What if you could see how clients make their way throughout the journey with your brand, the touchpoints they spend most of their time on, what excites them, and what holds them back.
Customer journey analytics makes this vision a reality, mapping out every interaction across channels and showing the hidden patterns that drive their behavior.
It’s pretty much like having a treasure map that not only shows where the gold is but also guides you on how to find it much faster and in a more efficient way.
Analyzing each touchpoint in a customer’s journey enables an organization to not only meet their expectations but also anticipate and exceed them.
For most industries where the customer experience is key, customer journey analytics is the secret weapon for always staying one step ahead.
This blog explains the importance of effective customer journey analytics that will help you ensure the success of your business and enhance customer experience.
What is customer journey analytics?
Customer journey analytics involves gathering and analyzing data from all customer interactions with a brand across every touchpoint.
It goes beyond simply mapping the customer journey; it also considers the customer’s interaction experience to understand how it influences their behavior and decision-making.
This approach helps to know how to interact with clients better and ensure you meet all their needs and expectations at each touchpoint.
When analyzing customers’ journeys, you should consider some of the key components including:
- What are your customers’ primary and secondary needs?
- How satisfied are your customers at each touchpoint?
- At which stage of their journey did they experience emotional highs and lows?
- For each touchpoint, what are the key customer metrics to measure and analyze?
By using such components of customer journey analytics, brands can learn how to effectively direct their attention to the exact needs of their clients and resolve any pain points along the way.
Customer journey analytics examples in different markets
It is important to understand and optimize all customer interactions with customer journey analytics as the appropriate tool for this job. Below are some examples of how it is used in various industries.
- E-commerce businesses can reduce cart abandonment by highlighting the elements creating difficulties in the checkout process.
- SaaS companies and B2B firms can utilize it to improve customer onboarding experience and lead-to-sale conversions.
- Telecommunication firms can use insights from their customer journey analytics to improve service delivery, customize offers, and proactively address issues like network outages and billing concerns.
- Schools can analyze student data, such as during applications, inquiries, and enrollment processes, to identify challenges, personalize communication, and enhance the experience to attract and retain more students.
- Entertainment industries can analyze user listening or watching habits and recommend similar music, movies, or videos. For instance, Spotify analyzes all the songs and podcasts a client listens to throughout and recommends similar music. At the end of each year, they create a personalized summary of their top songs, genres and artists – ‘’Wrapped’’.
Customer journey analytics vs customer journey mapping
Though customer journey analytics and customer journey mapping may seem different, they are often connected processes that give information on customer interaction at every touchpoint across their journey with the brand.
The table below outlines the main differences between customer journey analytics and customer journey mapping.
| Aspect | Customer journey analytics | Customer journey mapping |
| Definition | The process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data that relates to client interactions across touchpoints. | A visual representation of the different stages in the journey of a customer towards achieving a goal with a business. |
| Purpose | To collect insights from customer data. | To visualize and analyze the experience from the client’s perspective. |
| Tools | Uses data visualization and statistical analysis software. | It usually involves brainstorming sessions, workshops, and tools for designing, like flowcharts or diagrams. |
| Focus area | Majors in quantitative metrics like engagement levels, conversion rates, and behavioral patterns. | Concentrates on qualitative metrics like pain points, emotions, and motivations throughout the journey. |
| Timeframe | Often examines real-time or historical data to monitor ongoing performance trends. | Often developed as a one-time project or regularly updated to reflect changes in customer experience. |
| Stakeholders involved | Primarily involves marketing teams, data analysts, and business intelligence professionals interested in metrics-driven decision-making. | Involves cross-functional teams in marketing, UX design, and product management for collaborative input. |
| Application | Utilizes data insights for real-time monitoring of campaigns, performance tracking, and optimizing marketing strategies. | Employed for strategic planning in improving user experience design and service improvements. |
| Outcome | Insights into customer behavior data can be provided through creating reports and dashboards. | Produces a comprehensive map that shows the essential stages in the client’s journey along with the associated feelings and thoughts. |
6 Simple steps to master your customer journey analytics
Utilizing customer journey analytics can allow businesses to determine pain points and opportunities for improvement and tailor their marketing strategies to meet clients’ specific needs. Here is how to effectively implement it in your organization.
Outline goals and objectives
Every company should set its own goals and objectives on what precisely it hopes to achieve once it performs its customer journey analytics.
