Failing Ahead – What We Realized at Cisco from a “Failed” Digital Orchestration Pilot

The fashionable buyer expertise is fraught with friction:

You converse to a buyer consultant, and so they inform you one factor.

You log into your digital account and see one other.

You obtain an e mail from the identical firm that tells an solely totally different story.

At Cisco, we’ve been working to establish these friction factors and evaluating how we will orchestrate a extra seamless expertise—remodeling the client, companion, and vendor expertise to be prescriptive, useful – and, most significantly, easy. This isn’t a simple job when working within the complexity of environments, applied sciences, and shopper areas that Cisco does enterprise in, however it’s not insurmountable.

We simply closed out a year-long pilot of an industry-leading orchestration vendor, and by all measures – it failed. In The Lean Startup Eric Ries writes, “in case you can not fail, you can not study.” I absolutely subscribe to this attitude. If you’re not prepared to experiment, to strive, to fail, and to guage your learnings, you solely repeat what you understand. You don’t develop. You don’t innovate. You must be prepared to dare to fail, and in case you do, to attempt to fail ahead.

So, whereas we didn’t renew the contract, we did proceed down our orchestration journey outfitted with a yr’s price of learnings and newly refined route on methods to deal with our initiatives.

Our Digital Orchestration Targets

We began our pilot with 4 key orchestration use circumstances:

1. Seamlessly join prescriptive actions throughout channels to our sellers, companions, and prospects.
2. Pause and resume a digital e mail journey based mostly on triggers from different channels.
3. Join analytics throughout the multichannel buyer journey.
4. Simply combine information science to department and personalize the client journey.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into every. We’ll have a look at the use case, the challenges we encountered, and the steps ahead we’re taking.

Use Case #1: Seamlessly join prescriptive actions throughout channels to our sellers, companions, and prospects.

Right this moment we course of and ship business-defined prescriptive actions to our buyer success representatives and companions when we’ve digitally recognized adoption limitations in our buyer’s deployment and utilization of our SaaS merchandise.

In our legacy state, we have been executing a sequence of complicated SQL queries in Salesforce Advertising Cloud’s Automation Studio to affix a number of information units and output the precise actions a buyer wants. Then, utilizing Advertising Cloud Join, we wrote the output to the job object in Salesforce CRM to generate actions in a buyer success agent’s queue. After this motion is written to the duty object, we picked up the log in Snowflake, utilized further filtering logic and wrote actions to our Cisco companion portal – Lifecycle Benefit, which is hosted on AWS.

There are a number of key points with this workflow:

• Salesforce Advertising Cloud is just not meant for use as an ETL platform; we have been already encountering day trip points.
• The companion actions have been depending on the vendor processing, so it launched complexity if we ever needed to pause one workflow whereas sustaining the opposite.
• The event course of was complicated, and it was troublesome to introduce new really useful actions or to layer on further channels.
• There was no suggestions loop between channels, so it was not potential for a buyer success consultant to see if a companion had taken motion or not, and vice versa.

Thus, we introduced in an orchestration platform – a spot the place we will join a number of information sources by APIs, centralize processing logic, and write the output to activation channels. Fairly shortly in our implementation, although, we encountered challenges with the orchestration platform.

The Challenges

• The complexity of the joins in our queries couldn’t be supported by the orchestration platform, so we needed to preprocess the actions earlier than they entered the platform after which they might be routed to their respective activation channels. This was our first pivot. In our technical evaluation of the platform, the seller assured us that our queries might be supported within the platform, however in precise apply, that proved woefully inaccurate. So, we migrated probably the most complicated processing to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and solely left easy logic within the orchestration platform to establish which motion a buyer required and write that to the proper activation channel.
• The consumer interface abstracted components of the code creating dependencies on an exterior vendor. We spent appreciable time attempting to decipher what went incorrect by way of trial and error with out entry to correct logs.
• The connectors have been extremely particular and required vendor help to setup, modify, and troubleshoot.

