Customer journey mapping is dead. Okay, a little blunt, I suppose I should say it as “the exercise of building static journeys for prospects and customers is no longer the best approach to understand and interact with customers”. All the research I’ve done on buyer behavior shines a light on how ineffective the process and concept is today. Maybe it never was the most useful exercise, but at least in a pre-smartphone world it was reasonable to assume that your company was an important source of information on your products and services, and how a purchaser could use them to their benefit. Once the prospects had access to the entirety of the Internet’s information in their pockets, the buying process changed. Gone is the need for the vendor to be the only source of information on their products and services. Buyers can research, read reviews online for almost anything they want to purchase; connect with others that have experience with the potential solutions, in their industry, and with similar challenges; and generally eliminate the need to interact with a vendor until the decision to purchase is nearly decided, or is already made. I’ve written quite a bit on this subject, (here for example) so I won’t spend more time on it. The only other thing I’ll add is that the concept of providing a map to what you think a customer will do, in a linear and sequential way, is simply not accurate in almost all buying journeys today.

The answer to these issues is dynamic customer journeys; or using technology to create personalized and adaptable paths that drive interactions with customers based on real time behavioral feedback. Dynamic journeys result in an optimized, individualized company response in the context of the customers’ behavior and relevant to the stage of the individual. The concept of dynamic customer journeys acknowledges that each customer's experience is unique and constantly evolving, requiring businesses to be flexible and responsive in their marketing and sales strategies. Dynamic customer journeys involve the following key elements:

• Real time data-driven: By collecting and analyzing real-time and historical customer data from various touchpoints, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customers' needs, preferences, and behaviors. This information allows them to tailor the customer journey accordingly.

• Personalization: Dynamic customer journeys focus on delivering relevant content, offers, and experiences to individual customers based on their unique profiles and preferences. This enhances customer engagement and increases the likelihood of conversion. I like to call this “individualization” instead of personalization, to differentiate the concept that real-time data can radically change the level of specificity of the interactions.

• Real-time adaptability: As customer preferences and behaviors change, businesses need to adapt their strategies accordingly. Dynamic customer journeys involve monitoring and adjusting marketing, sales and service efforts in real-time to ensure they remain effective and relevant to each customer's needs.

• Omnichannel integration: To create a seamless and consistent experience, businesses must integrate all channels (online and offline) and touchpoints, such as websites, social media, email, and in-store interactions. This ensures that customers receive a cohesive and relevant experience throughout their journey with the brand.

• Continuous optimization: Dynamic customer journeys involve ongoing testing, analysis, and optimization to ensure that businesses are consistently meeting their customers' needs and expectations. Integrating real-time data and behavioral analysis enables the vendor to continually refine their strategies, maintain strong customer relationships and drive ongoing engagement and loyalty. Adding technology like digital twinning can radically change this optimization activity. The creation of a virtual replica of a physical object or system (or behavior), can be used to create a dynamic customer journey by allowing businesses to model, analyze, and optimize the customer experience across multiple touchpoints. By integrating digital twins with customer data, analytics, and marketing automation tools, businesses can create a more personalized and engaging customer journey.

Emerging Technology

Not surprisingly there is a growing rush of startups and established software providers that are starting to build out systems that delivers dynamic journeys (or at least parts of the process). In general I’d lump them into the category of digital experience management, although the approaches and feature sets vary greatly at present. Many solutions in this category come from the analytics markets, particularly customer / product analytics, which have some features that are critical for building a dynamic journey map experience. There are also a number of providers from the marketing automation market, eCommerce platforms, content management (CMS) and even some low / no code platforms (which I suppose would work, but then, building the whole system custom doesn’t necessarily seem like the optimum approach). The problem is not a simple one, and as with most “systems”, the biggest issue is likely integrating all the components. The problem looks a little like this:

The answer for now is, “we’re not there yet”. The more mature each of the parts though, the more likely that the entire solution is not far off. Today, a company could assemble the solution, although it would take some effort. The rewards for that effort though, would be a dramatic improvement in the overall digital experience of the prospects and customers. Reach out to us if you’re interested in discussing how the solution might come together for your business…and the potential it could deliver.