We challenge you to name one sector where AI is yet to enter. While you bring out your thinking caps, trust us when we say, it’s everywhere. It might be at a lower scale in some sectors compared to others, but it’s there, especially when it comes to reaching and engaging your audience.
One term that often goes in hand with AI is personalization. And customer journey orchestration platforms are here to implement the same at scale. But what are these AI-powered customer journey platforms? This in-depth guide shall walk you through the same to ensure you are there for your customers wherever they look, just like AI.
What is customer journey orchestration?
Customers these days interact with brands in all sorts of ways—online, in-store, through social media, you name it. Journey orchestration is about keeping track of all those interactions, gathering data about what customers like, what they don’t like, and what makes them tick. Then, with all that insight, the brand can fine-tune the customer experience, making it as personalized as possible.
It’s efficient whether it’s recommending products based on past purchases, sending targeted emails with special offers, or even just making sure the website loads quickly on any device.
With AI lending a hand, brands can do this at scale, automating processes and predicting what customers might want before they even realize it themselves. Moreover, happy customers are likely to spread the word to their friends and family, bringing in even more business.
What can companies do with customer journey orchestration platforms?
As we know, customers interact with brands on many different platforms. Customer journey orchestration platforms work at unifying these interactions to convert raw data into actionable insights.
While customers enjoy a more personalized experience, brands benefit from improving key metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, customer retention rates, conversion rates, and more.
Here are some more areas AI-powered customer journey platforms help cover:
Help understand customer intent
AI tools are excellent at understanding customer intent as they use advanced algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data from various touchpoints. Based on the analysis, they identify patterns and trends that signify customer behavior.
For example, let’s say a customer browses through your website and looks for coats in various styles. He adds some to the cart but doesn’t make a purchase. The AI-powered customer orchestration tool tracks the browsing behavior, notes the types of coats he’s interested in, and how long he spends on each product page.
Using this insight, the tool sends personalized emails with discounts to entice the customer to complete the purchase. Moreover, as the customer abandons the checkout process, the tool helps optimize it, offering simpler payment options.
Create strong customer profiles
Customer journey orchestration platforms collect data by tracking browsing behavior, payment history, engagement with marketing campaigns, responses to personalized offers, and feedback provided through surveys.
With such a wide spectrum of information, it develops customer profiles that help in personalized communication. Therefore, brands can reach customers with offers they simply cannot resist.
Identify potential issues and suggest changes
Customer journey orchestration platforms continuously monitor customer interactions, which helps them detect patterns that indicate potential problems. For example, they catch it quickly if there is a sudden drop in engagement on a specific channel. Once they identify the issue, a root cause analysis helps find the underlying factors contributing to the problem.
Say there is a sudden shift in market trends or technical issues that leads to a drop in engagement. After finding the cause, relevant stakeholders, such as the marketing teams or customer service representatives, are immediately notified. It also suggests remedial steps such as a change in content strategy, posting frequency, or reallocation of resources.
Route customers to the right agents
Nothing annoys customers more than talking to a clueless agent when they are looking for a quick fix to their problem. Customer journey orchestration platforms categorize agents based on their expertise, language proficiency, and other relevant skills.
Incoming inquiries are then routed to agents that are best suited to solve the issue. It avoids the hassle of making customers wait till the right agent can take up their queries.
What are the benefits of customer journey orchestration platforms?
Customer journey orchestration platforms help customers feel understood, valued, and catered to, leading to increased brand loyalty. But that’s just one of the many benefits of AI in journey orchestration. Let’s look at some more:
Improves first-call resolution rates
Do you know that 38% of customers expect agents to know who they are and the context of their query as soon as they reach out? That’s never easy but customer journey orchestration platforms ensure agents have a detailed view of the customer’s history, including past interactions, purchases, preferences, and any ongoing issues.
With such detailed customer profiling, agents quickly understand the context of a customer’s inquiry and resolve it on the first call. Moreover, self-servicing options such as knowledge bases, FAQs, and automated chatbots help customers find answers to their questions independently, reducing the need to contact support.
Help agents perform more effectively
AI-powered customer journey platforms provide agents with the tools, insights, and support they need to deliver exceptional experiences. Agents don’t have to conduct deep research to understand customer behaviors and preferences better. They have access to a comprehensive view of customer data that helps improve customer interactions.
Skill-based routing in these platforms also ensure the right agents get to handle the queries. It saves time on both ends and helps agents deliver solutions efficiently based on their skills and knowledge. Moreover, these platforms also offer guided assistance to agents by providing them suggested responses and recommended actions.
