Orchestrating the customer journey: why and how to implement it?
Article by Nathalie DEMOULIN, Nhien TRAN & Helen COCCO
02/03/2026
7 min
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Customers no longer follow a linear path. They navigate between stores, websites, apps, and social media, interact with dozens of touchpoints, and actively build their own experience instead of following the path laid out for them. Why is this a problem? While customers expect a seamless, personalized experience, most companies remain trapped in their organizational and technological silos, unable to coordinate their different interactions in a coherent manner.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the game… but also widening the gap
AI and big data now make it possible to personalize customer interactions in real time and anticipate their needs (even before they have expressed them!). But this technological capacity reveals a major flaw: traditional tools for managing the customer journey (maps, retrospective analyses) are no longer up to the task. This makes customer journey orchestration essential. It is the only way to dynamically coordinate all interactions to deliver on the promise of a truly seamless and personalized customer experience.
What is customer journey orchestration?
Orchestrating the customer journey marks a fundamental shift. Whereas traditional approaches were limited to mapping and analyzing past interactions, orchestration coordinates all interactions across all touchpoints in real time.
Four game-changing capabilities:
1. Each customer follows their own path
AI no longer simply adapts a message: it reconstructs each customer’s journey in real time based on their behavior, context, and intentions. Gone are the days of standardized journeys: each experience becomes unique and contextual. For example, Notify AI enables – thanks to real-time customer data synchronisation and modules such as IAN Orchestrate – companies to automatically assess the best channel, the right time and the most relevant content for each individual client, based on behavioral and contextual indications. This fine-tuned orchestration maximizes engagement while ensuring a smooth and consistent omnichannel customer experience.
2. A seamless experience, regardless of the channel
Orchestration unifies all interactions (web, app, store, customer service) in real time to create an experience that the customer perceives as fluid and coherent. Customers no longer have to repeat their ‘story ‘at each touchpoint: the company takes into account customer history and acts accordingly.
3. Anticipating instead of reacting
Rather than responding retrospectively, orchestration detects emerging needs, identifies resistance before it occurs, and proposes the best way of acting at the right time. This shift from being ‘reactive’ to ‘predictive’ radically transforms the customer relationship.
4. Dynamic customer journeys that adapt constantly
Thanks to this, customer journeys are no longer fixed in time; they now function as dynamic ecosystems that “sense, decide and respond” in real time. This fluidity is based on the three pillars of orchestration: context (where the customer is), timing (when they interact) and relevance (what they really need). This new generation of decision-making systems no longer settles for task automation but strives for true autonomy capable of constantly recalibrating itself.
Adidas illustrates this shift with Sirius AI™, which reconstructs the purchasing journey by analysing behavioural signals such as navigation and price sensitivity. AI dynamically adapts the catalogue structure for each visitor, transforming a standardized funnel into a unique experience.
Decathlon has also adopted this approach by aligning personalization with the customer’s actual intent. The journey is no longer a series of emails, but a continuum that incorporates contextual factors (weather, equipment usage cycle) to anticipate future needs.
The major challenges hindering orchestration
Despite their ambitions, most companies are still in the process of modernizing their approach to the customer journey and haven’t yet achieved true orchestration. Six major obstacles are blocking this transformation:
1. Scattered data and incomplete customer profiles
Customer information is often scattered between e-commerce, physical stores, customer services, and advertising teams. This results in incomplete customer profiles, (unnecessary) duplicates, and an inability to have a holistic view of the customer. Even with sophisticated platforms (CDPs), companies struggle to connect all data sources, creating blind spots that disrupt the fluidity of the customer journey.
2. Each department plays its own tune
Marketing, sales, digital, and stores – each department pursues different objectives, use separate tools, and optimize their own indicators. This lack of coordination produces inconsistent customer experiences: he/she may receive an offer by email that contradicts another that was made in store, or discover that customer services is unaware of their latest online interaction.
3. Reacting instead of anticipating
Customer personalization remains largely retrospective and static. Companies lack systems capable of detecting the customer’s mindset in real time, anticipating their unspoken needs, and offering appropriate responses at the right time.
4. The fine line between relevance and intrusion
By exploiting increasingly detailed behavioral data, companies risk crossing over to the dark side: excessive personalization can be perceived as intrusive and quickly destroy customer trust. With the disappearance of third-party cookies and stricter privacy rules, this balance is becoming even more delicate.
