Marketing

Focus on customer journey gaining ground, claims report

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June 14, 2021

More retailers and brands are becoming more customer-centric and the customer journey is gaining greater attention, according to a Kitewheel report.

The 2021 State of the Customer Journey report revealed engagement and retention journeys are the largest and faster growing customer journey use cases and is driving brands to adapt business operations overall as they increase focus on the full customer journey and not just individual touchpoints and sales.

Of all the journey types Kitewheel tracked in the report, journeys aimed at customer engagement and retention represented 97% of total growth in the customer journey space. This trend indicates brands are embracing CX as a key source of value rather than focusing solely on marketing and sales to drive business outcomes, according to a press release on the report findings.

"This is perhaps our most important report yet as brands consider how to change and optimize their strategy for this new world we've living in," Mark Smith, Kitewheel president, said in the release. "I was most impressed with the swift advances in the healthcare sector to embrace customer journey orchestration and digital channels. It's clear that patient experience and engagement has become a major priority for the industry during the pandemic, and we're likely to see continued transformation in the way healthcare payers and providers approach the patient journey."

Additional findings include:

• Demand is growing for simple, smaller-scale CX journeys: Though large enterprises and marketing teams have historically dominated the space, mid-market brands are beginning to enter the world of customer journeys, starting on a smaller scale. New projects were near evenly split between expansive, enterprise-tier projects and smaller, single-journey initiatives.
• CX journeys use more sophisticated, complex decisioning than marketing-led journeys: As a result of differing goals and CX requiring organization-wide connectivity and more channels, this trend indicates the growing role and purchasing power of CX departments.
• Phone calls stagnated, while digital channels thrived: Kitewheel identified slowed growth for phone-based channels, while email, in-person, and web saw serious growth. In short, the pandemic accelerated a broader move away from phone-based customer service and engagement in favor of digital efforts.