More than 10 years ago, the focus of marketing focused on how growth hackers can use the AARRR model (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral) to promote and accelerate the growth and development of enterprises. We once believed that as long as we attracted enough attention in the AARRR funnel, we could achieve satisfactory conversions.
However, today we live in an era of exploding contacts. In August 2023, Sences released a survey related to customer journey orchestration. The survey data shows that more than 92% of companies have observed an increase in the number of customers through digital channels in the past year, and more than 86% of companies have found that they have been facing New and changing customer journeys. But when asked about the actual implementation of corporate customer experience strategies, nearly half of the companies believed that the effectiveness of their strategy implementation was average.
This feedback highlights the urgency for companies to address user experience issues and reminds us that traditional marketing campaigns, offers and advertising are no longer enough. While these strategies exist in silos, the same cannot be said for the customer journey, which can go backwards, forwards, and across digital and offline channels.
Therefore, in this changing marketing environment, companies are re-examining the way they interact with their target audiences. We have ushered in a new concept - Customer Journey Orchestration (CJO).
1. What is CJO
The internationally renowned organization Gartner defines CJO as organizing a set of recommended interactions throughout the customer life cycle to respond to or create customer signals. Its essence is customer life-cycle interactive experience management, emphasizing personalized and consistent experiences across all channels.
2. Development history of CJO
The evolution of CJO can be divided into three stages. Each stage follows the changes of the times and provides solutions to the current core problems of enterprises.
In the 1.0 stage, that is, the pre-digital era, the mainstream touch points were concentrated in offline stores and branches. Enterprises mainly used traditional media such as TV and posters as marketing channels, and their interactions with consumers were more inclined to face-to-face or telephone communication. During this period, the customer journey is relatively simple, with a relatively limited number of steps between awareness, purchase, and service. Therefore, enterprises' demand for customer journey orchestration is relatively limited, and one-on-one interactions can already meet the quality and efficiency of interactions.
Entering the 2.0 digital era, transactional businesses have begun to migrate online. Enterprises interact with consumers through channels such as banners, emails, and online customer service. The cross-channel nature of the customer journey makes it more challenging to connect various stages of customer interaction. At this stage, manual processes start to be replaced by campaign management platforms, but this is used more for promoting campaigns rather than facilitating the customer journey experience.
Subsequently, with the advent of the 3.0 global era, traffic dividends have reached their peak, and transaction functions have been embedded in various touchpoints such as apps, smart TVs, and social media. The explosive growth of channels has ushered in new opportunities and challenges for cross-channel and device interaction. , enterprises have increased demand for omni-channel customer journey management, and have begun to deploy customer journey orchestration platforms to gain an in-depth understanding of customer journeys, realize interactions based on intelligent optimization, and provide customers with a consistent experience.
Figure: The development history of customer journey orchestration
Responsys (acquired by Oracle in 2013) first mentioned CJO in "The Rise of Marketing Orchestration" about 10 years ago, and its concept tried to separate the development of journey building technology and marketing automation technology. In the North American market, many marketers have at least 10 years of experience in event-triggered marketing technology, and the challenge they face is actually how to get more revenue from it.
We believe that there should be a transition to a marketing world that is primarily triggered or driven by real-time actions, and this will mainly rely on a relatively young part of the marketing field-CJO. To the extent that we can start with an activity at one end and move through a multi-step journey in the middle to individual interactions coordinated by predictive algorithms, this is what is called the “next best action.”
3. The difference between CJO and marketing automation/campaign management
Campaign management is defined as the process of planning, designing, executing and analyzing marketing campaigns, the key characteristic of which is to use an internal perspective of the company as a starting point to achieve corporate goals by communicating messages to the largest possible audience, usually within a predetermined time period , an organized series of tasks or activities to achieve a specific business goal or result, relying on pre-screened defined customer segments. This approach focuses more on efficiency, cost control and consistency.
Through marketing automation, campaign management can simplify and enhance the process of enterprise-customer interaction, thereby helping enterprises reduce repetitive tasks and improve the output of the marketing team.
In contrast, CJO is more comprehensive and advanced. It focuses on customer needs, feelings and satisfaction, putting customer experience at the core. CJO runs through all stages of enterprise-customer interaction, triggering and providing interactions for individuals in real time.
Journey orchestration runs continuously throughout the entire process, triggering in real time based on customer behavior. Unlike pre-arranged batch interactions, CJO focuses more on individual needs and goals. It describes in detail the customer's complete experience process from understanding the brand, product or service, to final purchase and use, and even feedback and recommendations.
Table the difference between customer journey orchestration and marketing automation/campaign management
4. The value of CJO
CJO brings a new and vital interaction model to businesses and audiences, designed to respond to changing customer behavior in real time, helping brands provide flexibility and adaptability. Incorporating CJO into business strategies brings many benefits to enterprises. McKinsey research shows that “if an enterprise can try its best to optimize the customer journey, it can not only increase the enterprise’s customer satisfaction by 15% on average, but also reduce customer service costs by 20%. At the same time, it can increase revenue by 15%.”
The results of a questionnaire survey conducted by Shence in August this year also showed that companies believe that the three greatest values that CJO can bring to companies are improving user experience, helping companies personalize products/services/experiences, and building customer-centric companies. culture.
Figure The three greatest values that customer journey orchestration brings to enterprises (N=403)
It can be seen that optimizing the customer journey is the key for enterprises to improve performance, enhance user experience and achieve success. Enterprises need to use CJO to connect the business processes of various touch points to create a consistent customer experience across all channels. Roland Berger also predicts that the importance and leading position of the customer experience department in enterprises will continue to increase in the future, helping enterprises to stand out in meeting personalized customer experiences.
At present, the market is gradually accepting the concept of CJO, at least in the North American market. Gartner's survey data shows that 94% of marketing technology leaders are planning or already implementing journey orchestration in the next two years, and 55% of them believe that this will It is the key task that they most urgently need to solve in 2023.
However, there are still many businesses that are struggling because building these journeys is not easy. Many marketers think they need to build complex and huge multi-step journeys, when in fact, it is more important to create more content and let algorithms figure out the path through the space of content and interaction, returning through multiple touch points. to determine which interactions are truly valuable.
So, what key issues can journey orchestration help companies solve? How do companies build an organization that is good at orchestration? How can businesses gain a competitive advantage from investing in orchestration-enabled technology? Please continue to pay attention to the Sensor Data CJO series of articles, so stay tuned!
Reference sources:
1. McKinsey "Customer Experience: A Growth Artifact in the Chinese Market"
2. Roland Berger "Foresight 2023 | Sharing key trends in the digital field: Customer experience and lean operations lead the digital future"
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