The relationships we form with others are built over time – the more positive encounters we have with someone, the stronger our relationship becomes, and the less likely it is for a single event (leaving out the egregious) to sever that relationship. The same holds true for the relationships we have with brands. A single bad experience could lead you to stop a subscription, or switch phone providers, but wouldn’t you be more forgiving if you had a history of good experiences to look back on?
This is the crux of why building customer loyalty over time is so important. At Medallia, we recognize that understanding each customer’s journey is mission critical to strengthening the relationship they have with a brand.
As such, we’ve taken a journey based approach to our solutions. Take Medallia for Retail as an example — it is not enough for a retailer to understand the customer experience of coming to the store and purchasing a product. How do customers learn about the product in the first place? How often do they use different channels to make purchases (in-store, e-commerce, or buy online, pick up in-store)? How satisfied are they with the products or services they buy? And how do they feel about resolution for any issues they may have had? Customer loyalty is built up across channels and experiences, and Medallia provides a unified view of the entire shopper journey so that companies can optimize the full set of experiences.
Beyond capturing feedback within a journey framework, Medallia has moved towards tracking individual customer journeys. Medallia’s Experience Data Platform provides a system of record for every experience of every customer. This provides companies with a comprehensive, 360-degree profile for each customer that includes:
By mapping and deduping every customer identity across channels, along with capturing feedback and operational data at each touchpoint, organizations have a true representation of each customer’s journey timeline. Visualizing customer experience data in this way enables companies to answer questions about whom to take action with, and what action to take – as a result, they can personalize individual experiences and build stronger lifetime relationships.
Companies can also look beyond the individual to find patterns in customer journeys, identifying which customers are similar and how experiences compare by segments. An aggregate view of journeys can reveal where anomalies occur, and where customers frequently switch channels to accomplish their goals. This shift from a touchpoint-centric view to a journey based approach enables companies to look across touchpoints and identify the right changes to improve the overall brand experience.
In the example below, a company noticed 12M calls coming into their call center – a significant proportion of which were from customers who opened an account and logged in on the mobile app.
By digging into the reasons for these calls, this company was able to identify that customers were calling frequently about data charges and account login help. They made a few changes to their website, bringing these pages to the forefront; by fixing the issues on other channels upstream, they reduced the number of calls coming into their call center from 12M to 3M.
With journey analytics, companies have the opportunity to better understand each of their individual customers and to drive improvements across the journey to strengthen customer loyalty.
See Medallia’s journey analytics capabilities in action here.
