Using Big Data to Improve the Customer Experience

In today's age of the customer, organizations have access to more customer data than ever. From social media and website analytics to customer feedback and insights from mystery shopping, data has never been more easily accessible. It's also never been more important for brands to connect customer data like age, gender, and location to other data points, like purchase history, visitor activity, and click-through-rates.

Leveraging big data can help companies better understand their customers, solve problems, and improve customer experience. However, all the customer data in the world will be no good to you if you don't understand how to put it to use. Here are a few ways you can use big data to improve customer experience at your organization.

Predict Customer Needs

Data allows brands to anticipate customer needs—and every customer is different. According to AgilOne, 79 percent of customers expect personalization when they interact with a brand.

Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify are three brands that excel at creating personalized customer experiences. Through machine learning algorithms, these companies collect different types of data to provide personalized recommendations to customers, whether it's a product, movie, or song. For example, Amazon might recommend purchasing a pillow after you add a blanket to your shopping cart. Meanwhile, Spotify uses a combination of data from collaborative filtering (what you listen to vs. what others listen to), natural language processing, and audio analysis to curate your "Discover Weekly" playlists.

Troubleshoot Problems

Do you feel like your customer service team is being asked the same questions time and time again? The old FAQ page isn't going to cut it anymore. Companies are increasingly using data from common questions asked by customers to create artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to quickly and effectively troubleshoot problems. According to IBM, chatbots can answer up to 80 percent of routine questions for businesses, which helps save customer service costs, speed up response times, and free up associates for more challenging work.

For example, Charter Communications determined that 38 percent of incoming customer service requests were for username retrieval and password resets. By automating the customer service process through their virtual assistant, Charter decreased the amount of time it takes customers to reset their passwords by 50 percent.

Brands are even using AI to resolve problems before they even arise. For example, big banks like American Express use bots to send customers real-time purchase alerts as a way to prevent fraud.

Deliver Targeted Messages

Big data can help you understand who your customers are and what resonates best, so you can better serve your target audience. Look at the data found within your omnichannel customer experience on social media, online, in-store, etc. What's the open rate or click-through-rate in your email marketing campaigns? What's your audience demographic on Twitter? Use this data to hone your marketing and advertising strategies to better understand which messaging works best and provide more effective customer experiences. Adidas, for example, segments their email marketing list based on gender. Meanwhile, other brands like Monster create separate Twitter accounts to cater to its different audiences like job seekers and employers in addition to its main account.

Another way to deliver more targeted messages is by leveraging geolocation data. Many brands, for example, are using the Waze app to drive customers to their brick and mortar stores. From fast food restaurants like Taco Bell to gas stations like Circle K, these brands deploy branded pins on Waze to alert drivers when they are near a location.

Improve Customer Experience

Whether you gather customer data from social media users, customer surveys, or mystery shoppers, you need to be able to define the next steps to improve customer experience. get the customer insights you need with IntelliShop.

From measuring the knowledge and friendliness of your associates to testing new training programs and initiatives, IntelliShop will help you define and track the entire customer journey to hit on the customer experience metrics you need. We'll then present our findings to you in a detailed, actionable InSite™ report to create a strategy that will improve customer experience at your company.

Contact IntelliShop today to request a quote and see how we can help your business create better customer experiences.