Many business forecasters believe that the most successful companies in the future will be those that develop sense-and-respond type approaches for listening to and responding to customer needs and preferences. This includes the use of predictive analytics to anticipate and address customer issues before they’ve reached out to contact centers.
As R “Ray” Wang (@rwang0), principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research Inc., points out in a recent Forbes article, a growing number of companies are shifting from transactional systems to engagement technologies to help improve interactions with customers and to provide better and more relevant customer experiences across the various customer channels.
The drivers behind this are simple: as companies seek new ways to grow revenues and expand their customer bases, they’re devoting greater attention to delivering solid, multichannel customer experiences. The quality of customer experience can have a profound impact on an organization’s business performance.
According to The Business Impact of Customer Experience report from Forrester Research (@forrester), improvements in the experiences delivered to customers can generate more than $1 billion in revenue for wireless carriers and hotels. This can be measured by a customer’s willingness to do more business with a company, the likelihood of switching their business to another company and their willingness to recommend a company to others.
When companies strive to become more customer-centric, one of the things that many organizations need to improve on is proper tracking of customers as they move from one channel (e.g. web) to another (voice). As it stands, too many companies struggle to do this. Rather, they make customers feel as if they’re working with multiple companies instead of a single organization.
This leads to customer frustration and churn. Plus, when customers have poor experiences with companies, they often share their frustrations with thousands of other people on Facebook and other social channels, resulting in lost business opportunities.
As companies gain experience in sensing and responding to customer needs, they can also use analytics to help identify potential customer issues before customers reach out to their contact centers for help. By reaching out to customers proactively, companies can strengthen customer trust by demonstrating that they’re proactively looking out for their customers’ best interests.
For example, let’s say a wireless carrier notes that a customer is about to reach his monthly data limit. An alert can be sent to a customer to let him know that he’s about to reach his limit before additional fees are assessed.
Companies that make greater use of analytics to identify and respond quickly to customer needs and preferences will be able to leapfrog their competitors and position themselves to be more successful.
Next Steps: Download our complimentary 5-Minute Guide to CRM Analytics to learn how agile analytics technologies can help companies answer critical questions about their customers and deliver more value to executives and front-line marketers.
