Customer journey mapping re-emerges as the top priority

In the Global State of Customer Experience (CX) 2019 report, it was revealed that customer journey mapping is the biggest investment priority, according to the 220 industry practitioners surveyed.

Customer journey mapping

This signals a divergence from last year’s report where digital customer experience and data and analytics were the biggest investment priorities among CX practitioners. In fact, customer journey mapping failed to make it into the top five investment priorities. Going back one more year to our 2017 report, customer journey mapping was in pole position as the leading investment priority.

What are the top three investment priorities for CX practitioners?  

CX practitioners appear to have given breathing space to journey mapping so that other areas of CX could absorb the budget.

However, it is encouraging to see it back in the top spot. Customer journey mapping is vital to the overall CX, providing a visual representation of all of your customer touch points and interactions.  

On the importance of customer journey mapping, Denisa Spinkova, VP Executive Services Development at Menzies Aviation, explains: “It helps to tell the story of a customer’s experience with your brand from original engagement and into hopefully a long-term relationship.”

Read: Your guide to customer journey mapping

When every touch point is mapped and has actionable data associated with it, this allows brands to accurately measure the positive and negative aspects of certain points in the customer journey, from chatbot interactions to a newsletter subscription bar. Having a deeper understanding of these touch points will allow you make informed decisions on how to improve CX based on customer needs and pain points. Yet, according to Forrester Consulting research, 87 per cent of businesses do not currently have the ability to orchestrate customer journeys at scale.

It appears that customer journey mapping requires some fine tuning. One potential issue that is slowing down the process is the lack of foundational work put in place prior to implementation. Ingrid C. Lindberg, CEO and Founder of Chief Customer, highlights the importance of completing the foundational work first. “If you just jump to journey mapping, without setting a strategy, readying the company and the executive team – you’ll end up with a ton of money gone, and a bunch of beautiful, useless pieces of artwork.”

Read: 9 Brilliant ways augmented and virtual reality are transforming customer experiences

When we segment the investment predictions casted by industry analysts and solution providers, it is a different story. For industry analysts, data and analytics was predicted as the highest priority, and for solution providers, digital customer experience took the top spot.  

What are the top three investment priorities for CX analysts (left) and solutionts providers (right)?  

Analysts pinpointed that more specifically predictive analytics and personalisation should be a focus. However these items did not rank in the top 10 investment areas for CX practitioners – this may be because they feel they first need to break down data silos and fill profile gaps in data lakes. Surprisingly, predictive analytics and personalization did not rank in the top 10 investment areas for CX practitioners.

Read: Customer Experience Design Toolkit

Be sure to check out the full report for more insight on investment patterns, linking ROI to CX and other insights, including the removal of data silos and building a customer-first culture.