Customer Experience Improvement: Finding the Right Data Strategy
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Despite trends in Big Data analytics, marketers are still missing a key component to understanding their customers' experiences: ethnographic data to better understand the "why," not just the "what."
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Customer Experience Improvement: Finding the Right Data Strategy
- 1. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. November 30, 2015 Customer Experience Improvement: Finding the Right Data Strategy As marketers, we are all focused on improving our customer experience and generating more revenue. Everyone talks about how important it is to invest in web, mobile and social media analytics. Smart marketers don’t stop there, however. We have started to gather everything we can about our customers and hand it over to the “big data” folks to see if they can find patterns that will make us smarter and enable us to improve our bottom line. Finally, we have done a good job at collecting, cleaning and matching data to assure more consistency and adding incentive programs so we can identify a larger percentage of our customers across devices. With all this investment, however, it seems we still haven’t made significant improvements in truly understanding our customers’ experiences. We wonder, “what is it going to take to drive real bottom line growth?” Thought Leadership Combining approaches to include big data, transactional data and ethnographic data can lead to insights that no one technique on it’s own can provide. Combining these approaches to include big data, transactional data and ethnographic data can lead to insights that no one technique on it’s own can provide. Using a combination of data types eliminates the needs for endless surveys and focus groups that usually add very little insight into what is actually happening to your broader base of customers. This combination provides a complete picture of the customer and can inform the creation of more strategic solutions to customer problems. At SuiteCX we use all three types of data to discover what customers are experiencing, how to they feel about the experience and what they consider to be a better alternative. We look at the “what” (transactions) and the “why” (customer motivations) to make recommendations for strategic improvements. The missing element to all of the above is why customers behave the way they do –which may often run contrary to what the data might predict. Understanding the why helps marketers make better choices for what improvements in the customer experience need to be made. That missing link is ethnographic data. Ethnographic data helps us understand why customers do what they do, starting with a hypothesis and then observing interactions to confirm or reject the hypothesis. Transactions Big Data Social Call Center Browsing Behavior Survey Responses Email opens & clicks Reviews Ethnographic Data Mystery shopping In home observation Planning observations Product usage info Family culture Thoughts & Perceptions Current Data Usage by Marketers
- 2. suitecx ©2015, suitecx Inc. November 30, 2015 About SuiteCX® Backed by over 120 years of combined experience in customer experience consulting, SuiteCX is a set of software tools that allow users to make fact based decisions and process improvements that are grounded in the customer experience. Customer-‐centric diagnostics, touch inventories, journey maps, customer storytelling and precision marketing are all components of this groundbreaking software. Thought Leadership For a leading eyeglass company, we observed customers while they were in the store. We noticed that consumers were taking pictures of each other as they tried on various frames. When we asked them why they did this the answer was interesting: “I can’t see what I look like in the mirror without my glasses, so my friend is photographing me so I can see what the new frames look like.” This totally made sense, but eyeglass companies have been asking consumers to look in the mirror for years to can pick their new frames. As a result of this research, the company now offers a computer station, at which the customer can take up to 4 different pictures at a time. They can then see the new frames with their current glasses on, and they can also share the photos with their friends. A recent Harvard Business Review article1 gave another example from a European supermarket chain. The CMO could see his sales declining but, counterintuitively, the number of customer trips to the supermarket were increasing. Using ethnographic research to better understand shopping and meal planning trends, the company discovered that eating habits have changed dramatically. Families were no longer eating all their meals together. Instead, dinner was eaten in different rooms, and different meals (vegan, gluten free, paleo etc.) were being consumed by family members. What consumers wanted was a fast and convenient place that enabled them to shop for their family’s distinctive needs. Once it is understood why customers are behaving they way they do, marketers can then go back to the big data team to learn which customers are most impacted, which stores they frequent, and which strategic changes will have the biggest impact. Ultimately the investment in the “why “(motivation) adds critical insight into the nature of the” what.“ (transactions).To achieve excellence in customer experience management and remain competitive in today’s marketplace, you can’t afford to focus only on one side of the equation. Type What is it? Typical Examples Who uses it What questions does it answer? Transactional Data What customers do when interacting with the brand. This is the most commonly utilized set of data. Add to wish list or shopping cart, purchase, return, repuchase, call for service, pay, join a loyalty program, redeem points, use coupons, churn, etc. Marketing Campaign Planners Merchants What are customers purchasing? How long do they stay a customer? What do they usually buy? What are they worth to our company? Big Data Extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. Behavioral data, social data -‐ listening, posting, interacting, call center details, browsing behavior, survey responses, email opens & clicks, product reviews, etc. Analytics Experts IT What do people do? What is happening now? Identifies trends, propensities to repeat behaviors, etc. Ethnographic Data The systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena, in which the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. Observing people in their homes and in shopping environments to see what they do, how they spend their time, their values, their expectations, life experiences, etc. Social Scientists, Ethnographic Researchers, Anthropologists Why do people do what they do? What is their motivation? What is their ideal experience? Customer Experience Improvement: Finding the Right Data Strategy 1 https://hbr.org/2015/11/big-‐data-‐is-‐only-‐half-‐the-‐data-‐marketers-‐need by Mikkel B. Rasmussen & Andreas W. Hansen, Nov. 2015