Our Subsequent Step Ahead

These three challenges pressured us to suppose in a different way. Our aim was to centralize processing logic and hook up with information sources in addition to activation channels. We have been already leveraging GCP for preprocessing, so we migrated the rest of the queries to GCP. As a way to remedy for our have to handle APIs to allow information consumption and channel activation, we turned to Mulesoft. The mix of GCP and Mulesoft helped us obtain our first orchestration aim whereas giving us full visibility to the end-to-end course of for implementation and help.

Use Case #2:  Pause and resume a digital e mail journey based mostly on triggers from different channels.

We centered on trying to pause an e mail journey in a Advertising Automation Platform (Salesforce Advertising Cloud or Eloqua) if a buyer had a mid-to-high severity Technical Help Middle (TAC) Case open for that product.

Once more, we set out to do that utilizing the orchestration platform. On this situation, we wanted to pause a number of digital journeys from a single set of processing logic within the platform.

The Problem

We did decide that we might ship the pause/resume set off from the orchestration platform, but it surely required organising a one-to-one match of journey canvases within the orchestration platform to journeys that we’d wish to pause within the advertising automation platform. Using the orchestration platform really launched extra complexity to the workflow than managing ourselves.

Our Subsequent Step Ahead

Once more, we appeared on the identified problem and the instruments in our toolbox. We decided that if we arrange the processing logic in GCP, we might consider all journeys from a single question and ship the pause set off to all related canvases within the advertising automation platform – a way more scalable construction to help.

One other strike towards the platform, however one other victory in forcing a brand new mind-set about an issue and discovering an answer we might help with our present tech stack. We additionally anticipate the methodology we established to be leveraged for different kinds of decisioning resembling journey prioritization, journey acceleration, or pausing a journey when an adoption barrier is recognized and a really useful motion intervention is initiated.

Use Case #3: Join analytics throughout the multichannel buyer journey.

We execute journeys throughout a number of channels. As an example, we might ship a renewal notification e mail sequence, present a personalised renewal banner on Cisco.com for customers of that firm with an upcoming renewal, and allow a self-service renewal course of on renew.cisco.com. We acquire and analyze metrics for every channel, however it’s troublesome to point out how a buyer or account interacted with every digital entity throughout their complete expertise.

Orchestration platforms provide analytics views that show Sankey diagrams so journey strategists can visually overview how prospects interact throughout channels to guage drop off factors or notably vital engagements for optimization alternatives.

The Problem

• As we set out to do that, we discovered the most important blocker to unifying this information is just not actually a problem an orchestration platform innately solves simply by executing the campaigns by their platform. The biggest blocker is that every channel makes use of totally different identifiers for the client. E mail journeys use e mail handle, internet personalization makes use of cookies related at an account stage, and the e-commerce expertise makes use of consumer ID login. The foundation of this problem is the shortage of a novel identifier that may be threaded throughout channels.
• Moreover, we found that our analytics and metrics group had present gaps in attribution reporting for websites behind SSO login, resembling renew.cisco.com.
• Lastly, since many groups at Cisco are driving internet site visitors to Cisco.com, we noticed a big inconsistency with how totally different groups have been tagging (and never tagging) their respective internet campaigns. To have the ability to obtain a real view of the client journey finish to finish, we would want to undertake a standard language for tagging and monitoring our campaigns throughout enterprise items at Cisco.

Our Subsequent Step Ahead

Our group started the method to undertake the identical tagging and monitoring hierarchy and system that our advertising group makes use of for his or her campaigns. This can enable our groups to bridge the hole between a buyer’s pre-purchase and post-purchase journeys at Cisco—enabling a extra cohesive buyer expertise.

Subsequent, we wanted to deal with the info threading. Right here we recognized what mapping tables existed (and the place) to have the ability to map totally different marketing campaign information to a single information hierarchy. For this explicit instance for renewals, we wanted to deal with three totally different information hierarchies:

1. Occasion ID related to a novel bodily location for a buyer who has bought from Cisco
2. Net cookie ID
3. Cisco login ID

With the introduction of constant, cross Cisco-BU monitoring IDs in our Cisco.com internet information, we’ll map a Cisco login ID again to an internet cookie ID to fill in a number of the internet attribution gaps we see on websites like renew.cisco.com after a consumer logs in with SSO.

