Losing customers never feels good, especially in a hyper-competitive market. You could replace them, but that’s easier said than done. In fact, it costs five times more to acquire new customers than it does to keep an existing one. But, what if you could predict and reduce customer churn to retain customers at risk of leaving you?

With the right strategies and tools, you can prevent customers from taking their business elsewhere. The key is to build trust and loyalty through positive experiences that convert potential losses into growth opportunities.

The Importance of Reducing Customer Churn

A customer-centric approach can’t succeed without addressing customer churn. High churn rates indicate dissatisfaction and missed opportunities to strengthen relationships. Here are a few reasons why reducing churn is essential for business gains:

• It increases revenue stability: Retaining customers ensures a steady revenue stream, helping you minimize acquisition costs.
• It boosts Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Loyal customers spend more over time, creating a positive impact on your bottom line.
• It encourages product improvement: When you address churn, you can identify specific pain points leading to dissatisfaction. This information guides product development to better fulfill customer needs and goals.
• It gives you a competitive advantage: Your product and business improvements will likely enhance customer satisfaction. As a result, you’ll succeed in retaining and acquiring customers to increase your market share.
• It improves your brand image: Happy customers are more likely to recommend your business, helping support brand reputation management efforts.

What Is Customer Churn?

Customer churn occurs when customers stop using your product or cancel their subscriptions. It’s an important metric to track because it highlights the number of customers leaving you. You can calculate it by dividing the number of customers you lost over a specific period by the number of active customers at the start of that period.

Types of Customer Churn

Several types of churn can affect your bottom line, including:

• Customer churn describes the decline in customer count during a specific period. It doesn’t address a drop in revenue, only focusing on the raw number of customers lost.
  
• Revenue churn represents revenue lost due to customers downgrading their plans or leaving the business altogether. Businesses with tiered pricing models typically focus on this type of churn.

• Early churn occurs when customers leave the business during their initial experience with the product or service. It highlights an issue with product onboarding and time to value since the product fails to demonstrate immediate utility to the customer.
  
• Active churn is when customers voluntarily stop using a service or product. The most straightforward example is when a customer decides to cancel their subscription. This decision could reflect dissatisfaction, finding a better alternative, or changing requirements.
  
• Passive churn is also described as involuntary churn. It occurs when customers don’t explicitly cancel their service. For example, a subscription that ends due to failure to update credit card details. This type of churn indicates issues beyond dissatisfaction, such as inadequate payment processing.

How to Reduce Customer Churn

1. Identify At-Risk Customers
2. Analyze Churn Drivers
3. Collect Regular Feedback
4. Identify Your Target Audience
5. Focus on Proactive Outreach
6. Deliver Excellent Customer Service
7. Understand Your Competition
8. Highlight Your Value
9. Invest in Customer Loyalty
10. Improve Onboarding
11. Educate Your Customers
12. Encourage Long-Term Engagement

Customer churn is a serious challenge, with U.S. businesses losing $136 billion annually due to avoidable churn. Here are 12 impactful ways to reduce churn and prevent it from impacting your revenue streams.

Identify At-Risk Customers

Knowing who is likely to leave helps you optimize your churn reduction efforts. It enables you to pinpoint specific user profiles for re-engagement. Tracking activity levels is a straightforward way to recognize at-risk customers. For example, if they haven’t renewed their subscription or completed a survey in a while, they might be losing interest in your product.

A churn prediction tool like InMoment simplifies this process by leveraging analytics to highlight these at-risk profiles and segments. It also helps you understand why churn occurs, which gives you an opportunity to take preventative action.

Analyze Churn Drivers

Churn occurs for various reasons that can highlight significant areas for improvement. Customers may leave due to product dissatisfaction, poor service quality, high pricing, or simply because a competitor offers more value. 

Leverage churn prediction tools, feedback, and usage data to analyze key factors driving customers away. For example, if customers complain about a lack of features, it signals a need for product improvements. Addressing these drivers allows you to enhance satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. 

To see what this can look like in action, read this customer story to learn how this large Telecommunications organization parted with InMoment to identify the root cause of customer churn and identified $6 million in at-risk revenue!

Collect Regular Feedback

Consistent feedback collection is essential for tracking customer expectations and behavior. Businesses that actively use customer feedback for improvements experience a 10% increase in retention rates.

Use surveys and social media monitoring to capture insights into customer experiences. Leverage analytics to understand their pain points and goals. For example, if feedback reveals confusion during onboarding, you can improve your processes to make them more intuitive.

InMoment’s XI platform enables you to collect and analyze customer insights effectively. It leverages CX integrations to connect and collect feedback from every channel, making it easier to act on. As a result, you build trust, improve retention, and reduce the likelihood of customers leaving.

Fill out the calculator below to reveal how much ROI you can get from utilizing InMoment’s platform: 

Identify Your Target Audience

You can build the best product with high-quality customer support behind it. However, it’ll struggle to keep target customers on board if it doesn’t resonate with them. Therefore, you must recognize the user profiles that can make the most of your product. These customers are less likely to be swayed by lower prices elsewhere because they see genuine value in your business.

Focus on Proactive Outreach

Proactive communication is an important part of re-engaging at-risk customers. It shows your awareness of potential issues, making customers feel valued and heard. Stay ahead of customer needs with regular check-ins and possible solutions.

The best way to recognize issues before they become churn drivers is to monitor customer sentiment online. With InMoment’s social listening tool, you can track brand and product mentions to see what customers have to say. This approach keeps you in the loop regarding customer experiences so that you can make proactive improvements.

Deliver Excellent Customer Service

Feedback collection, analysis, and social listening provide the insights you need to improve customer experiences. In fact, 77% of customers are willing to share personal information as long as they receive better experiences in return. For example, improving your e-commerce website’s user interface after listening to customers will improve your chances of retaining many of them.

Understand Your Competition

If customers are considering leaving you, guess where they might go next? Your competitors! Analyzing the major players in your space will help you stay competitive by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. It will also help you see how you can differentiate your product and service to stand out.

For example, if your competitor is receiving criticism for slow customer support, you can use the opportunity to market your 24/7 multi-channel service. Competitive analysis allows you to address market gaps and remain relevant for existing and potential customers.

