In the contact center of 2014, there are two major trends: big data and personalization. Big data, of course, refers to the fact that the average contact center collects so much information about customers on a day-to-day basis that it wouldn’t be difficult to work up a complete psychological profile of a customer after a few months of multichannel interactions. Personalization refers to the fact that customers want to be treated like individual human beings when they contact a company: They want that company to know who they are, what they have purchased, and when and how they last contacted the company. They also like it when the company can anticipate their needs in advance.
While they sound like two different issues, they’re not. Proper analysis and categorization of “big data” can yield precisely the type of intelligence companies need to personalize the customer experience. It needs to be done in a way that feels natural to the customer, however, and not a matter of “Hello, [insert customer’s name here]. We value your business.”
According to Harald Fanderl, Dorian Stone and Alfonso Pulido, writing for Harvard Business Review, parsing big data in order to be able to use it is the critical element to getting the customer experience right and growing the business.
“In our experience, the most productive way to get there is not by fixing individual touchpoints but by improving the entire customer journey – the series of customer interactions with a brand needed to accomplish a task,” they write. “McKinsey analysis finds that companies acting on journey insights have seen a 15 to 20 percent reduction in repeat service visits, a 10 to 20 percent boost in cross-selling, and a drop of 10-25 basis points in churn.”
In other words, using data correctly can both keep costs down AND improve customer outcomes. But where to begin? Fanderl, Stone and Pulido recommend that companies focus on a few key “customer journeys” rather than driving themselves crazy and ensuring that each and every interaction is highly personalized.
“Companies may feel they need to study all the bits and bytes available to them,” write the trio. “Our analysis across industries shows, however, that three to five journeys matter most to customers and the bottom line. They generally include some combination of sales and on-boarding; one or two key servicing issues; moving and account renewal; and fraud, billing and payments. Narrowing the focus to those journeys allows companies to cut through the data clutter and prioritize.”
It starts, however, with a robust data analytics solution, and companies need to be aware of what their needs and wants are BEFORE they start shopping for a solution. Too much irrelevant data can drown you and keep you from attaining your goal. It also helps to focus on actionable intelligence from the data and not on reporting, which can be a waste of time if nobody reads the reports and won’t offer immediate benefits to customer interactions.
For all these reasons, 2014 may shape up to be the year that companies start to organize their mountains of data and put it to good use.
Edited by Blaise McNamee