As soon as we had established that stage of knowledge threading, we might develop our personal Sankey diagrams utilizing our present Tableau platform for Buyer Journey Analytics. Moreover, leveraging our present tech stack helps restrict the variety of reporting platforms used to make sure higher metrics consistency and simpler upkeep.

Use Case #4: Simply combine information science to department and personalize the client journey.

We needed to discover how we will take the output of a knowledge science mannequin and pivot a journey to supply a extra customized, guided expertise for that buyer. As an example, let’s have a look at our buyer’s renewal journey. Right this moment, they obtain a four-touchpoint journey reminding them to resume. Clients also can open a chat or have a consultant name or e mail them for extra help. Finally, the journey is identical for a buyer no matter their chance to resume. We’ve got, nevertheless, a churn threat mannequin that might be leveraged to switch the expertise based mostly on excessive, medium, or low threat of churn.

So, if a buyer with an upcoming renewal had a excessive threat of churn, we might set off a prescriptive motion to escalate to a human for engagement, and we might additionally personalize the e-mail with a extra pressing message for that consumer. Whereas a buyer with a low threat for churn might have an upsell alternative weaved into their notification or we might route the low-risk prospects into advocacy campaigns.

The objectives of this use case have been primarily:

1. Leverage the output of a knowledge science mannequin to personalize the client’s expertise
2. Pivot experiences from digital to human escalation based mostly on information triggers.
3. Present context to assist buyer brokers perceive the chance and higher interact the client to drive the renewal.

The Problem

This was really a moderately pure match for an orchestration platform. The problem we entered right here was the info refresh timing. We wanted to refresh the renewals information to be processed by the churn threat mannequin and align that with the timing of the triggered e mail journeys. Our renewals information was refreshed at first of each month, however we maintain our sends till the tip of the month to permit our companions a while to overview and modify their prospects’ information previous to sending. Our orchestration platform would solely course of new, incremental information and overwrite based mostly on a pre-identified main key (this allowed for higher system processing to not simply overwrite all information with each refresh).

To get round this problem, our vendor would create a model new view of the desk previous to our triggered ship so that every one information was newly processed (not simply any new or up to date data). Not solely did this create a vendor dependency for our journeys, but it surely additionally launched potential high quality assurance points by requiring a pre-launch replace of our information desk sources for our manufacturing journeys.

Our Subsequent Step Ahead

One query we stored asking ourselves as we struggled to make this use case work with the orchestration platform—have been we overcomplicating issues? The 2 orchestration platform outputs of our attrition mannequin use case have been to:

1. Customise the journey content material for a consumer relying on their threat of attrition.
2. Create a human touchpoint in our digital renewal journey for these with a excessive attrition threat.

For primary, we might really obtain that utilizing dynamic content material modules inside SalesForce Advertising Cloud if we merely added a “threat of attrition” subject to our renewals information extension and created dynamic content material modules for low, medium, and excessive threat of attrition values. Carried out!

For quantity two, doesn’t that sound form of acquainted? It ought to! It’s the identical downside we needed to resolve in our first use case for prescriptive calls to motion. As a result of we already labored to create a brand new structure for scaling our really useful actions throughout a number of channels and audiences, we might work so as to add a department for an “attrition threat” alert to be despatched to our Cisco Renewals Managers and companions based mostly on our information science mannequin. A suggestions loop might even be added to gather information on why a buyer might not select to resume after this human connection is made.

Discovering Success

On the finish of our one-year pilot, we had been pressured to consider the techniques to realize our objectives very in a different way. Sure, we had deemed the pilot a failure – however how will we fail ahead? As we encountered every problem, we took a step again and evaluated what we discovered and the way we might use that to realize our objectives.

Finally, we found out new methods to leverage our present programs to not solely obtain our core objectives but in addition allow us to have end-to -end visibility of our code so we will arrange the processing, refreshes, and connections precisely how our enterprise requires.

Now – we’re making use of every of those learnings.  We’re rolling out our core use circumstances as capabilities in our present structure, constructing an orchestration stock that may be leveraged throughout the corporate – a large step in direction of success for us and for our prospects’ expertise.  The end result was not what we anticipated, however every step of the method helped propel us towards the proper options.

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