Sustained innovation and development: Effective customer journey management

Most brands place a high focus on providing excellent customer experiences because they know that consumers appreciate their complete shopping experience in addition to the goods or services they buy. Delivering on this promise, though, is frequently harder than it seems.

Throughout this series, we examined the cooperative elements of customer journey operations as well as the characteristics of effective governance. In order to maintain a fantastic approach to high performance, this post will cover how to continuously assess and improve it.

Loops of feedback:

Let’s begin by discussing the “engine” that will power your choices and help you determine what to put first in your pursuit of continual improvement. Because you have to have the information you need in order to keep improving.

A feedback loop functions similarly to a system that gathers pertinent data and information and arranges it so that your team or the tools you employ may use it effectively. This frequently refers to a next-best action, offer, or other kind of recommendation in the context of customer journey orchestration that will provide the best outcomes for the client and the company.

In addition to providing you with useful information, a strong feedback loop addresses important issues like the most effective way to contact a specific person or audience segment or the most alluring offers. Beyond basic reporting, feedback loops provide you with information that you (or your automated platforms) can use, frequently instantly.

The advantages of feedback loops

There are various advantages to having well-implemented feedback loops, such as:

• incorporating a scientific approach that calls for statistically significant data sets and a hypothesis into your customer journey orchestration job.
• combating the pitfalls of acting solely on anecdotal evidence
• gathering important facts and information consistently from a variety of teams and channels, some of which may not always communicate information on a regular basis but may nevertheless contribute to the orchestration of the customer journey.
• obtaining a variety of client data points that illustrate the customer journey in greater detail, highlighting potential as well as problems.
• delivering improved offers, content, and experiences to customers in real-time or almost real-time without the need for laborious internal review procedures, manual content development, etc.

Feedback loops provide you with the knowledge you need to respond quickly to real data, making them a crucial component of your efforts to continuously enhance the operations of your client journey.

Trial and error

Continually asking questions is a necessary part of improving. Here’s where things may occasionally become awkward since not all of our presumptions are true and not all of the inquiries we make will lead to better client experiences.

Nevertheless, it is imperative that businesses continue to foster an environment of experimenting without worrying about “being wrong.” As I’ve frequently advised my clients, experiments are never a failure as long as you learn something from them. While this holds true for all forms of marketing (and beyond), customer journey orchestration may be particularly affected.

The advantages of trying new things

You may count on the following advantages when you experiment well:

• Enhanced cooperation across frequently divided teams, which is especially critical for orchestrating customer journeys, where successful cross-channel team coordination is essential.
• Inventiveness in the completed task. Diverse teams working together produce fresh discoveries, and experimentation expands on that by allowing everyone to generate new concepts. Teams are free to attempt new things and be more creative and imaginative in their work when there is no fear of being “wrong.”
• Novel discoveries that have immediate use or can be extended to other business domains. The ability to take risks and attempt new things allows the company to adapt lessons learned in one area to another, which can be beneficial. Teams that experiment are forced to think outside of their “lanes,” which benefits everyone—even the customers.

Make sure the outcomes of your studies are integrated into your feedback loops. Because of how quickly innovation may happen in this process of ongoing testing, measurement, and improvement, a laggard in the industry can become a leader.

Creating a culture of experimenting can become a competitive advantage if feedback loops are in place. When combined with your customer journey operations and orchestration initiatives, it guarantees that your clients are always getting the greatest and newest concepts and techniques for connecting with them through the most pertinent offers, experiences, and content.

Agility:

Ultimately, what use are collaborative experimentation cultures and feedback mechanisms if your organization lacks the agility to adjust to the valuable ideas and insights generated by all that hard work? Agility is important in this situation.

These days, agility is generally required for a variety of reasons. However, there are a few things to take into account when doing something as intricate and interconnected as customer journey orchestration:

• New channels and platforms. One of the great things about customer journey orchestration is that it allows a brand to connect with its customers on the right platform at the right time with the right message. Because of this, as customer preferences change or new channels are made available, your teams need to be nimble enough to take advantage of them.
• New ways of working. There are also potentially new ways of work being performed, including greater reliance on AI-based tools to create work and even interact in real-time with customers, so make sure that you are evaluating best practices in how work is performed regularly.
• Determining what is working and what is not. Quickly determining what is working and what is not is a measure of agility. A key metric here is velocity — or how quickly work is completed.

Benefits of agility

When agility is done well, you will be able to rely on several benefits, including:

• Improved velocity of improvements and quicker fixes when something goes wrong
• Internal teams will offer up more ideas because they feel like things actually get done
• Customers appreciate quick and noticeable enhancements

When an organization is nimble and agile, it can take advantage of opportunities and often avoid challenging situations regarding its customer journey orchestration and operations. 

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