Highlight Your Value

We just discussed how competitor analysis provides opportunities to establish yourself as a viable alternative. This is where you must communicate your product’s or service’s long-term value. Leverage marketing channels to highlight impactful ways in which you solve customer pain points. Your online reputation management efforts will also be crucial, as they yield positive reviews that you can use to reinforce value and reduce churn. 

Invest in Customer Loyalty

Strong customer loyalty is key to reducing churn. 64% of loyal customers are more likely to purchase frequently. Besides improving customer experiences, you can encourage loyalty with rewards and incentives. A good loyalty program goes a long way toward strengthening relationships and increasing customer lifetime value. Incentives like discounts and loyalty points encourage customers to stick with your brand over the long term.

Improve Onboarding

The onboarding process sets the tone for the customer journey with your brand. An effective product onboarding experience ensures a short time to value and reduces the chances of early churn.

For example, you can create step-by-step tutorials, welcome emails, or in-app guides tailored to new users. Proactively address common questions and offer easy access to support during onboarding to build trust. This approach sets the groundwork for long-term satisfaction by empowering customers to achieve their goals early on.

Educate Your Customers

Customers who understand how to capture value through your product are more likely to stay long-term. Educating your audience ensures they use it effectively to fulfill their needs. Leverage guides, webinars, video tutorials, and newsletters to inform customers.

Another benefit of educating your customers is brand credibility. Customers and prospects are likely to view you as a trusted authority in your space. As a result, educational initiatives promote trust and long-term loyalty.

Encourage Long-Term Engagement

Engagement is crucial to keeping customers connected to your brand. Regular interactions remind customers of the value you offer and encourage long-term loyalty. Personalized recommendations, gamification, or exclusive community access can help foster long-term relationships. This approach helps reduce churn likelihood by making customers feel invested in your brand.

How Does Improving the Overall Customer Experience Reduce Customer Churn?

The best way to hold on to a customer is to deliver consistent and positive experiences. Excellent customer experience management is key to customer satisfaction and staying ahead of competitors. Here are four key ways in which CX improvements help reduce customer churn:

• It enhances customer loyalty: Loyal customers spend more frequently and are likelier to recommend your brand to others. As a result, they are far less likely to switch to competitors.
• It flags potential pain points early: Analyzing the customer journey helps you spot and address issues that might lead to churn. Proactive communication and problem-solving play a huge role in retaining at-risk customers.
• It strengthens customer relationships: Delivering personalized interactions creates an emotional bond between customers and the brand. This connection encourages long-term relationships.
• It highlights your unique value to customers: Positive customer experiences highlight the unique benefits of your product or service. They help customers recognize your value in their daily lives, reducing their likelihood of seeking alternatives.

How to Reduce Customer Churn Using Customer Journey Analytics

Customer journey analytics helps businesses map and understand the end-to-end customer experience. It pinpoints glaring issues, tracks customer behavior, and highlights where customers might churn.

For example, if analytics reveal a pattern of early churn, you can address the issue with clearer onboarding instructions or proactive support. These insights enable you to personalize interactions and improve weak touchpoints.

You can identify at-risk customers early with customer experience journey mapping and churn prediction. InMoment combines both processes in an intuitive CX platform to enable a better understanding of user journeys. Its advanced text analytics and AI Journey Insights help identify churn drivers and hidden pain points to improve retention rates.

How to Use NPS to Reduce Customer Churn

Net promoter score (NPS) is a valuable metric for understanding customer loyalty and reducing churn. It categorizes customers as promoters, passives, and detractors to highlight the likelihood of customer retention. Promoters are loyal advocates, while detractors are disgruntled customers at risk of churning.

NPS surveys help collect feedback from both types of customers. Following up with detractors and resolving their issues on a priority basis can convert them into loyal customers. Analyzing the change in NPS over a specific period is also helpful in tracking the success of retention strategies.

How InMoment Can Help Reduce Customer Churn

Customer churn results in significant business losses that make it difficult to survive in a competitive market. While you can’t completely eliminate churn, you can reduce it to grow your revenue and market share. InMoment provides industry-recognized churn prediction software that enables early identification of churn drivers and at-risk customers. Schedule a demo of our text analytics solution today to see how it can help boost retention rates!

References 

Forbes. Customer Retention Versus Customer Acquisition (https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/12/customer-retention-versus-customer-acquisition). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Desk365. 101 Customer Service Statistics You Need to Know in 2024 (https://www.desk365.io/blog/customer-service-statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Freshworks. 50 Essential customer service statistics to know for 2024 (https://www.freshworks.com/customer-service/statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Emarsys. 32 Customer Loyalty Statistics Your Business Needs to Know in 2025 (https://emarsys.com/learn/blog/customer-loyalty-statistics). Accessed 12/09/2024.

Your social media channels aren’t just for scrolling through your feeds. With 74% of consumers relying on social media to guide their purchasing decisions, these platforms host valuable customer experience data. Social media intelligence is a powerful tool for leveraging this data to make informed business decisions.

What is Social Media Intelligence?

Social media intelligence is the analysis of data from social media conversations to guide marketing strategy. Your brand can better connect with your audience by tracking trends in online conversations around your product and industry. 

For example, identifying negative sentiment toward your latest feature can help you spot areas for improvement. It’s also possible that your product is fine but your team is marketing it to the wrong demographic. As a result, these insights also enable effective marketing and lead generation.

Here’s a breakdown of the four key components of social media intelligence:

1. Monitoring
2. Data Collection
3. Data Analysis
4. Actionable Insights

Monitoring 

Monitoring your social media channels is the first step in identifying and analyzing audience activity. What are your target customers talking about? What are their opinions on your brand and your competitors? How do they feel about your products and services? You can answer these questions by monitoring brand mentions and keywords on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).

Data Collection 

Collecting data is necessary for generating analytical insights from social media conversations. InMoment’s comprehensive social listening tool can help pull mentions of your brand and competitor, track relevant keywords, and connect data from various channels in one place. The regular, real-time data collection ensures you have a rich dataset for the analytical phase.

Data Analysis 

Analysis is at the core of social media intelligence, enabling you to capture AI-enabled insights into customer behavior. For example, you can leverage sentiment analysis algorithms to understand public opinion around your brand. You can execute similar algorithms on competitor data to identify differences in online perception.

