It is accepted business wisdom that customer experience (CX) initiatives provide a competitive advantage across industries, but displaying hard return on investment (ROI) has traditionally been a challenge particularly in the short to medium term.
To date, most CX efforts have focused on NPS (net promoter score) because this metric allows for easy measurement of customer loyalty and therefore the likelihood of gaining new and repeat business. This is useful for forecasting business growth as well as assessing the health of a brand and overall customer satisfaction.
However, while NPS is correlated to long term increases in profitability and share price, it is a macro-economic correlation rather than a direct monetization, explains Michael Renzon, CEO of inQuba.
“Enter journey analytics. Not only can journey analytics increase loyalty and sales, it is a direct way of monetizing CX. Journey analytics is the key tool for orchestrating ROCX – return on customer experience.”
Journey analytics uses transactional data as well as qualitative and quantitative data to map out the real journeys that customers take, rather than a conceptual guestimate journey. Journey analytics helps to set goal states along the journey and nudge customers from one goal state to the next, using data to drive micro-campaigns and actions.
The journey analytics modelling technique has the sophistication to model experiences, sub-experiences and the touchpoints that customers take through the journey of using a company’s products and services. This includes all touchpoints, such as a branch, online, mobile, social, contact centres, and so on, ensuring that no interactions are ignored.
Renzon states that inQuba’s Journey Analytics solution provides the modelling capability to digitise these journeys, as well as map transactional and experiential data to the journey points. The actual customer journeys are then visualised, revealing the journey paths that customers actually take.
“This can show channel-switching, dead-ends in experiences, such as drop off during application or onboarding, and service failure points where customers end up in a service loop. It can, however, also highlight successful journeys, enabling the business to immediately see what is working and where improvements need to be made.”
He adds that segment information is identified for each of these actual journeys, and event-based strategies are applied within the journey software, allowing a highly personalised campaign to be sent to that customer to nudge them to the next goal state.
“For example, if millennials start a mobile journey but are reluctant to talk to a contact centre agent and so drop out, the business can offer them a more preferred means of communication, nudging them back onto their journey. Or a customer who has abandoned a credit card application can be reached out to and offered assistance, either by an agent or through a micro-survey,” Renzon says.
inQuba Journey Analytics applies advanced machine learning using predictive analytics to determine which action is most likely to nudge a particular customer to the next goal state. This also allows for deeper insights into, and understanding of, the needs and preferences of customers, allowing the business to acquire, retain and cross-sell to customers.
“Journey analytics presents the next frontier in CX, predicated on advanced modelling techniques, data science and machine learning to optimise customer acquisition, retention and upsell. inQuba Journey Analytics represents the next evolution of CX, and provides the missing link between CX efforts and ROCX” Renzon concludes.
Forrester and Gartner recognize inQuba’s CX leadership in journey analytics, evidenced by their covering of inQuba in CX and journey analytics respectively.