Exploring the role of automated touchpoints in B2B customer journeys

B2B customer journeys are characterised by complexity, as interactions occur across a growing number of touchpoints across various channels (Cortez & Johnston, 2017; Lundin & Kindström, 2023; Purmonen, Jaakkola & Terho, 2023). Touchpoints are described as any contact and interaction, online or offline, relating to the supplier organisation (Witell et al., 2020; Lundin & Kindström, 2023), and shape the customer experience (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). As B2B interactions shift to digital modes, technology that facilitates these touchpoints has grown in importance (Rusthollkarhu et al., 2022). Consequently, interactional processes between buyers and sellers are experiencing major transformations, representing an important area for future research (Ahearne et al., 2022). Recently, the potential of harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) in B2B customer journeys has gained attention (e.g. Moradi & Dass, 2022; Rusthollkarhu et al., 2022), with the possibility that human-to-human interactions could give way to human-to-machine interactions (Huang & Rust, 2018; Gao & Liu, 2022). With AI acknowledged as an actor in B2B relationships (Keegan, Iredale & Naudé, 2023) a wide range of AI-empowered tools has become available (see e.g. Rusthollkarhu et al., 2022). This study focuses on AI-driven marketing automation, a software tool used to automate various marketing activities (Bagshaw, 2015; Buttle & Maklan, 2019) including, sales lead management, delivery of marketing communications and collection of customer data (Mero et al., 2022). The shift from human interactions to automation represents a potentially radical transformation in interactions between organisations and their customers. Currently, we lack comprehensive insight into the various ways such interactions can affect customer journeys. Therefore, a qualitative, exploratory approach was employed, utilising in-depth interviews with 29 experienced senior digital marketers. As the purpose of these interviews was to understand how supplier-controlled automated touchpoints contribute to B2B customer journeys, participants were selected based on experience with marketing automation and B2B content marketing initiatives. The sample comprised of individuals from digital marketing agencies and in-house roles in B2B organisations, reflecting the diverse approaches organisations have in managing marketing automation initiatives across B2B sectors. The findings reveal clear benefits of utilising marketing automation to nurture B2B relationships across the customer journey. In particular, the value of automated touchpoints in the early stages of the customer journey was highlighted, as in this stage the selling organisation has limited information about the buyer and their information needs. Marketing automation allows organisations to capture behavioural insights, contributing to improved journey management, and simultaneously reducing the reliance on human relationships while enabling buyers to proceed in their purchasing journeys on their own terms. Consequently, using marketing automation allows for the creation of personalised and targeted interactions, which challenge the traditional perceptions of automation implying standardisation (Hollebeek, Sprott & Brady, 2021). Moreover, these experiences can be personalised at scale which may not be possible with human service providers. Thus, findings contribute to our understanding of the types of touchpoints that are effective in the customer journey (De Keyser et al., 2020), as well as how customers transition across different touchpoints in digitalised B2B journeys (Lundin & Kindström, 2023).