A leading global animal health company partnered with BCG to develop an AI-powered sales engine to target and engage with customers, driving double-digit growth.
At BCG, the customer journey goes far deeper than customer journey mapping. Customer journeys should synthesize and empower new ways of working in order to drive maximum transformation and fundamentally reorganize the way that change is delivered. Moreover, a successful customer journey strategy breaks down siloed initiatives and powerfully combines agile human capabilities with front-to-back digitization, smart automation, and integrated data and analytics.
Customer journey mapping and experience design are indeed critical components of a successful customer journey strategy. This work includes deep “voice of the customer” research and an ongoing process of customer testing. Organizations must approach journey mapping with a human-centered, zero-based design approach and a clear view of customers, intermediaries, employees, and other constituents.
BCG’s Approach to Customer Journey Consulting
Our customer journey consulting combines BCG’s traditional hypothesis-driven approach with a discovery-driven technological perspective, mixing strategy and design engineering for exceptional outcomes. We define, develop, and enable ambitious pilots, minimum viable products (MVPs), and at-scale digital product and service experiences.
The experiences we deliver are grounded in human-centered design, closely aligned with business strategy, and based on an iterative, agile approach to expedite delivery and accelerate time to value. We help clients lead ambitious change programs in parallel with the strategy, culture, leadership, talent, organizational, and governance changes that are critical to long-term sustainability.
Organizations need to focus on five key pillars
- Updating Legacy Technology and Data. Current technology and data resources are often unable to support the needed transformation. Organizations need to focus on updating technology to enable direct client communication, aggregated across critical data sources, as well as an integrated data and analytics program.
- Process and Operating Model. For the development of a successful customer journey strategy, organizations must reimagine internal processes, embrace new operating structures and modifications to old policies and procedures, and be ready to enhance current products and services.
- Digital Technology Adoption. A critical component is the adoption of emerging digital technologies, including robotic process automation and machine learning, artificial intelligence and chatbots, and overall omnichannel solutions.
- Change Management. This requires value- and outcome-based measurement and governance, strong support from senior executives and business owners, and a realignment of both the funding model and performance management.
- Agile Delivery. Internal design capabilities, the adoption of agile ways of working, and multidisciplinary, collocated teams focused on high-value delivery should be embedded in customer journey strategy.
Our Client Work on Customer Journeys
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December 17, 2021
Reinventing Customer Insights: Zoetis's Next-Generation Sales Engine
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July 14, 2020
Transforming the End-to-End Customer Journey
BCG partnered with an Australian bank to create a completely digital experience for banking customers with their customer journey program.
Our Solutions for Customer Journey Transformations at Scale
BCG offers solutions for end-to-end customer journeys, with a powerful focus on digital potential, through a range of entry points:
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Tool
Maturity and Benefits Assessment
We provide a maturity and benefits assessment, which measures the readiness and potential impact of a customer journey transformation.
Maturity and Benefits Assessment
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Innovation Design Studio
We offer our innovation design studio so that we can work with clients to reimagine their customer journey strategy through human-centered design workshops.
Innovation Design Studio
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Solution
Rapid Digitization Process
We deliver a rapid digitization process, fixing a specific business need or problem with a journey-driven approach.
Rapid Digitization Process
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Tool
Journey-At-Scale Transformation Work
Our journey-at-scale transformation work aligns all change initiatives throughout the organization.
Journey-At-Scale Transformation Work
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Customer Journey Enablement Program
And our customer journey enablement program trains client teams and enables them with sustainable customer journey skills.
Customer Journey Enablement Program
Explore Our Insights on Customer Journeys
Article
January 17, 2025
Marketers must plan their media buys based on what truly drives influence, and they must lean into AI to power execution.
Video
September 23, 2024
Three Ways AI Is Advancing Customer Engagement
BCG’s Karen Lellouche Tordjman explains how AI is helping companies use conversational agents to interact with customers as well as to personalize content and better understand user needs.
Video
July 1, 2024
Building Strong Relationships
Sephora’s Marco Steinsieck discusses how the company cultivates lasting relationships. Putting clients at the center of everything it does and nurturing brands are key.
Article
December 9, 2024
Offering points and cash back isn’t enough. To keep people happy, companies must deliver a differentiated experience with personalized benefits and relevant partnerships.
Article
May 30, 2024
Marketers who measure mindshare can grow brand value more effectively than with traditional approaches.
DEEP AI by BCG X brings transformative relief to customer service headaches—for customers and businesses alike.
Meet Our Customer Journey Consultants
BCG’s multidisciplinary teams are made up of customer journey consultants with deep expertise,
tech build and design experts from BCG X, people and organizational strategists, agile coaches, and instructional designers. We also build strategic partnerships to achieve the goals of our clients.
