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Configure customer journeys

Who can use this feature?

  • All roles with access level "high"
  • Available on all plans

Customer journeys in Catalyst provide a classification system to group customers according to their stage in defined milestones. Use the Journey Builder tool to configure stage criteria and build automated plays for each stage.

Defining customer journeys allows your teams to:

  1. Deliver a consistent experience from customer to customer
  2. Scale service delivery, whether high touch or digital
  3. Drive action plans toward goals and adjust on-the-fly as needed

Define your object-level journey fields

Journey Builder relies on the journey field values set at the account and opportunity levels. These fields are often set up as picklists. 

Calculated fields cannot be used for journey profiles or journey stages.

  1. Navigate to Settings > Object Configuration.
  2. Click in the accounts object.
  3. Locate the picklist field you want to use to denote the account's journey (e.g., Customer Journey). This field will likely correspond to the field you use to denote account journey in Salesforce. If one isn't created you can create a new one.
  4. Within the field, ensure the picklist values align with what you want to capture in the account journey. Common account journey stages include:
    1. Foundation
    2. Activation
    3. Mature adoption
    4. Continued success
  5. Repeat the steps above for the opportunity object. Common opportunity journey stages include:
    1. Discovery
    2. Consensus
    3. Proposal
    4. Closed Won
    5. Closed Lost
    6. etc.

Create object-level customer journeys

Within Journey Builder, you can create a unique journey for each of these objects:

  1. Account
  2. Opportunity

For each object, you can choose whether to use a single or multiple setup:

  • Single: Create one journey configuration that applies to all records on the object.
  • Multiple: Create multiple journey configurations that apply to subsets of records on the object, based on a secondary picklist (e.g., a "Customer Segment" field to create journey configurations for each account segment: SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise). Using the same stage names across all journeys drives consistency in reporting, but you can have different durations, goals, and automation logic.

You can transition from a single to a multiple journey configuration without affecting the existing journey data.

  1. Navigate to Settings > Journey Builder.
  2. Click Create Journey.
  3. Choose the object you want to configure (account or opportunity).
  4. Choose single or multiple setup.
  5. Choose the field you want to use for your journey stages (see above).
    • If setting up multiple journeys, choose the secondary field you want to use for creating a unique journey per field value. We recommend basing multiple journeys off of tier or segment, as tier usually determines the level of automation. For example, create a more automated journey for low touch customers while creating a more CSM-driven journey for high touch.
    • For each journey created, click inside to configure.
  6. Within the journey, click on each stage separately to define the configuration:

    • Color: Optionally choose a different color for the stage (click on color in configuration section).
    • Description: Enter a stage description; provides your team with instructional context for the stage
    • Target stage duration: Choose the number of calendar days or months a record should be in the stage
    • Stage goal: Choose one or more goals to indicate the outcomes each record should reach within the stage. These goals help your team prioritize their work to help customers succeed in each stage. You can add up to 10 goals. Text-based and multi-select picklist fields are not supported.
    • Stage logic: Set the operator to OR to satisfy duration or goal conditions; or set the operator to AND to satisfy both conditions. Duration is checked once per day (7PM of your instance timezone); goals are checked every 10 minutes.
    • Stage change: Determine whether to move a record automatically to the next stage based on the logic within the configuration, or leave as manual so your team members can choose when to move.
       
  7. Define the plays tab (optional). Attaching a playbook provides guidance to the account team on how to help customers achieve their goals, using prescriptive tasks and/or email actions.
    • Attach an existing playbook for the selected stage.
    • Or create a new playbook for the selected stage.
      Attaching a playbook applies the selected stage's goals and duration criteria to the playbook's entry conditions. 
  8. Click Save.
    The journey is active and applies immediately. Teams can monitor customer journey progress from the Customer Journey view or the Customer Journey module (if added to the object-level layout).

    An account will automatically not enter the first stage of customer journey, even when the field value set in Journey Builder syncs into Catalyst. Learn more ➡.

Edit journey configurations

When editing stage configurations, the following rules apply. 

  • Goal edit: Field is changed but it's using the same query input
    • Current stage: Recognized as a new goal and added as a goal on the goals tab
    • Previous stage: New goal only shows on re-entry, not on previous entries
  • Goal edit: Operator is changed
    • Current stage: Operator is updated
    • Previous stage: Operator frozen in time (when the customer left the stage)
  • Goal edit: Target values changed
    • Current stage: Target values are updated
    • Previous stage: Values frozen in time (when the customer left the stage)
    • Stage never entered: Shows the current state based on goals configuration for that stage
  • Add goal
    • Current stage: New goals appear on the goals tab
    • Previous stage: New goal only shows on re-entry, not on previous entries
  • Delete goal
    • Current stage: Removed from goals tab if goal is unmet; stays visible on the goals tab if already met
    • Previous stage: Removed from goals tab if goal is unmet; stays visible on the goals tab if already met

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