Actionable Insights 

Actionable insights are the fruit of your analytical labor, showing you how to stay competitive and win over more customers. These insights help you take immediate and effective action for feature improvements or a better marketing campaign. The main aim is to invest in activities that increase customer loyalty and engagement.

How Does Social Media Intelligence Differ from Social Media Listening and Social Media Monitoring?

Social media intelligence, social listening, and social monitoring are used interchangeably. However, they serve different purposes for brands looking to understand online conversations.

• Social Media Intelligence is the comprehensive collection and analysis of social media data for actionable insights. It helps brands analyze customer sentiment, trends, and competitors to make data-driven business decisions.
• Social Listening is the analysis of social media conversations around your brand, product, or service. It helps businesses see what customers are talking about to identify opportunities and pain points.
• Social Media Monitoring is the tracking of brand and product mentions through keywords and hashtags. Social media monitoring enables brands to find customer queries and complaints so they can provide immediate responses.

Benefits of Social Media Intelligence

• Stronger Customer Relationships
• Lead Generation
• Staying Competitive
• Proactive Crisis Management

Social media intelligence helps unlock valuable insights into customers, prospects, and competitors. Key benefits include:

Stronger Customer Relationships

You may have the best customer feedback questionnaire for collecting structured CX data. However, the reality is that customers are more likely to be honest and open about their experiences on social media. 

Listening to their online voice ensures you better understand your customers’ expectations. You get to capture honest insights to deliver more value, which in turn helps build stronger relationships and brand loyalty.

Lead Generation

Social media intelligence provides insights that help tailor your marketing efforts to your target audience. 

For example, a fashion retailer can leverage data analysis to identify demographics expressing interest in its premium suits and dresses. The retailer can invest in targeted ad campaigns to attract these user profiles and convert them into valuable customers. This effective lead generation also helps increase your market share as your campaign draws in more prospects.

Staying Competitive 

Your competitors’ social media activity highlights opportunities to improve your own brand. Tracking competitor mentions keeps you in the loop regarding key developments and issues. You can use this information to improve on their current offerings or fulfill a need they are neglecting. 

For example, let’s say several comments and posts are complaining about the use of leather in your competitors’ handbags. You can leverage this opportunity to promote your vegan fashion items to disgruntled users. The resulting competitive edge will help you win over customers to your side.

Proactive Crisis Management

Social media intelligence provides real-time monitoring of sentiment and conversations around your brand. By identifying negative trends early, you can address issues proactively before they escalate.

For example, if you identify growing frustration about a bug in your app, you can release a prompt update to reassure customers. This practice helps build consumer trust and supports brand reputation management efforts.

How is Artificial Intelligence Used for Social Media?

• Sentiment Analysis
• Content Creation
• Customer Engagement
• Analytics and Reporting

Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables social media intelligence by automating crucial tasks and uncovering CX insights. Primary applications of AI for businesses include:

Content Creation

AI helps businesses streamline various tasks, including content creation and scheduling. Generative AI drastically reduces the time it takes to produce impactful content that engages your target audience. Meanwhile, automation enables quick and effective scheduling of posts for enhanced interactions.

InMoment’s social media management tool tracks trending keywords and topics to generate fresh, engaging content. As a result, it helps you stay relevant to your audience while saving time that you can invest in other operations.

Sentiment Analysis

AI-powered sentiment analysis highlights customer feelings towards your products, services, or brand. It categorizes comments, posts, or social media content as positive, neutral, or negative. This categorization is useful for filtering out user profiles and managing their experiences.

For example, you can quickly identify customers expressing negative sentiments to resolve their issues. Monitoring customer health and journeys regularly helps companies reduce churn by over 34% for at-risk clients. Therefore, sentiment analysis helps boost retention by keeping businesses up-to-date on customer behaviors and reactions.

Customer Engagement

Chatbots and virtual assistants improve engagement by instantly addressing customer queries. With a comprehensive knowledge base, they can even guide customers through complex processes without human intervention. 

AI-powered chatbots learn from customer questions to provide targeted responses and recommendations. InMoment’s Active Listening™ is a conversational AI agent that provides context-aware follow-up questions to engage customers. As a result, it enables detailed feedback collection to help businesses make informed decisions.

Analytics and Reporting

AI simplifies analyzing large volumes of social media data to generate actionable insights. It helps you understand content performance, trends, and demographics to make data-driven decisions.

For example, analytics can show you which type of content receives the most engagement to help you optimize marketing campaigns. Similarly, it can highlight products receiving the most attention to guide inventory decisions. Visualizing these insights and sharing them with stakeholders can help brands track the effectiveness of their social media management.

How are CX Teams Benefiting from Social Media Intelligence?

• Competitor Analysis
• Reputation Management
• Trend Analysis
• Targeted Outreach

CX teams collaborate with multiple departments to improve customer experiences. Their cross-functional nature makes them a great fit for social media intelligence. Key benefits for CX teams include:

Competitor Analysis

Social media intelligence highlights competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. This analysis empowers CX teams to identify gaps in the market and proactively address them. 

For example, CX teams in an organization can discover potential pain points by tracking competitors’ customer feedback. They can use this information to resolve issues before they affect their own customers. Additionally, they can position their brand as a more reliable alternative, helping them acquire new clients.

Reputation Management

Social networks can amplify wins and crises for brands. Therefore, staying on top of conversations and tracking customer sentiment is essential for brand reputation management. 

Analyzing comments, reviews, and brand mentions can help CX teams detect crises early and manage them before it’s too late. It also enables them to highlight their wins and demonstrate their value through testimonials. This approach builds customer trust and enhances the company’s public perception.

Trend Analysis

Social media intelligence tools track trending topics and emerging themes. This analysis provides CX teams with valuable insights into customer interests and behaviors.

For example, a fitness app’s CX team might notice a rising interest in mindfulness and meditation. This trend could guide the development of new app features or content to align with customer demands. As a result, trend analysis allows CX teams to position their company as a relevant business that understands modern customer needs.

Targeted Outreach

CX teams leverage social media intelligence to identify specific demographics for targeted outreach. Positive interactions with these groups can strengthen loyalty and turn satisfied customers into brand advocates. For example, your CX team can identify the top influencers frequently mentioning your brand and contact them for a collaboration.

