As companies gain more experience with data analysis, they’re able to identify new ways to use data and pinpoint opportunities to improve the business.
This includes the use of data discovery and other techniques to identify the company’s most valuable customers and determine ways to attract more like them.
Data discovery techniques can help companies identify the right prospects faster and much more affordably. Think about it – enterprise companies often spend millions of dollars each year on sales and marketing campaigns, yet only a fraction of the prospects they target actually convert.
Through the use of data analysis and data discovery techniques, companies can identify prospects that have characteristics that are similar to those of their best customers.
These characteristics can include people who live in a similar geography, are in the same income bracket, or may have reached a comparable lifecycle stage (e.g., dual-income affluent couple with college-age children).
All customers are different. Every customer has different needs and preferences. Still, there are common characteristics that many customers share. This is true whether we’re talking about customers in Minneapolis or Manila. This is an important consideration for companies that are looking to expand into new geographies.
Let’s say an international hotel group is considering expanding into an emerging market such as Brazil where it has never done business before. Such a move requires an extensive analysis of market opportunities, competition, regulatory requirements, and other barriers to entry.
It also demands a deep understanding of who the target customers are, their needs and preferences, as well as the types of offers they’re most likely to respond to. Data analysis and data discovery tools and techniques can help the hospitality company identify these traits among its target audiences. It can also help the company examine the likelihood of success against various risks before it makes a sizeable investment.
Organizations that are progressing down the data analysis path are also positioned to continuously refine their operations and identify new opportunities for improvement.
One of the ways this can be done is by analyzing the comments customers make in social media channels as well as interactions that customers have with a company’s contact center. An enterprise can glean quite a bit of information about the aspects of its operations and customer-facing processes that customers don’t like.
Business leaders can identify such opportunities using data discovery tools and techniques and act on customer recommendations where they make sense. Then they can let customers know how their feedback was incorporated as part of a closed-loop communications process.
The power of today’s data discovery and data analysis tools enables companies to learn and understand more about their customers and prospects than ever before. With this type of knowledge, companies can make the right offers to the right sets of customers at the right time.
