Unlock Customer Data Insights to Improve Customer Experience

If you want to attract customers and keep them coming back, it is essential to give them a personalized, effective, easy-to-use experience. This post looks at how your business can use customer data to do just that.

Gathering the Right Data

Certain types of data are particularly helpful for improving the customer experience. The data company Arm Treasure Data advises gathering data on how likely customers are to recommend your company, how satisfied they are, and how easy their customer experience was. Other metrics include the churn rate of customers and how quickly they complete an interaction with your business. These are just a few examples, and some types of data will be more helpful to your business than others.

To gather such data effectively, Arm Treasure Data recommends measuring customer satisfaction at multiple points during each experience. (For example, a customer who has a great time ordering an item but a terrible time getting it delivered would deliver falsely positive feedback if they were surveyed only before the delivery process began.)

There can be many ways businesses and organizations can gather their customers” data. For example, Restaurants using social wifi could have their customers log in using their social media accounts to receive free wifi. This could then provide the restaurant with the user”s profile and some important data that can be used to further personalize their experiences in the future.

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However, that type of data often relies on customers opting to participate in a survey about their experience, answering questions during or after the experience, or otherwise handing over information. To make them more likely to do so, Forbes.com contributor Daniel Newman recommends making their experience as smooth as possible and providing benefits in return for their data. And if your marketing platforms have any built-in ways to gather data—for instance, the metrics available from Google Analytics 360—be sure to use them.

Analyzing the Data

Analyzing the data is just as important as gathering it. Arm Treasure Data outlines a several-step process for this:

1. Inventory existing customers.

2. Identify patterns of behavior for each customer.

3. Fill in any gaps in the data.

4. Analyze the data by comparing different customer sets. The goal is to identify your best customers.

5. Test how you can make new customers emulate your best customers—that is, how you can encourage them to make frequent and/or large purchases.

6. Continually measure the results.

To make your analysis more meaningful, make sure that every change you make to your strategy has a specific goal in mind. That way, you can track the data to see whether it worked or not.

Using the Data

Once you”ve begun analyzing your data, you can leverage it to individualize every customer experience. For example, you can use your analysis to create personalized email campaigns for each customer. One exciting new tool in this realm is a recently launched collaboration between Google Analytics and Salesforce”s Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud software. According to Salesforce”s page on the collaboration, this combination of tools can be used to create truly unique customer experiences. It can power “multi-language bot experiences,” enhance customer support, and help personalize customer experiences in other ways.

There is no one-size-fits all prescription for how a company should make use of its customer data. The only sure thing is that your company shouldn”t hesitate to start gathering, analyzing, and using data as soon as possible.