Customer Journey Analytics – The Key To Understanding Customer-led Journeys The power of the customer today cannot be overstated. More than ever before, customer-centricity is the driving force in the performance and success of a business. It’s no longer enough to assume you know your customers. You must demonstrate you’re listening to their unique needs – and respond accordingly. Because people demand personalized experiences. If they don’t get it, they’ll find a competitor who does. Businesses must rethink the way they interact with customers, prioritizing customer-led journeys that are optimized to suit their behavior and aligned to their needs. The only way to make this happen is with customer journey analytics. Read on to find out more. Firstly, what is a customer-led journey? A customer-led journey is the actual journey a customer takes. As the customer interacts with a brand across different touchpoints, relevant communications are served up in real-time based on their behavior (e.g. where they’ve been, what they’ve been looking for, what channels they’ve engaged with). Unlike traditional brand-led journeys, which are predefined and based on what a brand wants a customer to do, customer-led journeys are totally guided by the customer and the experience is based on the decisions they make. No matter what, your customers are going to decide how they interact with your brand. It’s up to you whether you optimize these interactions to create meaningful journeys that meet their needs and support business goals. Customer journey analytics is the critical first step in allowing you to do just that. Understanding journeys with customer journey analytics Unlike brand-led journeys, customer-led journeys cannot be controlled. The customer is in the driver’s seat. However, using customer journey analytics, you can capture and analyze the customer’s real-time behavior, and make informed decisions to optimize their experience and achieve better outcomes. Customer journey analytics allows you to truly understand customers and how they behave, and provides the information you need to create valuable customer-centric journeys using real-time journey orchestration technology. Businesses that achieve this are better placed to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which leads to higher customer lifetime value and customers who place less burden on costs. Customer journey analytics works by: Monitoring individual real-time interactions and journeys that are happening between a customer and the brand. Listening and learning from all customer interactions and serving up insights on how to optimize outcomes. Helping you understand key moments in the journey and analyze how they affect KPIs such as cost, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Pulling together comprehensive customer insights to help you figure out why customers decide on a specific route. By demonstrating the true intent of every customer, customer journey analytics helps businesses better understand who their customers are, how they behave, and use these insights to their advantage. For example, using customer journey analytics, you could quickly identify the key differences between existing customers and prospects and use that information to optimize multiple journeys to improve acquisition and loyalty. It also arms decision makers with key insights to answer business critical questions and solve problems at speed. Examples of these include: What common customer journeys are we not aware of? How are customers interacting with our brand across multi-channels? Which channels are most effective in serving customers, considering cost-to-serve and NPS? How can we create a customer-led journey that drives the self-service experience to reduce cost? How can we improve our cross-channel experience and reduce churn? You can also easily identify breakpoints and friction points across different customer journeys and prioritize the critical issues that need action. It also helps to significantly reduce time and complexity in journey analysis, allowing teams to identify and understand hundreds of journeys in a matter of days rather than many months. Example case study For example, a leading bank utilized Alterian’s Customer Journey Analytics platform to efficiently analyze millions of customers and their journeys in real-time, and take immediate steps to optimize their experience. With the support of Alterian’s technology, they were able to: Identify breakpoints within the customer experience. Pinpoint the customer journeys in need of critical attention. Understand the true customer journey in the moment. Discover the customer journeys that offered the most value. Efficiently track more than 7 million customers, billions of interactions, and hundreds of customer journeys. Read more about their experience here. Customer needs are increasingly diverse, and predefined brand-led journeys are no longer enough. Businesses must embrace customer-led journeys, and ensure they are backed by an intelligent customer journey analytics solution that lets you track and analyze every journey in real-time and clearly understand your customer needs. Armed with these accurate insights, you can quickly decide where to prioritize resources and make CX improvements. Furthermore, you can accurately analyze current business goals and ensure they align with the behavior and needs of your customers. To learn more about customer journey analytics, get in touch with our team today. Find out why We are a Forrester Journey Orchestration Wave Leader Learn more about our Real-Time CX Platform