Increase Customer Lifetime Value and More by Understanding the Journeys Your Customers Travel
July 27, 2015
Today, I’ll discuss how the insight gained by a better understanding of the paths your customers travel as they interact with your brand can lead to significantly improved business results and, ultimately, higher customer lifetime value.
This is the final installment in a three-part series covering the benefits of customer journey analysis, while also sharing an overview of IBM’s upcoming Journey Analytics solution. My first two posts provided a foundation of why understanding the customer journey is so critical and how this insight can be transformed into superior customer experiences.
Part One: Analyze and View the Customer Journey over Time and across Devices
Part Two: Gain Insights from Customer Journey Analysis to Build Superior Experiences
Unique and Compelling Experiences Lead to More Loyal and Valuable Customers
Exceptional customer experiences naturally lead to improved business results, such as shortened buying cycles and increased loyalty, retention, advocacy and average order values. Path analysis in Journey Analytics will help you understand the role different channels play in reaching a particular outcome, such as purchase and registration and, just as importantly, when it’s the best time to use them to make a true impact. A clear picture of your customer’s journey over time will highlight key moments to improve their experience, as well as possible trouble spots.
For example, you may find customers who received a thank you email with a loyalty program offer after a large purchase were more likely to, not only take advantage of the offer, but to also make more repeat purchases moving forward. By knowing what to offer and when to offer it in the journey, you can craft unique experiences to make each customer feel special, creating more satisfied, loyal and valuable advocates for your brand.
On the other hand, you may notice a specific interaction often leads to customer attrition, such as a visit to the support page or a call to the help line. Armed with this information, the support team can step in at such moments and deliver a better experience to make things right. Or, better yet, they can identify a behavior pattern at a particular point in the customer journey where action is needed before the customer ever contacts support and take corrective measures.
IBM Journey Analytics will enable you to gain the insights necessary to thoughtfully and smartly interact with your customers, so that they receive a high-quality, consistent experience across all channels, at all times. The solution allows you to study the top paths customers travel in a variety of ways, including the most traveled paths, the shortest paths and the paths generating the most revenue. By studying these top journeys and working with your customer experience design team, you can purposefully design experiences to accomplish specific business goals.
IBM Journey Analytics Is Being Built for Business Users to Quickly Gain Value
Unlike many offerings in the customer analytics space, IBM Journey Analytics is being built for business users and marketing professionals. And, it’s designed to provide value as quickly as possible. Key interactions in the customer journey will automatically populate and be displayed in a highly-visual way. The idea is to allow business users to understand, at a glance, how customers are interacting with their brand. We are taking an open partner approach and focusing on quickly displaying data meaningful to decision-making. The solution will be a great asset for marketers, performance analysts, channel owners, creative managers and marketing operations planners. Of course, data analysts will surely gain insight and value as well. And, as covered in my last post, Journey Analytics will work seamlessly with IBM Journey Designer to ensure insights can be quickly used to develop better customer experiences by communication and collaboration with the design team.
Focusing on the Customer Journey Should be a Top Priority
Making sense of the complex journeys your customers travel is now necessary to deliver an on-brand, high-quality, consistent experiences at each and every touchpoint. That is what they expect and what you must deliver to excel in the marketplace. IBM is the only one providing solutions to help you fully understand the journeys your customers take.
Please stay tuned for more about IBM Journey Analytics as we move toward its launch. In the meantime, learn more here: ibm.com/newwaytoengage [Note: Link no longer active.]