Your customers are accessing information about your business at all times.
Be it through your website, mobile app, or social media platforms, they are browsing through to know you better.
But are you delivering a consistently remarkable experience across all the platforms?
If your customer support team is manually on it, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers.
That’s where selecting a customer experience orchestration platform that engages and retains customers is crucial.
While there are a lot of tools out there, here are some parameters that will help you choose the right one.
How to choose a customer experience and journey orchestration platform
There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to selecting from the best CX orchestration platforms. You need to conduct a thorough analysis based on your business needs, compare the available options, test the ones that pass your requirements, and make a decision.
Let’s dive deep into all these parameters to ensure you put your money in the right tool!
Understanding business needs
What business objectives are you trying to achieve by enhancing the customer experience? Dwell on this question and get clarity on what you need to achieve—for example, improving customer retention rates, boosting revenue, or expanding market share.
Once you have clarity on your objectives, identify your customers’ everyday challenges. They might need help with consistent service across multiple channels such as email, WhatsApp, websites, or social media interactions. Or they might need more personalization as your communication is too generic. Go over all such areas and list the challenges you need to address.
As you work on these challenges, set KPIs to measure the results of your efforts. For example, if customers experience inconsistent communication across various channels, keep track of the channel switching and omnichannel consistency rates.
Similarly, keep track of your average response rate if they struggle with long waiting times. Just like that, identify all KPIs you need to track for success.
Research and evaluation
Now that you know to what extent you need to work on your customer journey orchestration, it’s time to explore the available options. Go through platforms like G2 and Capterra to get a list of the best CX Orchestration Solutions. During your research, compare the features and look for top features such as:
- Omni-channel capabilities
- Customer data integration
- Journey mapping and visualization
- Automation and orchestration
- Personalization and segmentation
- Real-time analytics
- Collaboration and workflow management
- Scalability
While browsing through platforms like G2, review the detailed reviews left by verified customers. You will better understand whether or not a particular CX orchestration platform is for you.
Here’s how brief and precise these reviews are:
Going through the list of best customer journey orchestration platforms will help you here as they clarify the available features and suitability. Similarly, you can read case studies of successful implementation to see if the tool remains beneficial in addressing your specific challenges.
Integration capabilities
Businesses use several tools for building customer relationships (CRM systems), marketing automation platforms, analytical tools, content management systems, and more. If all these systems function separately, you must manually insert crucial information.
That becomes a hurdle we need to avoid by choosing journey orchestration software capable of integrating with various tools and technologies. With this, the platform can easily leverage data and insights from multiple sources, automate processes, and deliver personalized customer experiences.
Scalability and Flexibility
Your business grows and evolves as you progress further with the right tools, technologies, and strategies. The tools you use must be able to scale with your scaling business needs. When selecting customer experience orchestration platforms, note that the volume of customer data, interactions, and complexity will expand with time.
Let’s say you have an eCommerce business with limited product catalogs and a small customer base. After proper CX orchestration platform comparison, you choose a platform that personalizes the customer experience, enhances the purchase journey, and improves conversion rates.
Initially, the platform works excellently at handling the data and interactions, providing personalized recommendations, and providing seamless cross-channel experiences. As your business continues to perform better, there will be an increase in customer data volume, additional channels and touchpoints, complex customer journeys, and possible global expansion.
To accommodate all these changing needs, the CX orchestration platform should be scalable, ensuring optimal performance during peak periods.
Go through their pricing plans and packages and compare the additional features of every upgrade. Choose the one that can accommodate a lot when the need finally arises. If not, you must go through the hassle of selecting a customer experience orchestration platform again.
AI and Automation
You probably have tons of customer data waiting for analysis. While your team members can efficiently handle it all, AI makes it more accessible. In fact, a recent survey of 1000+ customer service professionals revealed that 66% of respondents say that using AI positively impacts business performance.
Most of these professionals use AI to assist with their tasks, for instance, routing conversations to the right agent. All the simple requests that can be quickly answered are handled by the AI itself, which is becoming increasingly crucial as the survey revealed that 26%-50% of questions that agents get are basic requests such as the user number, account details, etc.
Instead, agents can focus on more complex or pressing issues.
Now that you know the importance of AI in customer service, search for a customer journey orchestration platform with AI capabilities that allow the platform to analyze large data sets in real time. This gives you more information on your potential customers, which ensures personalized communication across different channels.
The algorithms also give you a sneak peek into future buying patterns based on historical data analysis. It also simplifies your decision-making process by giving you contextual data categorized properly to help speed up the process.
You can easily send personalized messages, product recommendations, or modify pricing strategies to improve each customer interaction. Lastly, your team gets the time to focus on high-priority tasks as it automates repetitive tasks such as segmentation and campaign execution.
Vendor Reliability and Support
When you invest in a software solution, you will likely need assistance to get started.
The platform might have all the crucial features you need, but is customer support highly responsive? Do they respond to queries in minutes or weeks of writing multiple emails?
Reviewing these details and identifying how much these platforms value their customers is necessary. They should be reliable and helpful enough to guide you and help you make the most of every feature.
Also, sometimes, there are promises of feature upgrades, but verify whether or not they stand up to their promises. You can look for reviews online and ask on Quora and other online communities to get a clearer picture.
Cost Considerations
Look at the pricing part closely during the CX orchestration platform comparison. It helps you understand the platforms that fit under your budget and find hidden costs. Some platforms will give you clear pricing information and features included in them, while others give a custom quote.
Say your scale of operations is high, with complex customer journeys and an increased level of customization needed; you need to invest in a platform that caters to the same under your budget.
Different pricing models are involved here, and you can choose the one that fits the best. Some of them are as follows:
- Subscription-based pricing with a recurring fee based on the number of users, volume of customer data, and usage level
- Usage-based pricing with an amount set on metrics such as customer interactions, campaigns, etc.
- Tiered pricing with different tiers based on factors
- Custom pricing models that are tailored to your specific requirements
Carefully analyze each pricing model and choose the one that best fits your requirements in the present and future. If a platform seems suitable, request a demo or trial to get a better understanding.
Note that certain platforms charge additional fees for customization and integration to other tools and systems. They might also charge extra for data storage and migration, contract renewal, and upgrades. Consider all these costs when going through the best CX orchestration platforms.
User Training and Adoption
Some of the best CX orchestration platforms come with a steep learning curve. Your job is to catch the ones that require a high degree of technical knowledge. It’s safe to assume that not all of your customer service reps will possess that knowledge and require additional training. This increases the cost and the time spent adopting and implementing the platform.
Instead, look for a platform with an easy-to-use interface that supports quick adoption. You must also ensure the platform provides adequate learning resources and support in the initial stages. This could include tutorials, documentation, and other online resources explaining the various ways of using the platform.
Furthermore, if your team needs more experience operating such tools, go for the platforms with the most minor complexity.
Final Decision and Implementation Plan
Gain clarity on what exactly your business needs and the selected CX orchestration platform must cater to the same. Rather than rushing to decide, thoroughly analyze and read articles online. Use platforms that assist in making comparisons based on features, pricing, and customer support.
Taking all this into consideration, go for demos of shortlisted platforms. With that, you can select the right platform for customer journey optimization.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, one thing is clear— we need powerful AI and machine learning algorithms to deliver an exceptional customer experience. That’s what Radarr delivers, as it helps you understand your customers through platforms they generally use.
On all social media platforms, be it Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, no query or complaint goes unanswered. And it’s important to make your customers feel seen, heard, and valued if you are trying to give an experience they cannot forget.
Want to know more about how Radarr can help improve your customer experience?