Consistent messaging across channels
A brand should consistently deliver the same message across different channels too without any delay. If delays set in, you will likely offend the 75% of customers businesses often lose due to long waiting times.
Whether customers interact through a website, mobile app, social media, email, or in-store, they should receive instant and consistent brand messages and values.
In fact, customer orchestration platforms help synchronize conversations across various channels. For example, if a customer starts a conversation on social media and later switches to email or phone, the platform helps maintain and transfer the context of the conversation.
Ensures data-driven decisions
Customer journey orchestration platforms use advanced analytics techniques to identify patterns, trends, and correlations in different data sets. They also leverage historical data and predictive analytics algorithms to forecast future outcomes and trends.
With such vast amounts of data in their arsenal, brands can make decisions that create lasting impact. Such actions based on collected data lead to increased brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and repeat purchases.
What are some best practices in customer journey mapping?
Let’s now look at some best practices that will assist you in enhancing your customer journey maps.
Use AI for customer data analysis
Is your customer service team tired of manually analyzing vast amounts of data? Why waste their time when AI algorithms can extract valuable insights, predict behavior, and optimize customer experience almost instantly? Irrespective of the data volume, it analyzes historical interactions, purchases, and engagement metrics that may not be apparent through manual analysis.
In fact, AI-powered customer journey platforms also conduct sentiment analysis across various channels. Analyzing text, voice, and visual content can determine whether customers express positive, negative, or neutral sentiments.
Now, imagine how much your communication strategy can benefit when you dive deep into all these sentiments without scouring through social profiles on your own.
Involve customers in the journey-mapping process
Every communication strategy you devise is intended to connect with your audience on a different level. Customer orchestration platforms help with the same by collecting customer feedback across various touchpoints. You can use this feedback to understand customer perceptions, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.
You can also use these platforms to schedule and coordinate customer interviews. Selected customers can participate in in-depth discussions about their experiences with the brand.
Use predictive modeling
Based on the collected data, determine the areas that will most likely influence customer behavior or outcomes. This could include past purchase history, website interactions, time of day, location, or demographics. For example, predict the likelihood of a customer purchasing, churning, or responding to a marketing campaign.
Keep evolving your strategies
Of course, you are proud of the strategies and tactics you created. However, you must keep evolving your strategy based on the changing scenarios. Nothing can remain stagnant in this era, and AI power customer journey platforms can help you keep up with the changing pace.
Use them to understand your customers’ changing needs and preferences. Change your strategies accordingly and keep a clear eye on the results.
CX success examples
Let’s now look at some real-life CX success examples to give you an extra push to improve your customer journeys:
Lenskart: a unified website to in-store experience
Let’s get one thing clear— customers expect to be able to shift channels at any point in the customer journey. The eCommerce brand Lenskart does it right by creating a full fledged omnichannel digital experience. When customers browse their website, the pop-ups with offers and style guides motivate them to purchase.
Next, augmented reality gives customers the option to try their products virtually. As customers go to the physical store, the reps help them find the best fit per their past preferences. They cover everything from website to in-store and provide a connected experience that delights customers.
Starbucks: sending personalized product recommendations
The Starbucks app neatly personalizes the experience of coffee enthusiasts. When you place an order using the app, it suggests product pairings based on past purchases and browsing history.
This not only enhances the customer experience but also increases the average order value of the brand. The idea is to let AI take over and send personalized product recommendations at every point.
H&M: using a chatbot to enhance CX
H&M uses its chatbot to provide personalized fashion advice and recommendations to its users. Using NLP, the bot understands user requests and gives styling tips accordingly.
Their click-through rate was 8%, surpassing their email marketing click-through rate of 2%. This alone is enough to tell the importance of giving customers what they need when they send in an inquiry.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve really seen the impact of guiding customer journeys, Radarr is stepping up to the plate to make it happen. Teaming up with Genesys, a global leader in AI-driven experience orchestration, Radarr is taking its AI-based social and digital listening to a whole new level, promising your customers an experience they won’t forget.
While Radarr keeps an eye on every online chat and post, Genesys is all about meeting your customers right where they are, ensuring they get what they need every step of the way. Just think about the fantastic things we can achieve for your business when we handle both of these critical areas. Radarr’s deep dive into customer insights powers Genesys AI, ensuring you engage customers in all the right places.
Keen to see how the Genesys X Radarr team-up can make a difference for you?