Brands Only Beginning to Embark on Customer Journey Management, According to New Winterberry Group Research

Research released today, “The Evolution of Customer Journey Management, For Marketing and Beyond,” finds the majority of brands – 58 percent – are not only struggling with customer journey management, but the approach is focused on the campaign level, while only 17 percent look holistically at the customer journey.

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The research conducted by Winterberry Group, looks at the prevalence and maturity of customer journey management – defined as a strategic approach to understanding an individual’s need in the moment, to meet that need as early as possible, and in the most convenient manner for the individual.

“It is rare to find a brand that truly understands the journey that a customer takes when they interact with a touchpoint,” said Charles Ping, managing director EMEA of Winterberry Group. “It’s even rarer that they understand the customer need or have the resources and capability to deliver a solution quickly and efficiently. This is the problem that customer journey management seeks to solve and, already, more than three-quarters (77 percent) of brands are turning to the application of customer journey management disciplines and technologies according to our latest insight.”

The research is based on interviews with customer journey practitioners and industry experts from the U.S., U.K. and Europe, as well as a survey of more than 150 senior brand marketers and marketing decision-makers focused on the customer experience.

Winterberry Group’s research breaks down:

• The components of Customer Journey Management, including Customer Data Management, Journey Analytics, Decisioning and Orchestration, Engagement and Personalisation, and Measurement and Reporting
• Use Cases ranging from Basic and Omnichannel Communications, Optimisation of Prospect Journey, Orchestration of Customer Experience and Abandoned Journeys, and Personalisation of Customer Service
• The State of Maturity in Organisations working towards customer journey management

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“Customers not only decide when, where and how they interact with a brand, they decide if they want to engage with a brand at all,” said Sunil Menon, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Customer Journeys at Adobe. “Brands that can leverage real-time data to anticipate customer needs and automate the decisioning required to deliver next best actions will build meaningful relationships with customers and be the true leaders of customer experience.”

“A persistent challenge for many CMOs is the transformation from channel-based campaign management to journey-based experience management – a change that requires new approaches to technology, people, and process,” said Petar Lafchiev, Director of MarTech Solutions, Merkle. “The tech part of this equation is easily solved today with the right software partner; the critical success factor will be how quickly CMOs evolve the ways their teams organize, collaborate, and operate within this new framework.”

“Marketing leaders today have the power to understand and shape the customer journey in a way that was unimaginable only a few years ago,” said Sydne Mullings, general manager – U.S. Central Marketing Organization at Microsoft. “Supported by advanced technologies, marketers can deliver a cohesive internal and external experience that creates more engaging campaigns, aligns consumer trust and engagement and drives business growth.”

“Consumers’ evolving preferences for how they access products, services and information are changing, which means brands need to be there — ready to converse,” said Jonathan Bean, chief marketing officer of Sinch. “To support this and meet the needs of consumers, companies need to focus on two-way communications. Sinch enables companies to truly converse with their consumers, and consumers can engage with the brands they love in new yet familiar ways via Sinch’s conversational API solution. This approach is proven to increase sales, reduce costs and enhance the overall customer experience.”

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