Social Media Intelligence Tools

1. InMoment
2. Mentionlytics
3. Hootsuite
4. Sprout Social
5. Brandwatch
6. Sprinklr

A social media intelligence tool makes it easy to better understand customer expectations. It handles everything from social media monitoring to data analysis. Here are six of the best tools to help you choose the right one for your business needs.

InMoment

InMoment’s XI Platform software offers a comprehensive social media intelligence solution. Unlike other platforms, it lets you control how frequently you want to pull and analyze data from platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X. This level of control is key to building rich customer experience datasets.

The XI Platform also leverages sentiment analysis to provide insights into customer feelings around your brand. This analysis helps you identify disgruntled customers so that you can work on retaining them before it’s too late. In the XI Platform, you can also track trending keywords that can help you identify the biggest impacts on your customer experience. 

The ability to track keywords and brand mentions means you can keep an eye on competitor activity. This competitive analysis empowers your CX teams to learn from their strengths and capitalize on their weaknesses. 

For example, if your competitor is going through a PR crisis due to a recent data breach, you can use this opportunity to gain a competitive edge. Your marketing teams could communicate the superiority of your data protection technology.

Finally, InMoment’s social media intelligence tool enables high-quality lead generation. The insights gained from data analysis can highlight user profiles interested in your brand or offerings. 

By targeting these profiles with effective marketing, you can convert them into valuable customers. Similarly, the tool can help you identify top influencers in your space so that you can work with them to boost your brand reputation.

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics allows businesses to monitor and analyze conversations on social media. Key features include real-time sentiment analysis, multi-channel monitoring, and competitor comparison reports. These features help companies make data-driven decisions to stay competitive and improve customer experiences.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media intelligence platform that combines data collection and analysis. Its Listening Basics feature allows businesses to track keywords and hashtags on social media channels. CX teams using Hootsuite to manage social media can leverage the InMoment integration to monitor comments and reviews in one place. The integration helps filter out the best reviews and share them on social media to enhance online reputation.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a versatile platform that helps brands track and analyze social media conversations in real-time. Its standout feature is a trend-identifying tool that generates a word cloud highlighting topics relevant to the brand and industry. This trend analysis is helpful for staying competitive and managing customer interactions.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch uses advanced search options to help CX teams monitor vast amounts of social media conversations. It also enables trend analysis, influencer identification, and crisis management. It offers multilingual support to help businesses with multiple global locations manage their social media presence.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a social media management tool that enables businesses to track mentions, trends, and competitor activity. It uses AI algorithms to perform sentiment analysis on user-generated content. This analysis helps brands understand customer emotions and tailor their marketing strategy accordingly.

Get Better Insights to Transform Your Customer Experience with InMoment

Your social media channels are a treasure trove of customer experiences. Unlocking this data can help you win over customers, move past competitors, and boost your bottom line. InMoment’s social media intelligence tool gives you the key to access and analyze this valuable data. Schedule a product tour today to see how it can transform social media management for your brand.

References 

WebFX. 100+ Social Media Statistics You Should Know for 2024 (https://www.webfx.com/social-media/statistics). Accessed 11/26/2024.

InMoment. InMoment Market Pulse (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/weareinmoment_b2b-customersuccess-ai-activity-7251989745914818560-haGe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop). Accessed 11/26/2024.

Did you know that only 20% of CX teams report directly to the CEO? The other 80% of CX teams report to 15 different leadership functions, with CTO and Chief Customer Officer being the second and third most common leadership functions. 

These statistics show that there is no standard for where a CX team should live within your organization. To accurately place a CX team, you need to have a firm understanding of what CX teams do, what the customer experience goals of your organization are, and where those two overlap. 

What Is A CX Team?

A CX team is a group of customer experience professionals who work to improve customer experience by sharing customer insights throughout the organization. They analyze customer feedback, customer journeys, and more to get the most up-to-date information about the current customer experience and where it can be improved. 

Who Is On A CX Team?

The number of employees on a CX team and their respective titles will vary depending on the company. For example, a company that just established a CX team will have fewer employees than a company with an enterprise-wide CX team. 

Regardless, the core team members of a CX team are: 

• CX Managers: Oversee strategy and execution.
• Data Analysts: Dive deep into customer data to uncover actionable insights.
• Journey Designers: Map out customer interactions to identify gaps and opportunities.
• VoC Specialists: Ensure customer feedback is heard and acted upon.

What Skills Are Needed on A CX Team?

Members of a CX team need to be versatile employees who can examine different types of data. These employees must be able to research, analyze, and prevent all customer-related findings to organizational stakeholders. A recent study of CX teams said the three most common skills of employees on a CX team are: 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Project management

What Skills Will Be Needed On A CX Team In the Future?

To keep up with ever-evolving customer expectations, CX teams will need employees who can grow and ensure that an organization can still be successful. The three skills that CX team employees need to have in the future are: 

• Data science or analytics
• Business case development
• Inclusive design/accessibility testing

These skills reflect changes in the customer experience market and what is going to needed of organizations to stay successful.

How to Build a CX Team

Building an effective CX team requires careful planning and alignment with your organization’s goals and customer needs. Follow these steps to ensure you assemble a team that will drive meaningful results: 

1. Secure leadership buy-in
2. Define the team’s purpose and goals
3. Identify the right roles and skills
4. Select the right tools and technology
5. Establish clear processes
6. Foster cross-department collaboration
7. Continuously train and develop the team
8. Measure and Optimize

1. Secure Leadership Buy-In

For a CX team to succeed, you need the full support of senior leadership. The executives must understand the importance of a CX team and be willing to provide the necessary resources. In this step, you will also decide which executive leader the CX team will report to. 

2. Define the Team’s Purpose and Goals

Before you can hire and assign roles to employees, you need to clearly define your CX team’s mission. Determine what customer challenges the team will address, how success will be measured, and how the team aligns with broader business goals. Examples of CX team goals include: 

• Increasing customer retention by improving satisfaction
• Increase customer acquisition by improving the customer journey
• Driving higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) through targeted strategies

Clearly defined goals will guide the hiring process and set the foundation for CX success. 

3. Identify the Right Roles and Skills

With the purpose of your CX team defined, you can now begin the hiring process. Your CX team should include diverse roles that collectively address all aspects of the customer experience. Common roles on a CX team include:

• CX Manager
• Data Analyst
• Customer Journey Designer
• VoC Specialist 

In addition to technical skills, look for individuals who can perform qualitative and quantitative research, possess great communication skills, and are experienced in project management. 

