You share customers with your ecosystem partners. That means you also share the customer experience being delivered to them even though you don’t control touchpoints outside of your organization. So how can you de-risk your customers’ journeys to ensure they have good interactions from beginning to end and value their relationship with your brand, even when they engage with your partners?
According to research from Ernst and Young, 31% of companies use an ecosystem model to provide products and services to customers. Of those that embrace them, ecosystems, on average, contribute nearly 14% of total annual revenues, and approximately 13% in cost reduction and incremental earnings, says the analyst. Companies have expanded their ecosystems since 2020, (likely due to these outcomes) growing from five to seven relationships. Therefore, ecosystem partners are increasingly involved in customer journeys.
High-performing ecosystems drive, on average, 1.5 times the cost reduction, and generate 2.1 times the incremental revenue growth, compared to low-performing ecosystems.
Designing Customer Journeys Across Ecosystems is Tough
Ecosystem partners are increasingly participating in many parts of the customer journey, but your customer didn’t choose the partners - they chose you. You own the relationship, and you own the quality of the customer experience, even if others deliver it.
Customers hold you accountable for their journey - not your partners. And that’s actually good. Your brand loyalty and ultimately, customer retention depend on it. Anything that diminishes your brand promise weakens customer stickiness.
Therefore, you need tools to create ideal customer journeys, at scale, across complex ecosystems, to reap the benefits Ernst and Young describe.
Five Things to Look for in Journey Orchestration Tech
When considering a journey orchestration solution, organizations should look for five essential characteristics that address complicated ecosystem delivery models without adding technical debt that slows down innovation or agility.
Drag-and-drop ease - Look for a solution that anyone can use, without IT expertise or resources. Dragging and dropping steps, tasks and automations into place for unique journeys is fast and simple for anyone in the organization to do. With ease, business lines should be able to respond to market opportunities, competitive challenges and evolving customer needs. Drag-and-drop journeys offer the opportunity to build and go live in minutes.
Real-time visibility - See journey progress up-to-the-minute and solve for friction or obstacles proactively, before a customer becomes frustrated and leaves. Even better? Surface that information to customers. Make it easy for them to see what step they've completed, what's next, and what's the happy path to reaching their goal.
No/low-code implementation - Custom development only adds to the technical debt of your organization and leads to hard-coded solutions that aren’t nimble enough to pivot to changing use cases or customer expectations. Look for platforms that can be implemented within months, not years, and can deliver quick wins and ROI.
Visibility across the entire ecosystem - Journeys don’t stop at department walls - they cross product lines, departments and partners. Your journey orchestration solution has to follow. Look for platforms that have connectors to your day-to-day platforms and to your strategic third-party ecosystem partners to create a single shared view.
Why is this important? A recent study by Forrester and Airtable on fractured organizations noted the top reason for employee disenchantment is difficulty in finding needed information to do their jobs. It noted that 2.4 hours of the day is wasted trying to track down information.
Real-time analytics and dashboards - Arm yourself with current CX insights and make data-driven decisions based on what’s working today and what’s not.
Moving from good improvement to great [CX] will require regularly going back to the drawing board and maintaining patience and a mindset of always pushing for more in the interest of customers. -McKinsey
A Quick On-ramp to Build Ideal Customer Experiences
CXMEngineⓇ from OvationCXM just launched our newest version of Journeys, a real-time drag-and-drop journey builder. Our no/low-code platform empowers anyone in your organization to design and publish customer journeys in as little as 15 minutes. Without code or IT resources.
Our CXMEngine platform plugs into your existing systems using APIs, from CRM and ticketing systems to phone systems, project management and more. As a middle layer, CXMEngine brings together your legacy systems to unlock the interaction data within and share it with everyone interacting with the customer for a seamless experience.
Learn more about how our ecosystem speeds up go-live and expands visibility, communication and collaboration between your organization’s teams, different systems and outside partners.
See Journeys in action. Unsure which journey to start with or what exactly requires change in your existing customer journeys to gain better business outcomes? Schedule a journey mapping session with one of our experts.
