How Customer Analytics are Helping Progressive Companies Lead the Customer Experience Line

Cre­at­ing suc­cess in a world where cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty is increas­ing­ly impor­tant is no mean feat. Those will­ing to build their entire essence around their cus­tomers will undoubt­ed­ly lead the line for years to come. But to do this, they’re faced with the chal­lenge of not only meet­ing the increas­ing demands of today, but also keep­ing one eye trained on how they’re going to meet future requirements.

Data rep­re­sents the vital fuel that will pow­er this for­ward-look­ing, cus­tomer-cen­tric approach, unlock­ing an organisation’s poten­tial to tru­ly under­stand its cus­tomers. It means that cus­tomer ana­lyt­ics has fast become one of the most crit­i­cal tools in a mod­ern organisation’s arsenal.

But ana­lyt­i­cal suc­cess all depends on organ­i­sa­tion-wide buy in – start­ing at the top with the board – and the right blend of strate­gic and inte­grat­ed investment.

How leaders are getting it right

Estab­lish­ing as much vis­i­bil­i­ty as pos­si­ble around how cus­tomers engage with com­pa­nies is of vital impor­tance, and cus­tomer ana­lyt­ics lead­ers are at the forefront.

Using pre­dic­tive and pre­scrip­tive ana­lyt­ics is anoth­er key ele­ment of suc­cess. Lead­ers are har­ness­ing the pow­er of AI and machine learn­ing to take insights, and dri­ve actions auto­mat­i­cal­ly, in real time.

While tech­nol­o­gy is crit­i­cal for suc­cess, com­pa­nies must make sure they also focus on fos­ter­ing the right cul­ture, lead­er­ship, and skills inter­nal­ly. Lead­ing brands who democ­ra­tise data across teams are invari­ably those who unearth the most insights from their busi­ness intelligence.

And per­haps most impor­tant­ly of all, the most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies recog­nise the val­ue of data skills. So rather than lim­it­ing data man­age­ment to the ana­lyt­ics depart­ment, lead­ers are invest­ing in the core data skills need­ed to get the most from their tech­nol­o­gy, across the entire business.

Creating the right culture for success

Com­pa­nies must cham­pi­on a data-dri­ven cul­ture, where tan­gi­ble improve­ments in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and com­mer­cial per­for­mance are reward­ed. With cus­tomers inter­act­ing with a busi­ness on some many dis­parate lev­els, it’s impor­tant to cre­ate teams who col­lab­o­rate, share insights and edu­cate each other.

Democ­ra­tis­ing your data means that ana­lyt­ics tools are acces­si­ble to every­one in your organ­i­sa­tion, so those who aren’t spe­cial­ists can still analyse and manip­u­late the data to suit their own needs.

“Ana­lyt­ics deliv­ers val­ue to all depart­ments, from mar­ket­ing and sales to IT oper­a­tions,” says Felix Wenger, head of chan­nels and dis­tri­b­u­tion at Swiss bank Raif­feisen. “We ele­vat­ed the role of ana­lyt­ics in our organ­i­sa­tion to demon­strate the impor­tance of data insights in dri­ving more per­son­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence across chan­nels. You’d nor­mal­ly only expect to see con­ver­sion rates of 1 per­cent. By reach­ing out to engage a cus­tomer through insights gain from ana­lyt­ics, we’re see­ing aver­age con­ver­sion rates of up to 14 percent.”

A suc­cess­ful cus­tomer ana­lyt­ics strat­e­gy depends on the right kind of tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple to make it work. With the right peo­ple in place to bridge the gap between spe­cial­ists and the rest of the com­pa­ny, the oper­a­tional­i­sa­tion of insights becomes a lot eas­i­er. To get the most out of your invest­ment in cus­tomer ana­lyt­ics, senior man­age­ment must be brought ful­ly on-board and under­stand its val­ue. Only then can we build the opti­mal com­pa­ny cul­ture to sup­port ana­lyt­ics success.