There has never been a better time to be a data-driven marketer. With larger sets of data and a more diverse stream of information available, brands can learn more about their customers’ preferences than ever before. The key is to understand how to leverage the data and put the right strategies into effect. Doing so allows marketers to make a lasting impact on the entire customer experience, and ultimately, the company’s bottom line.
The amount of data available may seem daunting. If data and efforts are organized effectively, however, organizations in all industries can deliver a customer experience that separates them from competitors.
For effective analysis, marketers need two things: a holistic view of the data and an understanding of when, where and how that data was collected. With valuable, actionable data that is collected and analyzed on a consistent basis, marketers can both inform their marketing strategies and improve customer experience. Not only does such data highlight potential trouble areas in the customer journey, but it also sheds light on customer expectations of the company and its brand. The following are three ways marketing can do just that:
Improve Self-Service Functions
The self-service areas on company websites tend to be the first places customers visit when they have a question about a brand or product. The importance of this touch point cannot be emphasized enough. Since consumers value the ability to be self-sufficient, your self-service functions must be robust and user-friendly. For instance, the FAQ section of your website should be drawn from real customer issues rather than what you think your customers are experiencing.
By collecting and analyzing data on how customers interact with self-service centers, brands can improve these features, making them more valuable to customers.
Upgrade Products and Services
Big data analysis looks into every channel your customer interacts with your brand – not just where you initiate the interaction. This includes social media, microsites and more. By taking a multi-channel approach to customer data, the analysis can reveal insights about products, services and the customer journey that cannot be uncovered from looking at a single channel. Many companies are adding social care to their spectrum of customer service channels. This allows representatives to interact with customers’ issues and questions proactively and in their channel of preference, and gain insight into valuable opportunities for improvement.
Marketers can then work with product developers to make improvements to existing products and services as well as develop new ones that better meet the needs of customers.
Increase Personalization
It’s simple, really: with increased data analysis comes more knowledge. Marketers can incorporate these insights into strategic marketing activities to better address customer preferences and behaviors.
Not only is personalization a marketing best practice, but it is also a customer experience best practice. When customers contact brands, the appropriate data should be captured so that future information regarding contact logistics, the issue at hand and how it was solved would be available. This type of data could give reps the ability to offer a more complete, accurate and satisfying customer experience. More personalized service helps customer service agents solve customer problems faster in the long run and give marketers a key differentiator that works.
The customer experience is rapidly becoming a key differentiator among brands. And that is something your marketing team can develop and leverage. Knowing that it is the marketer’s job to understand key data insights, integrate them into the customer experience, and communicate those learnings to the rest of the organization. From there, creating thoughtful strategies and collaborating with the customer service team to exceed customer expectations is what will set your brand apart.