It could be to understand how their clients behave, improve user experience, or identify crucial touch points in the customer journey, among others.
Once the purpose is put in place, you can now set up measurable targets that could help monitor the analysis process and make necessary data-driven adjustments for quality insights.
Make it a joint effort by including cross-functional teams in the process to assist in ensuring diverse perspectives are taken into consideration when setting the customer service goals.
Map the customer journey
Highlight all potential customer touchpoints across all communication channels, from awareness stage to post-purchase interaction, to ensure you don’t overlook any step.
Now create your ideal customer personas to help you effectively map and analyze the entire journey. You can source for client data from websites reviews, social media comments, and face-to-face interactions.
From the CSAT surveys, analytic tools, and feedback, you can easily picture what makes your clients churn, what motivates them to purchase, and their sentiments at each stage of their journey.
Don’t stop there; keep updating and analyzing the journey map to always be in line with the evolving client needs or expectations, ensuring a seamless and worthwhile experience.
Select the right analytics tools
The first steps of setting your goals and creating customer journey maps can set you in the right direction, but without the best analytics tools, your efforts will be futile.
Consider the types of data you need to collect. Do you want it to be quantitative from web analytics or qualitative customer feedback from surveys?
Once you are sure about the data you want to analyze, ensure that the tools can handle it.
Evaluate the integration capabilities of different analytics tools with the existing customer service systems to ensure smooth data flow and improve operational efficiency.
You should also assess user friendliness and support options available for each tool to make sure that your support team can use them effectively for ongoing analysis.
Collect all the necessary data and analyze
Different touchpoints tell a different story about clients’ experiences along the journey. Don’t leave any stone unturned; get data from all channels.
- Practice social media monitoring and listening to know what clients have to say online.
- Retrieve conversation history from each support ticket.
- Leverage website analytics tools on the general information and reports.
- Check the records of purchases to know the patterns, churn or retention rates, and customer preferences.
- Carry out customer satisfaction surveys and send feedback forms.
Make good use of your analytics tools to compile and analyze data to determine what patterns and trends show how clients move through their journey with the organization.
Good analysis throughout the journey gives companies a clearer picture of what their customer service experience looks like from a third-eye perspective.
Identify and make improvements to the customer journey
From the insights about each stage of clients’ interaction, your team can easily find customer pain points, inefficiencies, or areas of friction.
At which touchpoints do the clients mostly decide to leave, experience frequent delays or feel dissatisfied during their journey?
It could be during the onboarding process while waiting for the resolution of their support issue, the out stage, or more.
Once you identify the exact pain points, take all the necessary targeted actions to streamline the process and optimize the touchpoints.
These improvements can range from tailoring experiences based on individual preferences to simplifying the checkout system with a self-service option and tracking KPIs to refine strategies based on real-time feedback.
Example
A telecommunications company might discover that many customers visit their support page after upgrading service plans but rarely contact customer support.
This might indicate confusion about new features or billing details. The company can then work to enlighten clients on the new features and correct the billing issues.
Testing of different workflows
How do you know if the final analysis information is efficient or if there are areas that need improvement?
Start by checking which customer journey analytics strategies provide accurate insights about each touchpoint.
Every workflow is different, and depending on the type of analysis carried out, one should expect varying insights.
Using A/B testing, you can examine the customers’ journey across multiple workflows. If the insights are consistent, you can rest assured that the customer journey analytics is effective.
Importance of customer journey analysis
It’s one thing to map your customers’ journey and a whole different thing to fully analyze and get useful insights. Let’s look into some of the key perks of customer journey analysis, for any business.
A better understanding of customers
The data from customer journey analytics will inform businesses on customer preferences and challenges.
For example, it gives insights into what communication channels customers prefer to use, enabling targeted marketing.
Provides insights to help improve customer journey experiences
According to PWC, 73% of customers believe customer experience plays a big role in influencing their purchasing decisions.
Analyzing data can help brands customize their interactions so that consumers feel valued and understood at every stage of their journey.
Using insights derived from customer journey analytics, support teams can identify what clients expect from their interaction with your business so as to frequently enhance the process. This can minimize friction and lead to a better client experience.
For example, knowing what pages customers spend the most time on enables brands to focus on improving the quality of the content and simplifying the navigation.