4. Select the Right Tools and Technology

In order to give your CX team the best chance to succeed, you need to have the right tools at your disposal. These tools might include Voice of the Customer platform, journey mapping software, or data analytics tools. 

InMoment’s customer experience platform is an all-in-one solution that lets you collect and connect customer experience data in every format across every customer interaction. InMoment’s integrated CX approach helps organizations realize ROI in just 12 months, which is more than twice as fast as the industry average.

5. Establish Clear Processes

It is important to develop workflows to guide a CX team’s activities. For example, you will need to define how customer feedback will be collected, analyzed, and shared. You will also need to create a process for collaborating with other departments to address CX challenges across the organization. 

6. Foster Cross-Department Collaboration

CX teams don’t operate in isolation. They must collaborate with other departments, including marketing, sales, product development, and customer service. Encourage open communication and shared accountability by hosting regular meetings to align on customer-centric strategies, using collaborative tools to ensure visibility, and more. 

7. Continuously Train and Develop the Team

The customer experience market is constantly changing. It is important to invest in skill development. This can be done by attending customer experience events, training on new tools and technologies, and getting certifications in CX methodologies.  

8. Measure and Optimize Performance

Being able to measure the performance of a CX team against customer experience KPIs is crucial for the longevity of a CX team. Regularly review these metrics and gather team feedback to refine processes and improve outcomes. 

CX Team Challenges

Although they are important to the success of an organization, even the best CX teams do not come without challenges. These challenges can affect CX teams across all organizations, here are the main ones to be aware of: 

Lack of Executive Support

Over 40% of CX teams in an organization that prioritizes CX say they do not have consistent executive support. This suggests that despite the organization’s overall commitment to enhancing customer experience, there remains a significant gap in the backing and resources that these teams receive from higher management, which can ultimately hinder their effectiveness and the overall success of CX initiatives.

Inconsistent Business Case Development

A recent study found that only 22% of CX decision-makers make a business case for customer experience for every project or initiative and that only a third of them make a business case for major initiatives. 

In order CX teams to become an integral part of the organization, it is important to make business cases for all initiatives on how they will impact the customer experience at your organization. 

Misaligned Priorities

When prioritizing customer experience initiatives, most CX teams primarily concentrate on customer impact. However, almost half of CX teams often overlook three important criteria: return on investment, feasibility, and risk. To gain and maintain the support of key stakeholders within the organization, CX teams need to give more attention to these three factors.

Considering ROI is vital for justifying CX efforts to key stakeholders concerned about any initiative’s financial implications. Assessing feasibility includes evaluating the existing operational capabilities and potential barriers that could hinder the execution of the initiatives. Lastly, risk assessment is an essential component that cannot be neglected. Every initiative carries inherent risks that could impact customer satisfaction, brand reputation, or financial performance.

Lastly, risk assessment is an essential component that cannot be neglected. Every initiative carries inherent risks that could impact customer satisfaction, brand reputation, or financial performance.

By considering ROI, feasibility, and risk alongside customer impact, CX teams can enhance their strategic planning. This comprehensive approach not only helps secure the support of key stakeholders but also ensures that CX initiatives are sustainable and aligned with the broader business objectives.

Where Should CX Teams Report?

Regardless of where your CX team lives, the team must remain unbiased and have the purview to work cross-functionally to drive collaboration and break down silos. Without that organizational freedom and neutrality, the team’s efforts are already handcuffed, and the chances of CX success are greatly diminished.

While many companies have added a seat at the table for a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) or Chief Experience Officer (CXO) in recent years, we still see most CX functions report to either marketing (the CMO) or operations (the COO). There are pros and cons to each of these reporting relationships:

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Marketing & the CMO: 

Pros:

• Tied More Closely to the brand promise of the organization (since CX is the fulfillment of that promise)
• Tied more closely to the communication function. Too many CX functions don’t think about the role communication plays in the overall experience, but this is where the customer expectations get set
• Part of a more holistic view of the company and the customer journey
• Marketing (or strategy) is more likely to consider the experience of the future as opposed to only today’s experience

Cons:

• May be too far removed from the actual frontline customer interactions, so it can be more difficult to implement change
• Often too closely tied to marketing’s priorities and budget
• Can marketing enforce an effective closed-loop process if that work happens elsewhere in the organization?
• Marketing is often more focused on customer acquisition and top-of-funnel activities

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Operations & the COO:

Pros:

• More closely tied to frontline customer interactions
• Typically has good success with enforcing a strong closed-loop process (if staffed and funded properly)
• Operations typically focused and measured on customer retention

Cons:

• Unless digital and call centers report to the COO, the program can get too focused on in-person or physical interactions
• Can be too focused on break/fix of today’s experience and not focused on overall CX strategy, process redesign, or experience design. Programs can get very tactical
• Susceptible to budget cuts and quarterly targets, whereas CX tends to be a medium-to-long term proposition

The Pros and Cons of Your CX Team Reporting to Executives Such as the CEO:

Pros:

• Easier alignment to executive goals and buy-in
• Budget is set aside specifically for one purpose and can have less constraints
• Easier to build relationships around CX with each department to break down silos

Cons:

• Difficult to get all departments aligned to taking action as they can be seen as an outsider
• More difficult to be in synch with the day-to-day business rhythm
• Focus often on medium- or long-term initiatives while peers focus on quarterly results

CX Team Best Practices  

While the focuses and goals of CX teams can change from organization to organization, certain things will set you up for success regardless of your objectives. Here are some best practices to ensure your CX team can succeed in any environment: 

Democratize Data

Democratizing data is an important step for protecting your teams’ time and resources, and it can be performed at any stage of CX maturity! 

Invest the time needed with key stakeholders to explain the importance of customer experience, co-create dashboards, and reduce any ambiguity about CX programs. By spreading the responsibility between team members throughout your business, you will save time both now and down the line with fewer emails, more empowered colleagues, and more visibility of your hard work. 

Leverage Available Resources 

Technology alone won’t help with demonstrating a return on investment. The most effective programs have a strategic partner to help map the initial CX framework, discover those actionable insights and point out the cost savings along the way.

You need a motivated team behind yours to design the roadmap of experience management success. Best practices show that the financial impact of the CX capability is outlined in the onboarding process, tested and controlled along the way, and measured and reported quarterly.

