Today’s customer journey in CPG is more fluid than ever, with consumers interacting with brands across a variety of digital and physical touchpoints. From social media shopping to in-store experiences, each interaction must feel connected and consistent to meet heightened customer expectations. Disruptions or inconsistencies across any touchpoint can lead to dissatisfaction and lost opportunities. 

To stay competitive, it’s essential for CPG brands to ensure seamless engagement across all touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey. In this piece, we’ve outlined some of the key obstacles companies face in optimizing the customer journey in CPG and possible strategies to overcome them, ensuring a more integrated experience for customers. 

Leveraging Omnichannel Data 

With the expansion of customer touchpoints, both online and in person, CPG brands can now glean insights from a huge amount of valuable data. This data provides a more comprehensive picture of the customer journey, like browsing preferences across various channels. When used effectively, omnichannel data enables brands to better understand customer needs, personalize experiences, and create a more cohesive experience across all platforms. 

Channel partners will be critical to ensuring that CPG brands can harness customer data and continue to satisfy customer expectations. The reliance on retail partners for information has grown significantly, as traditionally, CPG companies shared customer insights. Now, there’s an opportunity for data and information to be transmitted between each and every partner. It’s essential to ensure that your company can share and receive data efficiently to tap into these retail partnerships and gain holistic customer insights. 

A major hurdle to drawing accurate and helpful insights is simply the vast amount of available customer data, and without the right strategies, brands often fail to take complete advantage of what they have. To fully leverage omnichannel interactions, companies need to integrate people, processes, technology, and data in a way that enables a comprehensive view of the customer journey. 

One solution involves the hiring of business translators—professionals who facilitate communication between data teams and business stakeholders. These individuals help bridge the gap between the data and corresponding business strategies, ensuring that customer data is used effectively to inform decisions and optimize the customer experience. By aligning technology and data abilities with overarching business goals, CPG companies can create seamless customer experiences. 

Leading software vendors like Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, and others are evolving to meet the demand for increased data capabilities as their tools present another solution to handling an omnichannel dataset. They can manage large datasets across platforms while also offering real-time data capabilities and AI-driven insights.  

Traditionally, companies have viewed customer data through a siloed approach, making it difficult to paint a broader picture of the customer and their expectations. Housing the data centrally in programs such as these, and implementing an efficient data management process, is critical for providing a holistic view of the customer and their journey. Organizations must ensure they are ready from an overall people, process, technology, and data perspective to successfully leverage the capabilities these platforms offer. A company culture that embraces testing, learning, and adapting and has the right governance in place to manage changes will be poised to stay relevant in customer minds. 

Building Cross-Functional Teams 

In many CPG organizations, the customer journey has traditionally been divided between different teams to focus separately on sales and brand interactions. However, as the customer journey becomes more integrated and covers multiple touchpoints simultaneously, this fractured approach is no longer the best fit. Companies that have embraced cross-functional teams are better equipped to understand the customer journey overall and make smarter decisions about how to add value. 

Rather than having brand teams report solely to marketing, some CPG companies are moving toward a model where executives oversee brand activation cross-functionally, integrating responsibilities across marketing, sales, and digital strategy. This shift allows companies to break down internal divisions and collaboratively look at the bigger picture. 

Traditionally there are many data silos in place, often leading to an incohesive understanding of the customer journey. By encouraging cross-team collaboration and viewing the customer experience as one unified path, companies can make more informed, seamless decisions. This cross-functional approach not only ensures that customer data is used more effectively but also drives a better understanding of the customer, allowing for an optimized customer journey. 

Keeping Up with Customer Expectations and Industry Trends 

A major blind spot for many CPG companies is the risk of taking the customer for granted. In such a saturated and competitive market, failing to evolve with changing needs and expectations will push customers away. Therefore, it’s essential to keep up with the market and your customers, understanding how they want to interact with your brand and product. 

Customer behavior is also changing at a faster pace. With decreasing attention spans and a multitude of touchpoints to reach brands, it’s becoming more challenging to keep customers interested. This makes it critical for brands to not only understand where customers are engaging but to deliver concise and memorable messages at every point of interaction. The ability to find relevance in your messaging is increasingly important, which is why many brands choose targeted advertising to personalize interactions. Companies that can adapt quickly to this fast-paced environment will be better positioned to stay ahead and build lasting customer engagements. 

Looking Ahead: Optimizing the Customer Journey in CPG 

The customer journey in CPG has shifted dramatically, requiring businesses to implement strategies and cross-functional teams that can adapt quickly to change. With data from multiple touchpoints, companies need robust systems and collaborative teams to manage and analyze insights in real time. AI, social media, and phygital marketing strategies are transforming how companies engage with customers, and a consistent brand voice across all points of engagement is essential. 

Optimizing the customer journey in CPG is a must for keeping pace with omnichannel shopping capabilities and staying competitive in the industry. Brands that follow the aforementioned strategies will be most successful with the modern customer. 

Our team of CPG experts has the experience needed to help you on your journey. Ready to get started? Connect with us today. 

Contributions from Sam Weitzel