Customer experience (CX) professionals traditionally face 2 challenges:
- CX seems very qualitative at face value – which can make it hard to communicate the true impact of your efforts
- It encompasses so many areas of the business – because journeys are complex and non-linear
Customer journey mapping and orchestration are increasingly important and popular ways to tackle these challenges. They’re 2 techniques that help break down CX complexity and provide crucial evidence that investment is contributing to positive outcomes.
But what’s the difference and which should you invest in? Read on for a quick comparison.
What is customer journey mapping?
Forrester defines customer journey mapping as “a methodology to deepen customer understanding, break down siloed behaviours, and inject customer thinking into the design process.”
Mapping gives you a bird’s-eye view of every interaction your customer has with your business – from first contact to purchase and beyond – across every channel. That way, you see the business from your customers’ and prospects’ perspective. Because mapping is a mechanism for better understanding and empathising with customers, you have the groundwork for more meaningful interactions and more profitable results.
However, many customer journey mapping exercises don’t live up to their potential because they lack essential content, use a one-size-fits-all format or aren’t translated into an effective communication tool.
Therefore, mapping is only the first step in understanding and designing better end-to-end experiences. To realise the full value, you also need personalisation and cross-channel integration to optimise each journey. And you need to be able to deliver that at scale – across the many journeys different customers have throughout their unique lifecycles.
Which is where customer journey orchestration comes in.
What is customer journey orchestration?
Having your map is all well and good, but in reality you’re dealing with siloed systems and disparate data. This means you risk missing opportunities for engagement as you struggle with how disjointed journeys actually are.
Customer journey orchestration is a sophisticated yet simple way of managing all CX information spread across the organisation. It gives you a single source of accurate data from all systems and channels that feed into customer experiences. That way, you have a holistic view of how interactions work and what sequence they take place in – in real-time.
This ability to monitor and manage every customer touchpoint centrally is crucial because it allows you to:
- Personalise and automate at scale – so you can realise the potential of the customer journeys you’ve mapped
- Optimise journeys in real-time – so you have data on what is and isn’t working, and no customer is left behind
- Predict future behaviour – so you can proactively communicate why your brand is the best fit and head off any issues before they arise
You’re therefore positioned to deliver higher customer value and satisfaction (leading to greater revenue), together with streamlined internal processes (leading to greater operational efficiency).
You need customer journey mapping and orchestration
You need mapping to understand your customers’ complex, non-linear, often unplanned journeys – and what the ideal journeys should look like. You need orchestration to make those ideal journeys a reality (cost-effectively and at scale).
The 2 techniques go hand in hand, which is why you need a customer journey tracking approach that includes both.
See mapping and orchestration examples in action
Take a look at our free customer journey webinar to see how mapping and orchestration work together to deliver tangible value.
Experts will take you through:
- Best-practice customer journey mapping techniques
- How to gain actionable insight from orchestration
- Real-life examples of mapping and orchestration experiences
Watch now for these nuggets of CX insight.