Create CX Champions

Take time upfront to educate teammates on the importance of customer experience and ask for volunteers to champion such initiatives across various departments. The more stakeholders invested in a CX program, the more time practitioners will have to delegate responsibilities across a business.

See which people in your business are organically gravitating toward your CX program and formalize their role as a CX champion. Empower these individuals to access the CX data anytime, anyplace to drive action.

Level-Up Your Dashboards

When you have a customer experience dashboard that is intuitive and easy to understand, stakeholders can easily circulate them within the organization. An effective dashboard is designed to guide the user, not overload the user with data. 

We recommend you follow this design structure where possible:

• Main KPI: Where are we? How has our performance changed over time?
• Main KPI & Main Segment: Who/what should we focus on?
• Sub KPIs: What is contributing to our core metric?
• High-Level Text Analytics: What overall are our customers telling us?
• Verbatim: What are our customers actually saying about their experience?
• Deep Analysis: Splitting KPIs up by pre-pop data.

To learn more about best practices and how to succeed as a CX team, download the checklist below:

How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team

Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.

How to Craft a Max-Impact CX Strategy for a Small CX Team

Having a small CX team doesn’t mean you can’t make a big difference. What it does mean is that you have to use your time wisely! Download this checklist for step-by-step instructions on how to realize four strategies designed specifically for CX teams like yours.

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Customizing CX Team Organization: Considerations for Success

Regarding the reporting relationship of the CX function, one size doesn’t fit all. Every organization, leadership dynamic, employee culture, and business is different. We mentioned above that we have led CX, reporting to the CMO, reporting to the COO, and as an independent function. What we learned is that it can be successful in any of these reporting relationships, though we suggest it has a head start if it reports into the predominant power core of the organization.

Some companies are operations-led, others are sales & marketing-led, while others are product-led. Tying CX to the true cultural and power core of the company, though it brings some of the bias mentioned above, aligns it better with the core of the company.

Regardless of where your CX function reports, there are key organizational elements that must be present and the CX leader also has to have certain key skills, strengths and characteristics for it to be successful.

Improve Your CX Team with InMoment

If your customer experience (CX) team is just starting out or expanding an existing team, InMoment is the top choice for a CX partner. With over 50 years of experience across various industries and a best-in-class solution, InMoment will guide your company in the right direction. To discover how InMoment can benefit your organization, schedule a demo today!

References 

Forrester. Predictions 2025: Customer Experience. (https://www.forrester.com/report/predictions-2025-customer-experience/RES181533). Accessed 11/20/2024. 

Forrester. Customer Experience Market Insights, 2024. (https://www.forrester.com/report/customer-experience-market-insights-2024/RES181199). Accessed 11/20/2024.

Forrester. The State Of Customer Experience Teams, 2023. (https://www.forrester.com/report/the-state-of-customer-experience-teams-2023/RES180035). Accessed 11/20/2024.

Did you know that 77% of organizations cannot consistently create a consistent customer experience across channels? This often stems from poor internal communication, outdated technology, or inefficient processes. 

However, to combat this, you need to understand the end-to-end customer experience and be prepared for every path a consumer might take to become a customer or that a current customer might take when using your products or services. 

Whether you are looking to change current processes, improve old ones, or ensure that your team is aligned on the priorities of the customer experience, creating a customer journey map will be useful to your organization. 

What is Customer Journey Mapping?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the journey a customer has with a company’s brand, products, services, and people. Customer journey maps may also be called customer interaction maps, customer corridors, or service blueprints. 

A customer journey map visualizes all touch points between the customer and the organization, from customer research on the product to first contact with the company to building customer loyalty. 

By constructing theoretical customer decision-making scenarios, companies can more easily understand the factors and product features influencing customers’ purchase decisions. With InMoment’s XI Platform, you can create a customer journey map that tracks the customer journey across different channels and gives you insight on how to optimize it. 

The Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping allows companies to see the gaps between the desired customer experience and the one the customer receives. Creating a customer journey map can help organizations improve:

• Internal education and alignment
• Resource allocation
• Product lines
• Processes
• Customer Experience

Improved Internal Education & Alignment

Over 81% of CX practitioners agreed that customer experience journey mapping was successful at internally educating stakeholders about consumer pain points or unmet needs. This can be useful to show employees that one problem or mistake in one phase of the customer journey can hurt the customer’s overall experience. 

Furthermore, customer journey maps educate stakeholders and get them on the same page about what is most important. Almost 80% of employees who created a customer journey map at their organization say it helped generate alignment between internal teams. 

Increased Resource Allocation

Customer journey maps can help you identify problems and present a strong business case for customer experience improvement. 71% of organizations say customer journey mapping has successfully persuaded management to invest in CX efforts and fix existing customer problems. 

Improved Product Lines

Customer experience journey mapping identifies where you may be failing in the customer experience and gives you room to improve. Problems identified through customer journey mapping could be a confusing website navigation bar or a checkout process with too many steps. 

With this information, you can improve your customer experience and eliminate pain points. In fact, over 70% of organizations say that customer journey mapping has helped them improve the user experience (UX) of a product or service or has helped them gain investment to create new features. 

Improved Processes

Most professionals using customer journey maps agree that one of their benefits is identifying the need for internal optimizations. By visualizing the customer’s experience across various touchpoints, journey maps provide a clearer understanding of where internal processes may be causing delays, confusion, or frustration for both customers and employees. 

Whether it’s a lack of cross-departmental communication, inefficient workflows, or outdated technology, journey maps can expose these pain points and allow organizations to align their internal operations more effectively to improve overall efficiency.

Improved Customer Experience

All of these benefits connect to creating a customer experience that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations. Almost 90% of customer experience professionals who use customer journey mapping report improved performance in customer experience KPIs such as 

higher customer satisfaction, lower customer churn, and improved Net Promoter Score. 

Why Customer Journey Mapping is Important

Creating a customer journey map is important because it helps visualize the customer journey. Improving the entire customer experience can be difficult when only focusing on one stage or aspect. 

Seeing all the touchpoints together, how they relate to each other, and how they help the customer move through the journey helps your organization understand how each piece of the customer experience puzzle fits together. 