5. Fragmented indicators that create chaos
Companies measure Customer Lifetime Value, satisfaction, Net Promoter Score, ROI, and more, but nearly always at the channel or department level. This siloed approach pushes each team to optimize its own performance at the expense of the overall experience, creating conflicting incentives and an internal war that is invisible to the customer.
6. AI impresses, but it is not yet trusted
Despite AI’s growing use, it remains largely confined to content creation and basic recommendations. Few companies dare to entrust it with autonomous decisions, fearing unpredictable errors, lack of transparency, and negative impacts on the customer experience.
Strategic recommendations for effective orchestration
Faced with these challenges, how can marketers move toward authentic orchestration? Here are five priority tiggers for action:
1. Unify your data: prioritize quality over quantity
Before improving customer experience, first structure your data strategy. What matters is not the amount of data collected, but your ability to consolidate and unify data and obtain a complete view of each customer. Invest in infrastructure capable of centralizing all customer interactions in real time to create a single, coherent profile. For example, Treasure Data, a pioneer in Customer Data Platforms (CDP), has supported international players like Shiseido and Subaru in creating a unified customer profile covering all touchpoints. This approach has enabled more relevant communications throughout the customer lifecycle, from marketing to after-sales.
2. Focus on the customer moments that really matter
Rather than multiplying different points of contact, simplify the customer journey by eliminating unnecessary interactions. Identify the critical moments when personalized action brings real value to the customer, and focus your orchestration efforts on these key stages. The key is to intervene at the right time, with the right message, based on the customer’s actual needs.
The example of Sephora clearly illustrates this approach. Rather than increasing the number of customer solicitations, the brand structures the experience around moments of high added value for the customer ( e.g integrating into a skincare routine or recommending new products). By focusing on these critical steps, Sephora enhances the relevance of interactions and avoids overloading customers. The key is not to be everywhere, but to engage at the moment when the customer’s intent is clearest.
3. Test before rolling out
Embrace a culture of continuous experimentation. Run small-scale, low-cost tests, measure their real impact on customer behavior, and then roll out only what works. This incremental approach limits risk and enables continuous improvement of customer experience. J.P. Morgan CIB Investment Bank embraces a culture of continuous experimentation to turn intuition into certainty.
By using various methods, from A/B testing to observational analysis, this iterative approach allows for incremental refinement of the customer journey, thereby limiting financial risks while optimizing real impact.
4. Break down silos: align the entire organization around the customer
Orchestration only works if all teams (marketing, sales, IT, legal, management) share the same vision, speak the same language, and pursue common goals. This alignment is based on four pillars: a shared vision driven by leadership, unified access to data, coordinated operational processes, and transparent relationships between departments.
5. Make trust a competitive advantage
The more autonomous AI becomes, the more crucial it is to have ethical governance. Establish clear rules that ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability in your AI systems. Trust has become a strategic differentiator: companies that erode trust compromise their long-term customer relationships, regardless of their technological advantage. Be transparent with your clients about data usage and proactively adhere to ethical principles. For example, Novartis has formalized ethical principles around the use of data and artificial intelligence, including an obligation to clearly explain why and how data is collected and used, and to inform users when AI is deployed, in order to enhance transparency
Orchestration: a strategic necessity
Customer journeys have become too complex to manage with traditional tools. Orchestration is no longer a luxury: it is a strategic necessity for transforming customer experience into a competitive advantage.
The companies that will succeed in the future are not those with the best technologies, but those that have aligned their teams, unified their data, and placed the customer at the heart of their real-time decisions. The time to act is now. Those who delay risk losing the trust and loyalty of their customers to more agile competitors.
- Nathalie DEMOULIN is a professor at IÉSEG and an expert in marketing strategy and customer relationship management. She also teaches in the Executive Mastère Spécialisé® Direction Marketing et Digital (an executive program taught in French).
- Nhien TRAN is a Ph.D. student (teaching & research assistant at IÉSEG) and her thesis focuses on the orchestration of the customer journey.
- Helen COCCO is a professor at IÉSEG and an expert in customer experience and omnichannel strategy. Her teaching and research focus on the design and management of omnichannel customer journeys.
This is the English version of an article originally published in French.
The images accompanying this article were generated with Sora (OpenAI)
