Creating a customer journey

Customer journeys encompass all customer experiences that are related to completing an objective. Journeys can involve complex Stages or be very simple. These journeys provide a mental model for managing the different Actions by highlighting any gaps in content toward achieving the objective. Customer journeys also influence Next-Best-Action decisions, which lead to more consistent and improved customer outcomes.

This video shows you how to manage and optimize customer engagement strategies by using customer journeys. 

U+ Bank wants to use a customer journey to increase the number of mortgage applications from qualified customers. By using customer journeys, U+ Bank puts Actions and treatments into Stages in a sequential format that guides customers toward mutually beneficial outcomes. 

To implement this use case, a business user first creates a customer journey in Pega 1:1 Operations Manager. In the Create journey window, you can select the predefined journey type that most closely matches the use case, or you can create a custom journey request. To preview what the journey might look like, click the Help icon on the tile. You can view examples of the types of Actions expected at each Stage. 

Using the predefined journey type automatically populates certain data in the change request.

The bank wants to introduce a journey for mortgages to acquire new customers, so select the category Mortgage lead nurturing.

A new journey creation results in a change request creation. In the change request form, enter a name that describes the purpose of the request.

As a business user, you provide the completion date as the expected timeframe in which the NBA Specialists complete the request.

You can use the Description section to provide any additional business details that are useful for the NBA Specialists.

Create the new change request. The new change request has a unique ID.

The change request is currently in the Create Stage. Proceed further to complete the journey details.

In the Define journey details section, enter a name for the new customer journey. In this example, enter Discover and Apply for a Mortgage.

Select the appropriate business issue and group if you know it. In this example, you select the Grow issue and Mortgages group. You can change these details in collaboration with the NBA Specialist.

If you want to include actions from multiple business issues and groups in your journey, select All Issues and All Groups. In the Journey description field, enter relevant information about the customer journey and its outcomes.

There are three options to determine which Stage the system considers during Action arbitration:

• Forward progress (cannot go backwards)
• Right-most eligible stage (default)
• Eligible Stage with highest priority Action

In this example, retain the default option, Right-most eligible stage (default).

Optionally, to indicate the total duration a person can spend on a journey, enter the value in the Time frame field.

In the Acceptance Criteria section, in the Criteria field, enter the requirements that the customer journey must meet. You can also attach a document to this change request that provides a brief overview of the requirements, criteria for the journey, and the desired outcome.

If you selected any of the predefined customer journey types at the beginning, some information might be prepopulated by default.

Now, you can follow the typical change management process to prioritize, define a peer reviewer if required, and assign the task to the NBA Specialist.

Build your customer journey by adding or deleting Stages, Actions, and defining the entry criteria. If you selected any of the predefined customer journey types at the beginning, some of the information might already be included by default.

You can modify any journey Stage details, add entry criteria, upweight Actions, or add more Actions to a Stage.

To add an Action to the Stage, select the desired action from the list in respective Stage. You can add more than one Action to each Stage.

Now, add the entry criteria that determine whether an individual is eligible for a particular Stage of the journey.

You can enter items in the Behavioral entry criteria section to use a previously curated set of common conditions that help you build entry criteria for the journey Stage or use the Profile entry criteria section to select the context and the set of conditions that define the Stage entry Rules.

In this example, the behavioral entry criteria to enter the first Stage is that customer must have clicked on any item from the Grow/Creditcards issue/group on the Web channel in last 7 days.

To enter the second Stage, the customer must have clicked on the Pros and Cons item from the Grow/Mortgages issue/group in the Initial contact or promotion stage on the Web channel in last 7 days.

Create a similar entry criteria for the third Stage.

The system generates all the artifacts that are necessary to output this customer journey.

The NBA Specialist can now review and validate the generated artifacts.

Finally, submit the change request back to the team lead.

In the process of change management flow, the next step as a team lead is to verify and approve the change request configured by the Specialist.  

After approval, the system makes changes available or submits them to the revision manager, who can deploy the changes to production and complete the revision.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

• How to create a customer journey, set criteria, and manage Actions and Stages.
• How to navigate through the Plan, Build, Generate, Test, and Deploy Stages of a customer journey.