BOSTON, March 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kitewheel, the provider of the world’s leading customer journey platform, today announced the 2020 release of its annual State of the Customer Journey report. Based on data from 7.8 billion customer journey interactions in 2019 and over 19 billion customer interactions since 2014, the report reveals that enterprise, consumer brands remain at the forefront of customer journey orchestration adoption and journey innovation. In fact, 91% of all tracked interactions last year involved enterprise companies and more than half (62%) involved B2C companies. Year over year, interactions for enterprise and B2C companies shot up 71% and 120%, respectively. In other words, it’s not just that large consumer companies increasingly rely on journey orchestration, it’s also that their usage of it is diversifying and growing simultaneously.
Methodology
To build The State of the Customer Journey 2020 report, Kitewheel analyzed and compared all the interactions orchestrated on their industry-leading customer journey hub in 2019 by companies from the retail, automotive, travel, telecom, technology, and financial services industries.
Major findings from the State of the Customer Journey 2020 global report include:
- Marketing initiates the majority of customer journey orchestration efforts. In 2019, marketing interactions skyrocketed over 50% from the previous year, hitting 5.2 billion customer journey interactions. As journey management matures, this is the function where companies find and demonstrate the greatest value. Marketing has always funded journey orchestration's initiation—but true innovators are seeing the value of connecting marketing to their CX teams.
- Interactions across the funnel demand a different channel mix, but web and email remain king. Across every use case, web and email are the most heavily used channels, with 38% and 14% shares of all interactions, respectively. When organizations are pursuing different goals, however, there are some discernible patterns around channels. Down-funnel use cases—engagement and customer service in particular—tend to stitch together more channels, nearly three on average.
- Personalization as a standalone initiative is shrinking. Personalization projects focused on maximizing sales made up 30% of all recorded interactions back in 2015. That share decreased steadily in 2018, when it dropped to 18% and continued in 2019, to only 9%. However while personalization tied to a single use case is dwindling, it is fundamental to the success of journeys by being woven into interactions across the entire customer experience.
- Journey discovery is growing as a customer journey use case. Brands are finally listening before acting. Journey discovery initiatives, which enable marketing and CX teams to assess the state of customer engagement with brands across channels as is, doubled in 2019 compared to 2018—from 156 million in 2018 to 326 million in 2019. This trend points toward a consistent shift from inside-out, campaign-driven approaches toward a more data-driven journey management, informed by customer behavior and level of engagements across channels
“Large global brands are setting new standards for delivering great customer experiences. By gaining deep insights about the state of customer engagement and carefully orchestrating highly personalized interactions across every touchpoint, they win new customers and retain and grow their existing ones,” said Kitewheel President Mark Smith. “We expect to see these data-driven approaches expanding and taking hold in 2020.”
Kitewheel has issued its full analysis and findings in the global industry report, The State of the Customer Journey 2020.
About Kitewheel
Kitewheel orchestrates intelligent customer journeys by unifying decisions across all touchpoints for brands and their agencies. Kitewheel’s innovative Customer Journey Hub unifies disparate systems, touchpoints and technologies to provide seamless customer experiences that drive real-time revenue as well as long-term loyalty.
Kitewheel serves its global partner and client base from offices in Boston, New York City and London. For more information, please visit www.kitewheel.com and follow Kitewheel on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Kitewheel PR Contact:
Lexi Herosian
lexi@scratchmm.com