Empowers businesses to make insightful and data-driven decisions
Businesses can eliminate guesswork and base their decisions on the actual measurable behavior of customers just from the insightful information.
It becomes easier to determine the patterns and trends and brainstorm on the appropriate steps to effectively target the right audiences and personalize their support offerings.
Increases sales and ROI
Gaining insights into the improvements required at every touchpoint makes it easier to tailor your support to fit client needs and ensure the purchasing process is smooth.
For instance, if analysis indicates that sales are higher with emails than social media ads, the company can allocate more marketing resources to favor emails. Such optimization leads to additional revenue and improves the return on investment.
Customer journey analytics software and tools
For practical analysis of customer journeys, organizations use various tools to provide information about customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. Below is the customer journey analytics tools used by businesses:
Customer data platforms (CDPs)
Businesses can easily integrate customer data from multiple sources into one centralized database using the CDPs.
It gathers first-party data from interactions across different communication channels to create a detailed customer profile.
The unified data assists organizations to effectively segregate their clients, update user information in real-time, and provide a much more tailored experience for customers according to their preferences and needs.
An example of CDP is Twilio Segment which allows users to collect and route their customer data to different integrated systems.
Business intelligence (BI) tools
BI tools combine data from various sources, including internal databases and external systems, enabling the users to generate customer journey analytics reports and visualizations that show key insights.
With improvements in technology, many BI tools have implemented self-service capabilities so that a non-technical user can do their own analysis rather than relying on IT professionals.
An example of a business intelligence tool is BoldBI which can be used to visualize and interpret data to make informed decisions and enhance the performance of the company.
BI tools offer visualization features that convert data and insights into charts and graphs that can be integrated into a customer journey analytics dashboard for monitoring and adjusting the business.
Customer engagement platforms (CEPs)
Businesses can offer customer engagement features such as live chat support for instant replies and omnichannel inbox to connect with clients across different platforms in a unified system.
Others include multilingual support to interact with clients in their preferred language.
CEPs extract and unify customer data from various channels to form a unified omnichannel view of the customer journey, helping brands customize their strategies and personalize communication to add more value to the customer experience.
An example of a customer engagement platform is BoldDesk, which assists support teams in smoothly engaging with clients across all touchpoints.
Behavioral analytics (BA) tools
Companies can use behavioral analytics tools to track and analyze different user behaviors such as website visits, time spent on pages, clicks, and conversion actions (purchases and sign-ups).
Knowing the behavioral patterns and trends ensures brands are always up-to-date with what drives clients to either purchase or churn, therefore optimizing the customer journeys accordingly.
An example is Hotjar, which utilizes heat maps, session recordings and surveys to analyze how users interact with a website, assisting organizations in identifying pain points and improving usability.
Leverage customer journey analytics for business growth
Companies can analyze data at each touchpoint, from website visits to social media and emails, enabling them to know which tactics are working, which ones are not, and what challenges clients face.
Insights from customer journey analytics enables organizations to have a deeper understanding of their customers, personalize their sales and marketing efforts and make wiser decisions.
BoldDesk helps create a seamless and positive experience for your clients, which in turn enhances every customer touchpoint, transforming them into impactful and effective interactions.
Schedule a 30-minute live demo to experience how BoldDesk can help you analyze your customer interactions and make your clients’ journey more pleasant. You can also initiate a 15-day free trial to learn more about our features and tools. For more information, contact the BoldDesk support team.
Do you have any additional information? Share your comments in the section below!
Related articles
- Customer Experience Analytics: Important KPIs and Use Cases
- Customer Service Analytics: Types, Uses and Benefit
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What are some examples of data used in customer journey analytics?
There are various data components used in customer journey analytics, such as demographic, psychographic and contextual data that help make the customer journey more personal.
There are also cross-channel types of data such as behavioral, transactional, engagement that explain user behavior on several customer journey analytics platforms.
Besides that, more data comes from feedback, time series trends, and operational data to track satisfaction and performance.
How is the customer journey analytics market performing?
The demand for customer journey analytics solutions is rapidly increasing. As businesses focus more on customers, the tools for analyzing customer journeys are equally crucial to improving their experience and providing a competitive advantage.
The customer journey analytics market will continue to develop further with enhancements in AI and real-time analytics capabilities.
Why is analyzing customer data important?
It makes it easier for businesses to personalize customer journey experiences, make better decisions, and understand their analysis to retain customers.
