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Home / Insights / Blog / Here’s How Organizations Can Use Customer Analytics to Boost Engagement
May 28, 2021 - by Synoptek
In today’s highly volatile and uncertain business environment, businesses are having a tough time interacting and engaging with customers and delivering experiences that boost loyalty and curtail turnover. And one of the main reasons for this is the inability to process the growing volumes of customer data to unearth rich, new insights that pave the way for increased engagement and retention.
Forrester recently rolled out a Customer Analytics Playbook titled “Turn Data into Insights with Customer Analytics” which talks about customer analytics best practices, strategies, and technologies organizations can embrace to engage with customers in new and exciting ways. Here are some key takeaways from the playbook:
The deluge of customer data in recent years and changing business dynamics and customer patterns due to COVID-19 have caused immense turmoil in the way customer needs are addressed, and customer experiences are provided. Here are some challenges:
Collecting, assessing, and acting on customer data has never been easy; but given the volume, diversity, and complexity of customer data today, organizations are having a tough time predicting customer intent, assessing behavior, and delivering personalized experiences. This is especially true for those relying on traditional reporting and querying tools that makes it even more difficult to optimize engagement.
As more and more devices and sensors become a part of day-to-day life, the amount of data generated via social media interactions, support tickets, CRM systems, and customer communities is immense. The data explosion that has been happening in the last couple of years has made it extremely tough for organizations to collate data from different data sources, store it in a unified location, and then apply appropriate analytics techniques.
Organizations today also need to be able to move beyond understanding customer needs and unearth insights across the customer lifecycle. In addition to learning about customer needs and wants before they engage with the business, it is vital to assess where customers currently are in the sales pipeline, the interactions they have with the sales teams, the challenges they are facing, as well as the cross- and up-sell opportunities they are seeking.
As customer data becomes increasingly massive and complex and customer expectations continue to evolve, organizations need to move out of their comfort zone and revamp their customer experience strategies – across the entire customer lifecycle – using customer analytics as a catalyst. Here’s what they must do:
The first step towards successful customer analytics is to conduct a detailed assessment of current strategies. If you continue to rely on traditional and siloed approaches to customer experience management, it’s time for a reset! To identify and deliver the right experience to the right customer at the right time, based on everything you know about the customer, is it important to uncover where you are in your customer analytics maturity journey and use tools and technologies that can help you move to the next level.
Although most organizations today are capturing massive amounts of information on their customers, not all data is useful or relevant. If you want to streamline and enhance customer service experiences, you need to first improve the quality of data that is being analyzed. To gain access to the clean, relevant data, you need to invest in tools that allow for data to be cleaned: this includes identifying incomplete and incorrect data, getting rid of irrelevant and duplicate data, as well as replacing or modifying bad data.
To improve the experiences your customers have with your business, it is important to unearth insights from data in a quick and efficient manner. In today’s dynamic and volatile business environment, many decisions must be taken in real-time; therefore, it is important for you to build analytics models such that they allow for insights to be derived and converted into action quickly.
Given the many touchpoints through which customers interact with your business across the customer lifecycle, it is also vital that you engage with them in an intelligent and consistent manner. Make sure to acquire and align analytical capabilities across the discovery, exploration, buying, and engagement stages and bridge organizational silos to deliver consistent product, support, and marketing experiences.
Lastly, for customer analytics efforts to deliver sustainable and long-term results, it is extremely important to measure and monitor your efforts and communicate success. Continuous assessment of your customer analytics initiatives will throw light on the risks and challenges you’re facing as well as allow you to capitalize on opportunities to improve customer experiences.
A volatile business environment, unforeseen market changes, and intensifying competition have all put customer analytics on the top of CXOs bucket lists. As the scale and diversity of customer data skyrockets, it is time for organizations to embrace the right strategies and techniques to unearth insights across the customer lifecycle, deliver unmatched experiences, and extend customer lifetime value and loyalty.
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