At the top of every modern marketer’s priority list is customer journey management. But what exactly is it? And why is continuously managing the customer journey so important? In this blog, we’ll tell you what it is and how to successfully manage the customer journey in five steps.
What is customer journey management?
Customer journey management is the continuous orchestration and optimisation of the customer experience. It’s all about mapping, managing, and improving the (digital) journey a visitor takes. This journey encompasses all interactions and touchpoints a visitor can theoretically have with your company. This makes customer journey management crucial not only for marketers but also for employees in other departments who interact with visitors and customers, directly or indirectly.
Successful customer journey management in 5 steps
The aim of customer journey management is to gain deeper insights into the path your customers take and utilize these insights to enhance the journey. But how does customer journey management work? Where do you start, and what should you focus on? We’ve divided the process into 5 steps.
Step 1: Map the customer journey using a CDP
To optimise the customer journey, you first need to map it out. The most effective way to do this is through a Customer Data Platform (CDP). A CDP gathers all the touchpoints visitors and customers have with your company and consolidates them into individual customer profiles. These profiles show you how they behave, what they click on, which channels they use, and how they progress through the various phases of the journey.
Step 2: Analyse the customer journey and define your strategy
The second step involves analysing the insights revealed by the CDP. What does the customer journey look like? What’s working well? And where are the opportunities for improvement? This analysis forms the basis for the strategy and associated use cases with which you optimise the customer journey.
Step 3: Ensure broad adoption of the strategy
To increase the chances of success, it’s essential that the customer journey management strategy is widely adopted within your company. Regardless of the department you work in or how much customer contact you have, every employee should focus on improving the customer experience.
Step 4: Monitor interactions and analyse results
After implementation, continue to monitor customer interactions and analyse the results of the adjustments and use cases. Once again, examine all touchpoints across all channels. Are there fewer queries to customer service after adding the info block? Are fewer customers abandoning their carts during checkout after changing the design? Has the average order value increased after adding personalised recommendations to the product page? The Customer Data Platform precisely tells you what works and what doesn’t, allowing you to continuously optimise.
Step 5: Monitor interactions and analyse results
The final step is to implement the insights gained from the analyses. Afterward, start the cycle again: monitor, analyse, and optimise. The customer journey is subject to change and influenced by external factors. By continuously working on it, you achieve the optimal journey that yields benefits in both the short and long term.
4 benefits of customer journey management
When you successfully apply customer journey management, you benefit from several advantages. The four main ones are:
- Greater insight into customer behaviour: by continuously focusing on the customer journey, you gain a better understanding of your customers’ behaviour, needs, and preferences.
- Higher customer satisfaction: a seamless customer journey leads to a better customer experience, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
- Increased conversion rates: the fewer potential obstacles a journey contains, the greater the chance of a visitor converting.
- Increased ROI: increasing satisfaction boosts loyalty, leading to a higher ROI (since retaining existing customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones).
Manage your customer journey effectively with Spotler Activate
Are you ready to incorporate customer journey management into your business strategy? With Spotler Activate, you can easily take the first step. The Customer Data Platform not only assists you with customer journey mapping but also helps you identify opportunities and optimally leverage them through personalisation tools.
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Our goal is to simplify customer journey management. Curious how we can help you? Book a free Spotler Activate demo!
