In our 30-criterion evaluation of customer journey orchestration (CJO) providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. The Forrester Wave™ evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders, and Challengers. In alphabetical order, these are the vendors we included: Alterian, CSG, Engage Hub, Genesys, inQuba, Medallia, Qualtrics, Quantum Metric, and Roojoom.

CJO Is The Journey-Centric Firm’s Nerve Center

Customer journey orchestration is the heart of the journey-centric technology stack. It connects journeys and fosters a culture of data-driven decision-making based on a customer’s path and perceptions as they pursue a goal. Reference customers for CJO vendors say their two biggest challenges are 1) integrating data sources for a real-time, unified view of the true customer journey to uncover issues across channels and act on opportunities and 2) hyperpersonalizing increasingly conversational journeys for ever-changing customers. Solving these challenges takes the guesswork out of orchestrating journeys and accelerates journey-centric transformation.

New Criteria In The Forrester Wave™: Customer Journey Orchestration Platforms, Q2 2024

We added some new criteria, to reflect changes in the market and in buyer persona needs. We added criteria such as:

  • Predictive journey AI and generative AI. Predictive AI and machine learning have been key CJO criteria since our inaugural evaluation in 2018. But generative AI (genAI) now dominates tech discussions and all CJO vendors are incorporating it into their offerings, with some developing stand-alone genAI-driven products. AI is accelerating journey discovery, analysis, testing, and recommendations. Generative AI’s transformative impact on journey mapping, journey analytics, and journey orchestration has only just begun. It promises to connect humans to complex journey data in more natural ways and generate hyperpersonalized recommendations for people and systems working with customers. It has the potential to turn orchestrated journeys into conversational ones at the pace of customer behavior.
  • Journey hierarchy and strategy optimization. Why? Because journeys don’t occur in isolation; they flow into each other, connect, and influence each other. By viewing individual journeys in the context of other journeys, you can gauge the relative impact of a journey, share best practices and create consistency across journeys, understand the accumulated impact of journeys, and scale fixes across journeys and not be caught out by unexpected effects of changes in one journey on another. Journey-centric firms are managing journeys at scale, making criteria such as journey hierarchy and strategy optimization critical. Embedded AI-enabled tools can help automate strategy recommendations, assess impact, prioritize journeys, and aid in scenario planning. Tools like advanced journey atlas creation and dashboarding capabilities make it easier to track, measure, and optimize both journey strategy and overall business performance.
  • Business operations intelligence. Journey-centric firms are laser-focused on the flow of journeys from customers’ points of view across touchpoints, as well as silos, policies, and procedures. They deliberately detect, act on, and orchestrate the most critical events in the journey, and to do that, they need to connect metrics like journey completion and Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS) to journey cost, operational efficiency, employee experience (EX) metrics, friction, sentiment, emotion, and overall journey profitability across customer, employee, and partner journeys. Vendors increasingly offer customer experience (CX) and EX correlations and dashboards that bring together customer and employee journey insights and employee and partner journey orchestration.

Some Advice For CJO Buyers

If you are a Forrester client, check out the new report, The Forrester Wave™: Customer Journey Orchestration Platforms, Q2 2024. I also recommend reading The Customer Journey Orchestration Landscape, Q1 2024. You can also reach out for a guidance session or inquiry with me. No matter which CJO solution best fits your needs, keep in mind the following:

  • Data fusion across channels and data sources is critical to quickly reveal the reality of customers’ experiences and act. Look for out-of-the-box data integrations to enable immediate use without IT integration, as well as preloaded market and competitor data and orchestration playbooks to improve journey discovery and time to value.
  • Prepare to navigate industry hype to determine where AI can help the CJO solution realize value. Look for solutions that combine predictive AI and genAI to facilitate responsible business decisions and build customer trust. Whether embedded AI functionality enhances EX or powers CX use cases, make sure that your CJO solution adheres to the highest standards for privacy, regulatory compliance, and ethical data use.
  • Metrics matter more than ever. CX pros are increasingly looking to measure journey outcomes, health, and profitability across an expanding number of use cases to drive journey centricity. Look for vendors that go beyond typical metrics such as journey completion and NPS to measure journey cost, operational efficiency, EX metrics, friction, sentiment, emotion, and overall journey profitability across customer, employee, and partner journeys.