When was the last time you made a business decision without any foresight, purely based on guesswork? We won’t be surprised if you can’t remember.
Businesses no more operate on guesswork. It may sound cliché, but technology has changed everything. You can get access to a staggering amount of customer data to understand what your customers are looking for. This is all the more important because it’s not what you have to offer that drives in customers; it’s the experience you provide to your customers that makes you stand out.
Customer experience is an invaluable element in the growth of your business because…
- 74% of consumers said they were likely to purchase from businesses based on the experience alone (Source: Forbes).
- 65% of consumers find positive shopping and service experience with a brand more influential than advertising (Source: PwC).
- People can tell up to 21 people when they have a poor experience with a brand (Source: American Express).
Customer data can help you put the finger on precisely what can help you deliver remarkable customer experiences. It helps in making critical business decisions like how to train your service staff, market your product, deal with dissatisfied customers, and make doing business with you easier for customers.
In this article, we will talk in detail about how you can use customer data to improve your potential to deliver excellent customer experiences. We also explore how you can collect meaningful customer data.
Use of Data in Customer Mapping
Customers take different paths in their journey with the business to finally reach the conversion point. For example, some customers may come across your paid ads while mindlessly scrolling on social media, which prompted them to visit your website, add products to the cart, and place an order. Some may even connect with your support team after receiving the order. On the other hand, some may purchase from you only after receiving a discount offer on their next purchase.
Customer data allows understanding the motivations of people to buy from you. It also helps in understanding how customers move through different touchpoints.
With the help of customers’ purchase history and information on when they churned, businesses can understand what’s working and what’s not. Proactive customer feedback can even help prevent customer churn to a considerable extent.
Use of Data to Improve Customer Service
According to a Gartner study, customer experience drives over two-thirds of customer loyalty. And whether online or on the premises, your customer support team can make all the difference.
You can leverage customers’ data to empower your support team so they can efficiently provide proactive assistance and intelligent resolutions to customers. For example, while offering support through Live chat, your support agents can view customers’ previously reported complaints and offer personalized resolution in real-time.
Moreover, when your support team has access to customer data at all times, they can service customers instantly without scouring massive databases, thereby reducing customer effort. This can be done by integrating your survey software with your CRM, customer ticketing, or customer servicing tools.
Zonka Feedback ensures seamless migration of customer contacts and data with other customer management software. The key is deploying Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT Surveys) at different touchpoints to get insights on purchase experiences, products, marketing, service, and the overall brand perception – directly from customers.
Use of Data to Improve Customer Engagement
According to a Gallup study, engaged customers account for 23% of the relationship growth and accountability. But does customer engagement only represent the transactional relationship between the customer and the brand? No.
Engagement is the continuous process of building customer relationships, where each interaction contributes to the relationship’s growth. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to personalize communication for customers and enable them to engage better with the brand.
Here’s how you can leverage customer data for the same:
- Personalize emails; address your customers with their first name.
- Use behavioral data to understand what channels customers prefer to engage with the brand. Once you have the answer, send all communications via that channel.
- Improve the feedback experience by making your surveys dynamic so that the survey questions appear before the customers based on their responses to the previous questions.
- Follow up with customers and close the feedback loop with automated support emails.
Use of Data to Improve Shopping Experiences
How often do potential customers visit stores and leave without buying anything? Similarly, they often visit e-commerce websites, add products to the cart, and exit without making the transaction. What could go wrong? Unavailability of a payment mode? Lack of support staff on the site? Out of-stock items? There could be any number of reasons.
With customer feedback and behavioral data, you can find out what’s causing customers to leave. For example, you can run a cart abandonment survey or an exit-intent survey when customers tend to leave without making a purchase. The customer data can help you figure out and resolve customer challenges. In fact, customer data can help you identify complaint trends and be able to remove critical roadblocks in several customers’ journeys with your brand.
Use of Data in Personalization and Marketing
Have you ever unsubscribed or requested to be removed from a brand’s mailing list because you were flooded with irrelevant promotional and marketing emails? We have all been there at least once.
This happens when businesses send out promotional content with the click of a button to every contact in their mailing list without any personalization. This doesn’t only affect the brand negatively but also impacts the overall customer experience.
With the help of customer data, you can understand exactly where customers are in their journey with you and send out marketing or promotional content that is actually relevant to their experience. For example, you can send personalized gardening equipment recommendations only to your website customers who have purchased plants.
Similarly, you can use customer data to personalize website recommendations. For example, you can turn on the automatic recommendation of similar products based on what visitors look for on your website.
How to Collect Meaningful Customer Data?
You may have an impressive customer experience strategy with everything from fancy customer loyalty programs to automated customer service. But if you don’t have the basics right, you may not be able to get very far.
To strengthen your database and know your customers better, make sure to include these feedback collection methodologies in your CX strategy:
Direct Customer Data Collection
- Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT): Feedback surveys to understand customers’ experiences, expectations, satisfaction levels, and challenges with a product, a service, or the brand as a whole.
- Net Promoter Score Surveys (NPS): To understand why customers are and aren’t loyal to the brand.
- Customer Effort Score Surveys (CES): To get feedback on service experiences and agents’ performances.
Indirect Customer Data Collection
- Customers’ Online Activity: The tracking of customers’ movement across your website to understand where customers convert and where they churn.
- Customer Churn Rate: The loss in the number of customers from time to time.
- Customer Health Score: Analysis of customer behavior in their journey to understand how likely they are to continue business for a long time.
- Customer Lifetime Value: The total revenue a customer generates for the business over a specific time period.
While the indirect methods help understand the status of the customer relationship, the direct methods (feedback surveys) help understand customers’ exact viewpoint of the brand and its offerings.
As a closing note, we would advise using different customer data and feedback collection methodologies to stay on top of your game. This is because every interaction and experience is equally important, and no amount of customer data is too much when it comes to perfecting each customer experience.