5 Types of Customer Journey Maps

There are different types of journey maps for different use cases. Each is tailored to specific goals and stages of the customer experience. Different journey maps provide unique insights, whether you’re looking to understand how customers interact with your brand today, envision an ideal future state, or analyze internal processes that affect customer outcomes. Here are some of the most common types of customer journey maps and when to use them: 

Buyer’s Journey

• Purpose: To map out the process a potential customer goes through before making a purchase decision and becoming a customer. This type of journey map helps you understand what motivates a consumer at each stage, their questions, and the information they seek. 
• When to Use: This journey map is used when developing marketing and sales strategies that aim to guide prospective customers through their decision-making process. It is particularly useful for aligning teams across multiple departments, such as marketing, sales, and customer success. 
• Focus: This journey map focuses on the buyer’s thought process, motivations, pain points, and needs at each stage of the journey. It typically covers awareness, consideration, and decision. 
• Example: A SaaS company creates a buyer’s journey map to understand how potential customers discover their product, research competitors, and make decisions. The map helps the company tailor content to each stage, such as blog posts and webinars for the awareness stage, product comparisons during the consideration stage, and free trials or demos for the decision stage.

Current State

• Purpose: This map reflects the existing customer experience based on how customers interact with your products or services today. It is useful for diagnosing current inefficiencies and identifying areas for improvement. 
• When to Use: When you want to understand what is happening now, spot bottlenecks or optimize current processes. 
• Focus: Real-time customer journey analytics to understand the emotions, pain points, and touchpoints customers are experiencing at every stage. 
• Example: A retail company maps out how a customer currently shops on its e-commerce platform and identifies the complex checkout process as an area of improvement to improve the e-commerce customer experience. 

Future State

• Purpose: The future state journey map outlines the ideal customer experience you want to create. It will look different from a current state journey map because it shows how interactions could be improved. 
• When to use: This journey map is most useful when redesigning or improving current processes. 
• Focus: Future state journey maps focus on optimizing processes, streamlining interactions, and improving customers’ emotional states at each stage. 
• Example: A software company wanting to overhaul their customer support process to improve resolution times can create a future state journey map to show what the ideal process would look like. 

Day-in-the-Life

• Purpose: The day-in-the-life customer journey map takes a broader view of the customer’s life beyond their interactions with your brand. It focuses on the typical day for the customer and how your product or service fits into their life. 
• When to Use: This can help you better understand your customers and identify better ways to serve them. 
• Focus: Day-in-the-life customer journey maps focus on customer activities, goals, frustrations, and needs within their daily routine and how that intersects with your product or service. 
• Example: A fitness app company maps out the day in the life of a busy working parent to see how and when the app could help them achieve their fitness goals in their busy schedule. 

Service Blueprint

• Purpose: The service blueprint journey map extends beyond the customer journey and includes business processes and systems that enable the customer experience that aren’t usually showcased in other journey maps. It visualizes the connections between the front-stage (customer-facing) and back-stage (internal processes).
• When to Use: This can be used to improve internal processes that impact the customer experience or to optimize service delivery systems. 
• Focus: Service blueprints showcase the customer journey and the underlying business activities with equal importance. 
• Example: A provider working to improve customer experience in healthcare maps out the patient’s journey, internal systems, staff interactions, and other elements needed to deliver a quality healthcare customer experience. 

How to Create A Customer Journey Map

Creating a customer journey map is an important process that should not be taken lightly. When building your customer journey map, it is important to follow the right steps to produce the most accurate and effective map for your organization. 

When you partner with InMoment, you get access to customer experience consulting with practitioners with over 50 years of combined experience that can help you build the best customer experience journey map for your organization. 

However, if you are not using those services, here is an overview of how to create a customer journey map from scratch: 

Step 1: Outline Your Objectives

Why do you want to create a customer experience journey map? Are you trying to improve a specific touchpoint, understand customer pain points, or increase the lead-to-customer conversion rate? Creating a customer journey map is a detailed process that often involves collaboration from multiple departments, so outlining what you hope to learn as a result of the customer journey map will make sure the efforts are well spent. 

Step 2: Create Customer Personas 

Next, you will want to develop detailed customer personas that represent different segments of your customer base. You might have already created these as part of your customer experience strategy. These personas should include important customer information such as demographics, needs, behaviors, goals, and challenges. 

Step 3: Map Out the Stages of the Customer Journey

This is one of the most important steps in creating an effective customer journey map. You will outline the stages and touchpoints customers will experience in this stage. Typical stages of the customer journey include awareness, consideration, and purchase. Some business models might include retention and advocacy after the purchase stage. 

Touchpoints refer to the places where your customers interact with your business. These could include the website, customer support portal, social media, and more. Outlining the high-level view of the customer journey will make it easier to examine specific sections of your … 

Step 4: Identify Customer Goals and Actions

You need to identify what the customer is trying to achieve at each stage of the customer journey. For example, in the awareness stage, they may be trying to gather information and create a shortlist. In the consideration stage, they want to see what product or service makes the most sense. 

Once you have identified these goals, outline the steps the customer will take to meet those goals, such as conducting online searches, reading customer reviews, or contacting your team directly. When you have the goals and actions outlined, you can position your organization to be prepared to meet customer needs. 

Step 5: Understand Customer Sentiment

While customer sentiment is usually a metric reserved for consumers who have already become customers, it can be useful in creating a customer journey map. Customer sentiment is how a customer feels about a brand’s products or services. It can be useful in customer journey mapping to see how customers feel about your brand at every stage of their journey. 

For example, suppose you discover that consumers didn’t like the email they received after downloading a document from your website. In that case, you can remove or change the email to prevent further customers from abandoning their journey. 

InMoment’s XI Platform makes sentiment analysis easy with best-in-class natural language processing (NLP) that categorizes, sorts and tracks customer sentiment. 

Step 6:  Visualize the Journey Map

Once you have completed all these steps, you can visualize the customer journey map. Create a visual representation of the journey using a customer journey map template. Your journey map should clearly show the stages, touchpoints, goals, emotions, and pain points a customer might experience. 

Step 7: Gather Internal Feedback 

After putting it all together in a visual form, share the journey map with internal teams not involved in the customer journey mapping process. You can even share it with existing loyal customers. Sharing the customer journey map in these groups will help you verify its accuracy and identify anything that needs to be fixed. 

