Improving Customer Experience with Data

As anyone worth their salt working in business today knows, data is the lifeblood pumping through the veins of modern industry. Canny businesses are deploying digital information to better understand their audiences and provide their services in innovative new ways.

Another element of modern business which is gaining increasing prominence is customer experience. We know from past research – and detailed in previous articles in this series – customers will, more often than not, choose a brand which offers a superior CX over one with lower prices and that it can only take a single negative experience for customers to abandon a favorite brand and start shopping around elsewhere.

Today’s article therefore is to look at where data and customer experience meet and learn how one can feed the other.

Measuring Customer Experience

The most useful way data can be used to boost customer experience is through something which can be incredibly difficult to achieve – especially when we are talking about an abstract concept like experience – measurement.

Companies today need methods of objectively measuring the effectiveness of their customer experience strategies so they can make improvements where they are needed and demonstrate success to upper management and the executive suite.

Traditionally, companies would have used surveys to measure customer experience, asking the customers themselves to fill in a questionnaire to assess how satisfied they were with a particular interaction with the brand and/or their overall impressions of it. However, survey-based data gathering is rapidly being outclassed in a landscape where a comprehensive view of the whole customer journey is needed together with deep and granular insights as to what is driving each element of the experience.

According to McKinsey, survey-based measurement is limited in that only 7% of the customer voice is shared with CX leaders; reactive in that just 13% of CX leaders believe they have the ability to take action on CX issues in real time; ambiguous in that only 16% of CX leaders think surveys allow them to address the root causes of performance; and unfocused in that only 4% of CX leaders believe their existing measurement systems enable them to accurately calculate ROI.

Companies seeking to leverage data to improve customer experience clearly therefore need a more effective method of information gathering which will allow them to measure the concept more accurately, and give them the ability to become more agile, flexible, and forward thinking when designing strategy.

Predictive CX

When discussing the world of field service, we often talk about a shift away from reactive and scheduled maintenance towards a predictive model. In that industry, predictive service means using data from machines to detect when faults are in their nascent stages and act on them quickly and early.

Thanks to modern digital data practices, this kind of strategy can also be applied to customer experience. By thinking beyond surveys and taking advantage of the vast swaths of data generated by contemporary B2B business interaction, a 360 view of the customer and their experience with your brand can be achieved.

• Internal data on customer interactions (both digital and analogue)
• Transaction data
• Customer profiles
• Third-party data sets that cover customer attitudes, purchase behaviors and preferences, and digital behaviors, including social-media activity
• Data sets on customer health, sentiment, and location (in stores, for example) generated by the Internet of Things (IoT).

These are just a few of the sources businesses can leverage to gain a far richer and more valuable insight into customer experience and use to predict customer behavior and design strategy which is able to better meet expectations while act with agility when transformative change is coming over the horizon.

The comparison is glaring – surveys might be useful for finding out how a customer is feeling about their experience in a single moment, a CX snapshot if you will, but the kinds of data sources listed above can predict not only satisfaction, but the likelihood a customer will remain loyal, look elsewhere, or increase their business with you.

"After years of serving as the benchmark for defining and refining a company’s customer-experience performance, survey-based systems are heading toward their twilight," writes McKinsey. "The future of superior customer-experience performance is moving to data-driven, predictive systems, and competitive advantages are in store for companies that can better understand what their customers want and need."

Final Thoughts

When it comes to measuring CX, surveys serve a purpose, but they pale in comparison to the kinds of rich objective information which can be leveraged by B2B brands with the appropriate level of data maturity.

Data and CX are sure to be part of the conversation at B2B Online Orlando 2022, taking place in November at the JW Marriott Orlando Bonnet Creek Resort & Spa, FL.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.