Feature
The Gist
- Unifying experiences. Customer journey orchestration platforms connect data and context to enable real-time, personalized experiences for customers.
- Driving loyalty. By integrating marketing, service and operations, CJO platforms help businesses create seamless experiences.
- Evolving market. The growing customer journey analytics market offers a variety of CJO platforms and tools designed to optimize customer experiences and enhance revenue streams.
Customer journey orchestration (CJO) platforms allow brands to unify and optimize customer experiences across multiple touchpoints and channels. By leveraging data-driven insights and automation tools, CJO platforms enable the creation of personalized and engaging experiences that drive customer loyalty and revenue growth. In this article, we will explore the capabilities of CJO platforms and present the Top 13 CJOs in 2023.
What Is a Customer Journey Orchestration Platform?
According to the 2022 Forrester Wave: Journey Orchestration Platforms report, a customer journey orchestration platform “connects customer data and places it in the context of the customer journey, enabling real-time, relevant and personalized customer experiences.” Additionally, most customer journey orchestration platforms feature measurement capabilities that track CX metrics so brands can more effectively monitor the impact of their customer journey efforts. The Forrester report also suggests that there are two other features of best-of-breed platforms:
- Generates internal stakeholder alerts to pertinent customer journey insights.
- Creates predictive models which initiate the “next best experience” in real-time.
Rahul Bhargava, CTO at Evolphin Software, a media asset management solutions provider, told CMSWire that the most crucial step in orchestrating the customer's journey is understanding the customer and all the pitfalls they encounter. "This exercise enables you to design a well-orchestrated solution that best addresses all the gaps in the customer's journey, offering a seamless experience." Customer journey orchestration platforms simplify the process, allowing brands to gain a more complete understanding of their customers, eradicate pain points and improve the overall customer journey.
At its core, customer journey orchestration is about delivering an exceptional customer experience across the entire journey. Although there are compelling market use cases for journey orchestration, its true power lies in connecting marketing, service and operations use cases. By integrating these different aspects of a customer's journey, businesses can create a seamless and personalized experience that strengthens customer loyalty and drives business success.
Niki Hall, CMO of Contentsquare, a digital experience platform provider, told CMSWire that the ultimate goal for CJOs is to deliver customer experiences that cater to the desires of customers, ensuring that their journeys are informed and relevant from end to end. "CJOs, as a whole, operate best when leveraging different sets of customer data to meet a common goal: a better understanding of customers to deliver data-driven and AI-powered marketing automation, so the end customers are engaged, satisfied and loyal."
Related Article: 4 Steps Toward Successful Customer Journey Orchestration
The Top Customer Journey Orchestration Platforms
As customer journey orchestration platforms are a relatively new technology, there is a variety of tools that are used for CJO. While some software providers have developed platforms that are tailored specifically for customer journey orchestration, others are working with existing technologies in customer data platforms, analytics, customer engagement platforms and digital experience platforms, among others. In addition, some of the larger application providers have incorporated customer journey orchestration functionality into their products.
Ryan Bonnici, CMO of Gympass, an employee fitness and wellness app provider, told CMSWire that he has used customer journey orchestration to optimize the customer journey flow, drive more engagement and ultimately improve his business’s B2C revenue stream. “Canvas Flow has allowed my team to create more personalized and streamlined customer experiences,” said Bonnici. “Since integrating with Canvas Flow, we’re able to reach new levels of personalization, like unique messaging based on users’ past actions and how they engage with the product.”
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The customer journey analytics market continues to grow and evolve, and according to a report from Allied Market Research, is expected to grow from $8 million in 2020 to $46 million by 2030. Some of the most popular customer journey orchestration platforms and tools in 2023 include (along with what the vendor promises they offer):
- Adobe Experience Platform – The Adobe Experience Platform enables large-scale personalization through cutting-edge technology that simplifies customer data collection, management, and use across current and future applications. The Experience Platform enables brands to deliver personalized experiences at scale in conjunction with other Adobe Experience Cloud applications.
