The Link Between Data and the Customer Experience: How to Improve It
Understanding your customers and their expectations is critical to delivering superior customer service. One way to do this is to understand and improve the connection between data and the customer experience.
You can use data that is typically readily available to understand your customers’ needs and anticipate them before they happen.
Businesses that don’t use these modern methods of analyzing data risk losing their customers to businesses that can better respond to customer expectations.
Here, we will explore why improving the customer experience is important and the steps you can take to improve it.
Key Takeaways
- A good customer experience is crucial to improving customer satisfaction and the customer lifetime value.
- Businesses should collect and analyze user data through every step of the customer journey.
- Data analysis can help businesses deliver an effortless customer experience.
How Important Is Data to the Customer Experience?
For many customers, the customer experience is as important as price, if not more, when it comes to brand differentiation. In addition, 86% of buyers will pay more for products if they come with a superior customer experience. Ultimately, improving the customer experience means improving the customer lifetime value.
The key to improving the customer experience is to understand what your customers expect. To reach that understanding, you need to gather and analyze customer data. You likely are already doing some data gathering in the form of surveys. However, modern data analysis using advanced AI technology can take this even further.
How to Use Data to Improve the Customer Experience
You likely already collect data on your customers, like demographic information and purchasing history. However, there is a vast amount of analytic data available that you can use to improve your business and give your customers the experience they want.
Consider some of these strategies.
1. Map the Customer Journey
Do you know every step your customers take to go through the buying process? Look at your business from your customers’ perspectives to see what they are experiencing.
You should:
- Define each stage of the customer journey
- List the touchpoints they experience at each stage
- Decide what actions you want customers to take for each touchpoint
- Consider any challenges they might face at each stage
- Explore the emotions your customers might feel after taking these actions and experiencing the challenges
- Design improvements to eliminate the challenges
2. Focus on the Most Important Moments
Some moments in the customer journey will have a bigger impact on customer satisfaction than others. These are the moments you should focus most of your attention on.
Some of the most important moments include:
- Resolving billing issues
- Paying a bill
- Contacting support with technical questions
- Making changes to services
Thoroughly investigate how customers experience your brand during these pivotal moments. Collect as much data as you can during these moments to see where you can make improvements.
3. Create an Effortless Experience
For years, the oft-repeated idea was to create moments that surprise and delight your customers. While that may still be beneficial, data shows that customers want their interactions with you to require as little effort as possible – think one-click buying or getting problems resolved after talking to one associate instead of many.
To decrease the amount of effort your customers require, you can monitor how long the buying process is, how long it takes to get issues resolved, and how often customers have to contact you for simple processes. Look for ways to shorten the buying process, resolve problems faster, and give customers more up-front information.
4. Give Employees More Power
Many times, businesses inadvertently create a more difficult customer experience. They do this by giving their employees excellent training and then not allowing them to make any changes to customer information or resolve issues. For example, a customer calls in to say they never received their order, and the inbound customer service agent must send the problem to management instead of having the power to issue a refund or send a new shipment.
By giving your employees with the most customer contact more power, you should naturally see an improvement in the customer experience. Look through the data you have on customer service. Are most calls resolved with the first interaction, or are they escalated or sent to another department? Look at your customer service data to see where you can empower your employees.
5. Look Beyond Surveys
While customer surveys are a valid way to gather insight and data, they have distinct limitations. According to McKinsey & Company, surveys are limited, reactive, ambiguous, and unfocused.
One of the main drawbacks to surveys is that they are backward-looking. They are a response to something that has already happened. To replace or complement surveys, you should focus more on data that can help predict customer behavior and satisfaction.
This data may include:
- Internal data from customer interactions
- Transaction data
- Customer profiles
- Third-party data
- Social media activity
- Data on customer sentiment
6. Use Machine Learning
With the data you collect on your customers, you can use advanced machine learning algorithms to help you better understand your customers and predict their behaviors. These algorithms can generate scores for certain behaviors for each customer profile. You could choose to predict how much revenue a specific customer is likely to generate along with their customer lifetime value.
Reimagine the Customer Experience with Televerde
In addition to using data to improve the customer experience, you need the right customer support strategy. This is where Televerde can help. We are experts in supporting businesses with consistent customer service.
Our customer care experts have an average tenure of 4.5 years, which means they are here for a long-term commitment to you, your business, and your customers. We offer enhanced operational performance with data-driven analytics and insights. We also pride ourselves in delivering increased customer retention and available staffing 24 hours daily.
Want to see if Televerde is the right fit for your business? Schedule a free consultation today.
