP): Provides a unified view of customer data across all touchpoints, enabling a single customer identity.
• Omni-channel marketing automation: Orchestrates marketing campaigns across channels, delivering personalized interactions throughout the journey.
• AI and machine learning: Analyzes data to predict customer behavior and personalize experiences in real-time.
• API-driven integrations: Enables seamless data exchange between different systems, breaking down silos.
• Cultural shift towards customer-centricity: Alignment and collaboration across departments to prioritize the customer experience.

It would be wise to also consider the following in your programmatic overhaul or new technology introductions.

• Focus on customer needs and expectations: Understanding customer pain points and desired experiences is crucial for designing a seamless journey.
• Data governance and security: Implementing robust data security and privacy measures is essential.
• Change management: Preparing employees for new processes and technologies requires effective training and communication.

Data Points Used by Marketers to Understand Customer Journeys:

As discussed earlier, there are a huge number of data points in play. Marketers leverage a vast array of them across various channels to understand customer journeys. Just some of the channel and data points are included in the list below, but it is far from exhaustive:

• Websites and Apps: Clicks, page views, scroll depth, time spent on specific pages, downloads, search terms, abandoned cart items, device used, location, etc.
• Email Marketing: Open rates, click-through rates, link clicks, unsubscribes, email forwarding, etc.
• Social Media: Likes, shares, comments, mentions, hashtags used, reactions to specific content, etc.
• Paid Advertising: Impressions, clicks, conversions, cost-per-click, demographics of ad viewers, etc.
• Customer Service: Support tickets, call recordings, chat transcripts, resolution times, customer satisfaction surveys, etc.
• CRM Systems: Purchase history, product preferences, engagement history, service interactions, etc.
• Loyalty Programs: Points earned, redemption history, engagement with program features, etc.
• Surveys and Feedback Forms: Direct responses to questions about preferences, needs, pain points, etc.

And yet still so much available data remains unused by so many:

While the list above covers common data points, several potentially valuable sources remain underutilized:

• Offline interactions: In-store visits, phone calls, physical events, etc.
• Social listening: Brand mentions across the web, not just on owned channels.
• Third-party data: Publicly available data sources like demographics, purchase history, and online behavior.
• Biometric data: Eye tracking, facial recognition (with ethical considerations).
• Customer sentiment analysis: Analyzing text and audio for emotional undertones and opinions.

Beyond privacy and ethics, the highest cited reasons for not using all the available data are data integration challenges and a lack of skills and resources. These barriers should be overcome at the first opportunity.

Industries that Care Most about Accurate Journey Mapping:

While every industry benefits from understanding customer journeys, some sectors place a higher emphasis on accuracy due to their unique dynamics:

• Financial services: Complex products, high-value transactions, and stringent regulations necessitate precise understanding of customer needs and risk profiles throughout their financial journey.
• E-commerce: Highly competitive landscape, short attention spans, and diverse customer segments require personalized product recommendations and seamless purchase journeys.
• Healthcare: Personalized care, complex treatment plans, and patient satisfaction demands require precise understanding of patient journeys across various touchpoints.
• Travel and hospitality: Personalized travel recommendations, dynamic pricing, and seamless booking experiences necessitate in-depth understanding of individual travel journeys.
• Media and entertainment: Highly fragmented audience, diverse content preferences, and evolving consumption patterns require accurate understanding of user journeys across different platforms.

Understanding customer journeys is a crucial aspect of modern marketing, leading to personalization, improved ROI, data-driven decision making, and increased customer engagement. While every industry benefits, those dealing with complex products, diverse customer segments, and personalized experiences have a greater stake in accurately identifying each journey.

But a word of warning to anyone embarking on this work.? There are traditional challenges that can get in your way and slow progress or muddy the results.? Data hygiene and timeliness of data.? You don’t want to do your work once and have the results skew over time or fail to keep up.

• Data accuracy and completeness: Ensuring data reflects real customer behavior and includes all relevant touchpoints.
• Dynamic journeys: Customer behavior constantly evolves, requiring regular updates to the journey map.

Transforming data into actionable insights that drive business decisions and improve the customer experience must be your goal but in an accurate, consistent and dynamic way.

I’d be remiss if I did not talk about one of the major changes affecting Customer Journey mapping, and that is the demise of the 3rd party cookie.? I just wrote about this the other day in my article “The Cookie Crumbles ”

The Demise of 3rd Party Cookies and Customer Journey Mapping:

The upcoming phase-out of 3rd party cookies will undoubtedly impact our ability to accurately map customer journeys. These cookies allowed us to track users across the web, building a comprehensive picture of their online behavior. However, the industry is already adapting and exploring alternative solutions.

Impact of Cookie Deprecation:

• Limited cross-site tracking: Without cookies, understanding customer behavior across different websites becomes difficult, restricting insights into multi-touchpoint journeys.
• Reduced personalization: Personalized recommendations and offers based on browsing history across different sites will be less effective.
• Attribution challenges: Accurately attributing conversions to specific touchpoints in the journey becomes more complex.
• Data siloing: Customer data remains siloed within individual platforms, hindering a holistic view of the journey.

Mitigation Strategies:

• First-party data focus: Companies are increasingly focusing on collecting and utilizing first-party data (e.g., email addresses, purchase history) from their own customers.
• Consent-based data collection: Obtaining explicit user consent for data collection and sharing can be used to build trust and gather valuable insights.
• Contextual targeting: Targeting based on website content, user demographics, and interests can provide relevant ads without individual tracking.
• Identity solutions: Utilizing privacy-preserving identity solutions based on email addresses or hashed identifiers can help connect data across platforms.
• Server-side tracking: This approach utilizes server-side data processing to track user behavior without placing cookies on individual devices.
• Advanced analytics: Leveraging advanced analytics techniques like machine learning can extract meaningful insights from first-party data and contextual signals.

Emerging Trends:

• Customer Data Platforms (CDPs): These platforms consolidate and analyze first-party data from various sources, providing a more unified view of the customer.
• Cookieless measurement solutions: New tools are being developed to measure campaign performance and customer journeys without relying on cookies.
• Focus on customer experience: Companies are shifting towards building deeper customer relationships and collecting data through direct interactions.

What More Can Be Done?

• Collaboration between industry players: Standardized approaches and data sharing initiatives can improve cross-platform insights.
• Transparency and user control: Building trust through transparency about data collection and providing users with control over their data will be crucial.
• Investment in privacy-preserving technologies: Continued development and adoption of privacy-focused solutions will be essential.

Conclusion:

The demise of 3rd party cookies presents challenges, but by focusing on first-party data, privacy-conscious practices, and advanced analytics, like Senzing 's Entity Resolution product, companies can still gain valuable insights into customer journeys and deliver personalized experiences. Collaboration, user trust, and investment in privacy-preserving technologies will be key to success in a cookieless future.