- Alterian – The Alterian orchestration platform seamlessly connects multiple data sources, generates actionable insights for improving customer journeys, and delivers data-driven insights to inform the next best action. With its journey orchestration playbooks, brands can quantify the impact of CX adjustments on costs and revenue.
- CSG – The CSG platform combines journey analytics, a customer data platform, native channel applications, and experience design, as well as journey visualization tools, a partner ecosystem, and a future roadmap to enhance both customer and employee experiences.
- Salesforce Customer 360 – Customer 360 is a platform that enables brands to connect customer data across different systems and channels. It enables businesses to create a single view of the customer and deliver personalized experiences across all touchpoints. With a complete view of their customers, brands can more effectively personalize their interactions, improve customer service and make informed decisions. Customer 360 is built upon the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.
- Medallia – Medallia’s Enterprise Experience Platform consists of three functions: listening, customer intelligence and orchestration. Its advanced AI, data integration, insight visualization and scalability enable brands to capture and analyze signals, predict behavior and create exceptional personalized customer experiences.
- Cheetah Digital – Cheetah Digital is a customer engagement and loyalty platform that facilitates marketing automation, personalization and cross-channel messaging capabilities. It enables brands to create and manage customer data, execute marketing campaigns across multiple channels, and measure their effectiveness through analytics and reporting.
- Optimizely – Optimizely is a digital experience platform that enables businesses to create and deliver personalized experiences across different channels, including web, mobile and email. It provides A/B testing and personalization capabilities to help brands optimize customer journeys. It also offers Optimizely Journey Orchestration.
- Segment – Segment is a comprehensive platform that enables businesses to gather, merge and enhance customer data from a variety of sources, such as websites, mobile apps and customer support systems. This provides brands with a unified customer view that can be used to deliver personalized experiences across multiple channels. It also offers a Journeys offering.
- Qualtrics – The Qualtrics platform combines Usermind, an experience orchestration platform, with Clarabridge (now known as Qualtrics Connect), an omnichannel conversational analytics platform. This combination enables businesses to create effective journey orchestration use cases and gain valuable insights into customer sentiment, intent and effort. The platform also provides intuitive visualizations to inform future-state maps, enabling brands to make data-driven decisions.
- NICE – The NICE CCaaS platform leverages AI and analytics to generate customer journey insights that can be used by contact center agents to create highly personalized experiences. It features integrations with CRM and collaboration tools, as well as advanced workflow automation features.
- Genesys – The Genesys customer experience/customer journey orchestration platform enables brands to leverage customer journey analytics, data management and orchestration to better manage, measure and optimize customer journeys. Genesys is AI-driven and is designed to be used in contact and call centers.
- Contentsquare – The Contentsquare Digital Experience Platform (DXP) combines analytics, behavior insights and optimization capabilities to enhance digital experiences across web, mobile and apps. The DXP uses heatmaps and session replays to visualize customer behavior, journey mapping to better understand customer paths and touchpoints, and A/B testing to optimize page design and content.
- Braze Canvas Flow – Canvas Flow is a drag-and-drop customer journey orchestration tool that is part of the Braze customer engagement platform. It enables brands to understand customers in real-time and initiate the next step in the customer journey based on contextual preferences, behaviors and cross-channel interactions. Additionally, it features customer messaging functionality that allows brands to test and optimize messaging, frequency, channels and more.
“The first part of successful CJOs is truly understanding what is causing customers to behave the way they do through data,” Hall explained. “It’s worth noting that you don’t need to know who is doing what on your website as much as you need to know what they’re trying to achieve and whether or not they’re successful.”
Related Article: Will 2023 Be a Breakthrough Year for Customer Journey Orchestration?
Final Thoughts on Customer Journey Orchestration Platforms
Delivering an exceptional customer experience is crucial for building loyalty, driving sales and ensuring customer satisfaction throughout the entire journey. To achieve this, brands must prioritize a customer journey orchestration strategy that focuses on enhancing CX and eliminating pain points.
Customer journey orchestration platforms offer an effective solution for unifying customer data, gaining actionable insights and improving the overall customer journey.
