My chunky, snotty two-year-old toddler is teaching me how to make sense of the customer journey.
(Stay with me on this.)
He tackles his older brothers but screams when they get too close to him. He throws tantrums for crackers then doesn’t eat them. His desire to express himself far outpaces any logical thought or language development.
Each scream, smile, and tear is a stark reminder of the cognitive and emotional journey he’s on. And there are limitations to what I can understand about his limitations. Because I can’t yet ask him, and he can’t yet answer, the shortest of questions:
Why?
This is the most important question I’d ask. It’s how I’d start to build empathy. I’d understand his behavior, his reasoning, his feelings. Only then, would I be able meet him where he is on his messy, snotty journey. Understanding the why is everything.
It’s the same when it comes to the customer journey. Because nothing screams “messy” — and requires genuine empathy and intuitive understanding — quite like it.
There is no journey without the “why”
A customer journey helps a brand identify and activate against the key steps, decisions, actions that occur throughout. Often this is the clean, hard data — the what, the where, the who — a company needs to effectively meet its customer where they are.
Make no mistake — this data is essential to understanding the journey. The data is the blueprint.
But stop there, and the understanding of the customer and their journey is nothing more than just that — a collection of data. We’re missing what matters most, and it’s the question I can’t ask my toddler: Why?
Take for example, a patient diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer.
Data about this patient is essential, but it’s not insight. Data provides the what: their health, their care team, their treatment path. Data does not provide why they chose their care partners. Why they struggle with adherence. Why they keep their trusted circle so small. Why they handle a setback the way they do.
Now it’s messy. Fetch those crackers.
From data, to empathy, and back again
To truly uncover and activate against the customer journey, it’s critical to unpack the insight that asking why helps you achieve.
Here at Brado, our definition of insight is a fresh, intimate understanding of people’s beliefs that has the power to genuinely change behavior. And achieving insight through the customer journey is about making sense of the mess. It’s learning what that customer wants and needs— whether they realize they do or not— in every moment that matters. Insight is the key to that intimate understanding; the key to establishing a genuine, long-term relationship with the customer.
So, if data is the blueprint, empathy is the intelligence and imagination behind it. It’s the human heartbeat behind the map. And we need both to make sense of that messy journey.
First, we need that blueprint. We need to map the chapters in their journey and gain a detailed understanding of their experience along the way. The steps taken, questions asked, conversations had. We must know the moments that matter. All the critical moments where action happens. These are the tangible, measurable aspects that, when pieced together, create the map of their journey.
Next, we need the heartbeat. We need to unpack the why behind this data. And the only way to do this is through meaningful conversation with the customer. By leaning into the blueprint, we can have real, empathic engagement with the customer to unpack why they feel, think, and act how they do along their journey, and uncover their most important unmet needs throughout.
And now, we meet them where they are. Layering the why onto the what enables us to activate with intention. We can revisit that map, identifying and showing up in the most important moments throughout their journey.
Now, this is insight in action. Now, we’ve achieved an intuitive understanding of the customer that, through strategic bridging of data and meaningful conversation, can empower your brand to establish a truly valuable relationship with them.
Now, it’s not so messy.
Patient Journeys and Conversational A.I.
Establishing these real relationships require real conversations—and this is true for patients more so than any other type of customer. Conversational AI is here, and no category will benefit more from its arrival than healthcare. Navigating the healthcare system is highly complex. Patients need education and guidance during every step of their journey. Patients want – demand – better experiences from their healthcare provider. Both the patient and the provider benefit from an enduring relationship throughout that journey. Conversational AI, such as Brado’s new Conversational Engagement™ platform, makes this win/win possible.
Patients are often dissatisfied (and doctors mortified) with the answers from generic AI such as ChatGPT. Mediocre answers are not an option when you are talking about someone’s health. Purpose-built AI is a must, getting us closer to what the patient really cares about and enables the
control over the content healthcare companies need. Today, providers can have meaningful conversations with patients – at the exact moment the patient wants to talk. And that leads to the better experience the patient wants.
Conversational A.I. requires a very specific type of patient journey
Generating the patient journey used to inform conversational AI necessitates insight strategists and data scientists to work together. For our Conversational Engagement™ platform, we map the most important moments in patients’ lives, while mining the search landscape for relevant questions and keywords. We also uncover tens of thousands of patient questions and link them to each stage of the journey. We not only know what patients are doing, we also know why.
And there is that word again.
It all gets back to why.