Customer Journey Mapping: Benefits and Impact of Analytics and AI

In this data-driven world where most of the industries are functioning concerning customer-demands, it has become quite essential for businesses to step into their customer's shoes and analyze their business from the customer's perspective. To gain such a level of understanding, they must go ahead with customer journey mapping.

According to Salesforce, "a customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience your customers have with you. It helps to tell the story of a customer's experience with your brand from original engagement and into hopefully a long-term relationship."

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

•  It helps businesses gain insights into common customer pain points.

•  They can improve the customer experience, and define what existing customers or prospective customers, need in order to complete a purchase.

•  Additionally, a map helps reveal issues with siloes in your business.

•  Customer journey helps businesses see where customers interact with their business

•  Through this companies can focus on particular customer needs at different stages in the buying funnel

•  The map shows businesses the gaps between the desired customer experience and the one actually received

•  It also highlights development priorities

•  Customer journey maps enable companies to concentrate efforts and expenditure on what matters most to maximize effectiveness  

Optimization Through Analytics & AI

Businesses must recognize that customer journey mapping is actually a way to gather information about their customers, that too in real-time. As more and more information will be gathered, more constantly they need to be adding new touchpoints, channels, and devices in order to harness ever-evolving data. This subsequently means that companies will need to make critical investments in data collection, management, and software to enable successful utilization of that data. According to Forbes, "Customer Data Platforms and CRM's from companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and SAS all have extensive capabilities in this domain. Also, there are a growing number of companies building comprehensive CDPs so it is important to do your homework when selecting a platform."

Moreover, research shows that 80 percent of customers are more likely to purchase a product if the marketing is personalized. Daniel Newman, principal analyst of Futurum Research and CEO of Broadsuite Media Group, said, "thus, the better we know our customer—not just how they're shopping but why, how, and where—the better we'll be able to personalize their experience and convert to not just a sale but a loyal customer. The data you capture through your comprehensive digital customer journey map will help you create solid, complex personas that detail more than demographics. They detail why the customer is buying what you're selling (or not). When used intelligently, that's the information that will help differentiate you from your competitors."

As we can observe the digital customer journey map is of no use unless companies have the platform in place to use the data and information they are gathering, and updating the map as new touch-points and technologies come into the limelight.

Moreover, Daniel suggests that the utilization of AI and Machine Learning to optimize data collection and performance are two key capabilities to enable the true personalization of the digital customer journey. He also recommends the following actions to get the most out of this mapping.

•  Businesses must invest in tools as data without tools has almost no value for driving customer value.

•  They must align their product information messaging across platforms as there are so many channels available today through which customers risk learning about their product out of context.

•  Adding the specific pain point, problem or issue to their digital customer journey map and proactively address it when possible can be beneficial.

•  Businesses should constantly work with their team to test their digital customer journey map and determine where new insights could be found or changes that need to be made.