Data-Driven Customer Experience: Forbes Insights

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In today’s very competitive business stage, customer interaction with brands has become richer and more engaging thanks to big data and analytics. Delivering a great customer experience now requires having good individual insights on customers, their interactions, preferences and the ability to meet them in a channel of their choosing. Harnessing customer data to enhance their experience and improve loyalty is what data-driven CX is all about. The ability of an organization to achieve this will set them apart from competition and ensure long-term profitability.

The Forbes Insights’ survey (sponsored by SAS) of 357 high-level executive decision makers in large organizations reveals that Data-driven Customer Experience has become critical to the growth and development of organizations. The survey revealed that the benefits of data-driven CX are wide-ranging – from enhancing revenue generation and enabling cost reduction, to accelerating process efficiencies and quality improvements.

The survey measured organizations’ data-driven CX progress based on three key pillars;

  • Organization (People)
  • Openness (Data) and
  • Orchestration (Process)

Below are highlights from the survey. You can view the full report here.

The Organization (People)

  • Delivering great CX is not by magic, it requires a mix of activities & important competencies ranging from data integration to implementing necessary technology, as well training and redesigning processes.
  • Organizations are now turning to analytics to better understand customer trends and preferences, with about 30% of enterprises already experiencing a remarkable shift in customer experience.
  • Data-driven customer experience is beneficial not just for customers, but organizations as well. A majority of enterprises surveyed revealed that their data-driven CX efforts are already delivering benefits in two key areas; decision making, improved insights and engagement with customers.

Openness of Data

Data-driven Customer Experience

  • Data integration is a challenge. Only 36% of the executives surveyed say they have attained real-time, highly integrated capabilities across all the customer channel within their enterprises. Just 50% of the most highly data-driven CX organizations consider themselves to be highly integrated, with only 14% reporting that their data is structured on a cross-functional, synchronized basis
  • The good news is that many organizations have established mechanisms needed to achieve the necessary back-end integration needed to deliver data-driven Customer Experience.
  • Visibility into customer activity is low, with only a handful of enterprises currently capable of seeing the entire breadth of their customers’ experiences. Complaint resolution was identified by executives as the top area in customer experience related process that required greater visibility.
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Orchestrating Processes

  • Delivering superior customer experience is not just about machines and systems. Much of the success relies on the people who build and manage these systems, and their ability to help design key business processes. There is a close alignment between personnel involved in back-end systems and customer experience delivery
  • The most cited benefit of data-driven CX among 57% of the executives is having an improved ability to target specific customers, as well as achieving consistency across various channels. 41% of the executives say insights from data analytics enable them to coordinate treatments, tactics, and offers across limited touchpoints.
  • The Executives report taking numerous steps to better align and increase insights and visibility into the customer experience they deliver. 48% report they have developed interfaces or access analytics in order to increase awareness, while 47% indicated they have promoted data sharing across their enterprises.

Is your Organization ready for data-driven CX?

Data has become a valuable commodity that all organizations must master. Every interaction a customer has with a company creates data, which when properly analyzed can reveal insights that not only improves decision accuracy but also enhance the customer’s experience and improves perception about the brand.

Data-driven CX is key for surpassing the competition in today’s hyper-competitive global economy. It takes a combination of factors—organizational readiness, open data and well-honed orchestration of people and processes—to deliver superior and highly interactive customer experiences. – Hugo Moreno

A good example of a company using customer data to improve CX is Air New Zealand. Their mobile app is proving a big hit with the customers. The ability to order a coffee from the app while visiting the airline’s lounges was added in 2014 and is one of the app’s most used features, with over 2 million orders already! The app remembers the customer’s coffee preference and invites them to order a coffee at the touch of a button whenever they enter the lounge. The customer receives another mobile alert when the coffee is ready to collect from the barista.

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data driven cx

Air New Zealand’s mobile app also offers a range of features to enhance the check-in, lounge, and boarding experiences for the customers, including the ability to check-in for flights, manage bookings on the go and receive real-time flight information.
According to the Chief Digital Officer Avi Golan – “Customer satisfaction with the app is high. Customers who participated in research groups told us they use it almost every time they fly with us, with many commenting about how it makes travel easier,”

The era of discarding customer data after transactions is gone, this data has become a valuable business commodity for organizations that truly wish to understand their customers and improve on their service offerings. But first, the organization must be able to harness and utilize available customer data in improving CX and enhancing operations before they can reap long-term rewards of data-driven CX.

Kelechi Okeke
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