In 2009, McKinsey and Company pronounced the classic marketing funnel dead and, in its place, the “Customer Decision Journey” was born, depicting how customers engage with technology to learn about brands before doing a purchase.

But in 2015, they changed the concept, citing that the consumers evolved and have removed the consideration and evaluation phase of their journey. Several marketing experts, however, challenged the notion saying that conversational commerce was the cause.

Since then, a lot has changed. Bitcoin now costs about $200, Snapchat was supposed to take down Facebook and fake news is becoming a huge problem online. So, if you think of 2009 when the “customer decision journey” was created, a lot more has changed. The way customers communicate, buy and experience has changed and the concept by McKinsey is no longer relevant.

But who would claim its place in the customer journey?

The Future of Customer Journey

The fundamental shift from 2009 to today is about balancing power in the decision-making process. McKinsey’s model suggests that customers hold the power and brands must engage and influence them into a cycle of loyalty.

However, today when brands can build connections through multiple channels, customers are not as in control as they think. Consumers are now spoilt for choice, and thus, they have handed their decision-making powers to the machines.

Just think about how Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, and other media platforms show you brands, products and contents based on what the machine thinks you like. Unless customers actively break out of the cycle, customer experiences today are highly curated.

The shift from decision to curation leads experts to believe that the new heir of the old marketing funnel is the “Curated Customer Journey.”

With Curated Customer Journey, brands must navigate the balance between profits and ethics as they curate journeys for their customers. Since data privacy becomes important for more customers, businesses should consider how this will impact their business model.

Take Netflix and Spotify for example, they continue to serve a personalized customer journey, while advertising-driven businesses continue to aggressively push themselves to customers.

With this, companies should change their models to cater to the evolving customer journey rather than sticking to a dead concept waiting for it to get back to life.

Understanding the Curated Customer Journey, Everise created Systematic Insights®,  a data-driven methodology for improving CX by helping our clients perfect their products.

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