Visualizing customer journey is at the heart of any CMO. Nothing makes a customer happier than experiencing a smooth and memorable journey during their interaction with a business. Technology has enabled us in creating unimaginable solutions, but creation and visualization of seamless journeys is still a challenge. Let's explore why.
Disjoint data & technologies
The number of marketing technologies are increasing at a rapid rate. As more and more people are trying to solve this problem, they are coming up with their own proprietary ways, not really looking at the problem from a holistic standpoint. Imagine if the Internet was created with that mindset! The unfortunate part is that the more innovative a solution is, the more disjoint and proprietary it tends to be! As a result, it's sometimes near impossible for marketers to seamlessly share user journey information between these powerful yet disjoint technologies.
Privacy concerns
Capturing important moments in the customer journey often requires the user to explicitly consent to provide more information about themselves, which is not easy to get. And the customer is not to blame in this situation. It's completely the fault of incorrect messaging, which unfortunately is happening 99% of the time. These concerns can be overcome if the customers are told clearly how exactly their information will be used. It's not about being transparent on what you want the customer to share but it's about being transparent on what you are going to do with their information.
Not all steps in the journey create true win-win situations
While every step in the customer journey is supposed to be seamless and create a beautiful memorable experience for the customer, it may not necessarily create a true win-win situation for both the parties – the customer and the business. Many times businesses intentionally create steps in the journey in order to upsell and cross sell items, which the customer may not necessarily understand or like. When that happens, which unfortunately happens a lot, customers walk away from the intended customer journey that the CMO envisioned.
What we really need is a standard way for state of the technologies to collaborate and co-exist, address customer's privacy concerns by really understanding their expectations around information sharing, and thinking about true win-win situations when orchestrating customer journeys.
Tags: customer-journey
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