Organisations that serve customers depend on customer satisfaction and retention to generate revenue and increase market share. Yet these businesses often miss opportunities to create truly engaging experiences. Why?
Because many companies struggle to understand and visualize the full spectrum of a customer’s interactions with their brand, products, or services. This is where Customer Journey Map, as one of the available tools, can be particularly helpful.
Gartner defines a customer journey map (CJM) as a tool that helps marketers understand the series of connected customer experiences that customers desire and need — whether that involves completing a specific task or navigating the end-to-end journey from prospect to loyal advocate. By doing so, CJM enhances customer understanding and informs customer-facing decisions (1).
Customer journey mapping (CJM) is an increasingly popular strategic management tool, praised by both academics and practitioners for its effectiveness in clarifying an organisation’s customer experience (2). Such prise is well-founded as CJM allows visualising customer’s experience and the overarching service system. This blueprint of touchpoints serves as an excellent catalyst for innovation.
Imagine collaboration of cross-functional team to identify and eliminate service failures and customer pains, improve processes, and create greater value at each stage of customer’s journey.
How can this be achieved in a world of growing uncertainty and volatility?
In their “Market Outlook 2025”, JP Morgan characterises 2025 as a year of divergence, with markets facing increased complexity driven by the impact of technological innovation, geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility and regulatory uncertainty in fiscal and monetary policies (3).
According to J.P. Morgan Research, there’s a 55% probability of a high-for-long baseline, and a 45% probability of rates dropping in 2025.
It seems that the Covid pandemic has accelerated de-globalization trends. This, combined with the growing debt levels and restricted access to financial products (e.g. loans, mortgages) have led to:
As a result, drastic changes in customers behaviours, driven by external factors, are unfolding before our eyes. Making matters more complex, debt net of financial assets is estimated to increase to $25,587 billion (90.6% of GDP) by the end of 2024, and $27,370 billion (93.3% of GDP) by the end of 2025 (4).
Such mounting debt levels in the United States could trigger a “butterfly effect” across global markets, further influencing customer behaviours
Are we likely to face a crisis in the near future, or will we navigate the unchartered territories unscathed? If a crisis is indeed brewing, how server might it be? According to McKinsey, companies that employ AI for proactive analysis of customer behaviour, leveraging vast amounts of data, are more effective in:
Is preparing businesses for a possible crisis ahead sufficient?
What if the crisis ahead mirrors what Ray Dalio refers to as the “Big Debt Cycle”, akin to the one experienced by our great grandparents in the 1920s (6)? Can AI support businesses and enhance the creation of effective CJM in rapidly changing world order?
Human memory is limited. We frequently fail to recall past events, particularly the ones that didn’t take place in our own life time. AI, however, can build on historical and long forgotten interactions, data and trends to optimise CJM in real time. Key advantages include:
Unlike manual analysis, AI-driven insights are continuous, allowing businesses to make incremental changes that reflect real-time customer feedback and ultimately improve the robustness of CJM.
AI can undoubtfully process massive datasets and forecast customer behaviours, yet there are critical risks to acknowledge:
Change is the only constant
Heraclitus
Regardless of our personal stance on technology, our lives and businesses will continue to be shaped by AI. An informed approach to AI adaptation must involve smart risk assessment, competent governance and educated decision-making.
How can we achieve this?
Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
Steve Jobs
While AI can automate repetitive tasks, streamline processes and provide new, valuable insights, it remains no substitute for human intelligence, particularly in complex decision-making and customer relationship-building. In roles requiring creativity, empathy, and nuanced judgement, the human touch remains indispensable.
From my experience, as you integrate AI into your customer journey strategies, consider the following:
By uniting AI capabilities with human ingenuity, businesses can stay agile, customer-focused, and prepared for ongoing change. In an ever-evolving marketplace, the question is no longer whether to adopt AI, but rather how responsibly and boldly integrate it into your strategic vision. A balanced approach between digital tools and human wisdom is the cornerstone of resilient, future-ready organisations.
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