Step 8: Track Customer Journeys

Once your map is complete, tracking real customer journeys is essential to see how they align with your assumptions. Use analytics tools, customer feedback, and data from CRM systems to monitor how customers interact with your brand across touchpoints. 

By tracking these journeys, you can identify patterns, measure the success of any implemented changes, and spot potential gaps in the customer experience that may not have been visible in the initial mapping process.  

Step 9: Use the Customer Journey Map to Drive Action

A customer journey map is only as good as the insights that come from it. Use your customer experience journey mapping to help inform your strategies and initiatives across departments. 

For example, you may notice that customers are more likely to convert when they receive a discount on their first purchase or that a specific landing page in a campaign has a bounce rate. These metrics can help you drive transformative action within your organization. 

Step 10: Share Wins

​​Once you start seeing the impact of your customer journey improvements, it’s important to celebrate and share these successes. Sharing results reinforces the value of journey mapping and motivates continued investment in customer experience initiatives. Document these improvements so they can serve as benchmarks for future efforts and inspire a customer-centric culture within your organization.

Challenges of Customer Journey Mapping

Some challenges associated with customer journey maps may deter some businesses from using them. However, these challenges can be avoided with the right customer journey mapping platform and a team invested in customer experience success. Regardless, here are some challenges of customer journey mapping to be aware of: 

Delayed ROI 

Although the use of customer journey mapping is growing, few organizations have had them in use for extended periods. Only 34% of organizations have three or more years of experience developing customer experience journey maps, and 83% struggle to identify and prioritize customer experience efforts. 

Effort of Integration

In a recent study, organizations that use customer journey mapping solutions said that the number one thing their provider needs to improve is the ease with which data sources are integrated. This means that these organizations may be spending too much time setting up their customer journey mapping platform or not setting it up completely and are missing out on important data that could be used to provide business insights. 

Quality of Integration 

Similarly, the organizations referenced above said the second most important thing for providers to fix is the quality of integrations with voice of the customer platforms, content management repositories, or other existing systems. 

Journey Measurement 

Another common challenge among organizations that utilize customer journey maps is the ability to measure the different phases of the customer journey and analyze their impact on business performance.

Journey Validation and Testing

When organizations create and use customer journey maps, they want to be able to validate and test them. Customer journey map testing and validation refers to the process of evaluating and verifying the accuracy and effectiveness of a customer journey map by actively testing real-world scenarios and gathering feedback. 

The goal is to ensure that the journey map reflects actual customer behaviors, experiences, and pain points and that the proposed changes or optimizations will deliver the intended improvements. However, this was ranked in the top five biggest areas of improvement for customer journey mapping solutions. 

Customer Journey Map Best Practices

As you go through the process of creating a customer experience journey map, you want to focus on how you are doing it as much as why you are doing it. When you build a journey map correctly, it can immediately be useful to you and your organization. If not, it will take time to fix, which will delay the benefits you will realize from using it. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when creating a customer journey map: 

1. Use Quantitative and Qualitative Data 

It can be easy to build a customer journey map based on the trackable actions a customer takes throughout their customer journey. However, this does not show what they felt at each stage or how they felt about certain touch points. You must combine insights from qualitative systems such as CRM systems, web analytics, and customer feedback tools and quantitative data such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups to correctly map the customer journey. 

InMoment helps you combine structured and unstructured data for the most accurate customer understanding by building an omnichannel customer experience that combines data from multiple sources and can help you build the most accurate journey map available. 

2. Align with Business Goals

In order to get executive support, you will need to connect your customer journey map to business goals. For example, it might be a marketing goal to increase conversion rates, but if you can say something like “increasing conversion rates by half of a percent will result in a 20% increase in revenue,” you will be more likely to secure executive support. 

3. Involve Frontline Employees

When creating customer journey maps, they are usually a cross-departmental effort across marketing, sales, customer support, etc. However, the frontline employees are often left out of it even though they deal with the customer more frequently than any other department. Consider sending out an employee survey or meeting with employees to understand their view of the customer journey and the customer experience. 

4. Leverage AI Customer Journey Insights 

AI customer journey insights can be used to reveal hidden pain points, optimize touchpoints, and improve the customer journey flow. These insights allow your business to proactively respond to customer needs and streamline processes. 

InMoment’s Strategic Insights team will use AI Journey Insights to identify the significant touchpoints in your customer feedback data. Our team helps you contextualize these findings by categorizing insights based on where they fit in the customer journey, understanding the underlying sentiment, and how insights can be implemented. 

Customer Journey Map Examples

When creating a customer journey map, it may benefit your team to look at customer journey mapping examples. These examples can provide valuable insights into how different organizations across different industries have mapped their unique customer journeys. 

Visualizing these examples can help your team understand how to structure the journey map, integrate data, and highlight customer pain points. Furthermore, studying a range of examples allows you to adapt best practices and innovative techniques to fit your specific customer base, whether focusing on B2B or B2C journeys. This exploration not only aids in the visual aspect but also helps pinpoint gaps in your current mapping approach that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Customer Journey Map Template 

Get a free customer journey map template and begin outlining experiences and important touchpoints.

Customer Experience Journey Mapping with InMoment

InMoment’s customer experience platform gives you all the tools you need to create and use an effective customer journey map to improve your organization’s CX and financial performance. Check out InMoment’s XI Platform to see how you can uncover customer insights in every form of customer feedback to create a more efficient customer journey!

References 

​​Khoros. Must-know customer service statistics of 2024. (https://khoros.com/blog/must-know-customer-service-statistics). Accessed 10/8/2024. 

Nielsen Norman Group. Journey-Mapping Impact: Research Findings. (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-impact/). Accessed 10/8/2024. 

Hanover Research. How To Use Customer Journey Mapping and Improve Customer Experience. (https://www.hanoverresearch.com/insights-blog/corporate/customer-journey-mapping/). Accessed 10/8/2024. 

Gartner. Gartner Says Most Customer Experience Programs are not Delivering on the Promise of Improving Differentiation and Helping Brands Better Compete. (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/gartner-says-most-customer-experience-programs-are-not-deliverin). Accessed 10/23/2024. 

Forrester. Key Trends In Customer Journey Mapping Platforms. (https://www.forrester.com/report/key-trends-in-customer-journey-mapping-platforms/RES179422). Accessed 10/10/2024.