According to research conducted by Hubspot, "6% of expanding companies highlighted that customer satisfaction is a key component to their growth." But in order to ensure high-level customer fulfillment, businesses have to become more customer-focused. Or in other words, organizations have to put client satisfaction before their own fulfillment. This may sound odd, but in reality, those two variables have a direct, proportional relation one to another.
The challenge comes with the fact that clients have become more demanding than ever with continuously evolving desires and needs. That is why the businesses face difficulty in meeting the changing quality criteria of their customers and improving their customer focus.
However, data analytics provides an excellent opportunity to tackle this challenge. Every company generates data from business activities and operational transactions, which is a key intellectual asset to be used in improving performance and becoming customer-centric. Unfortunately, the majority of companies integrate only one part of their generated data, as the rest stays uncovered and unused (also known as Dark Data). But to get the most out of the generated data, and achieve meaningful customer focus, Dark Data is a must. This way, we receive complex solutions to arisen business questions, which stimulate our organizational growth and development.
What is more, its key to guarantee a high-quality data integration process, in order to ensure accuracy, trustworthy analytics, and as a result, valuable and evidence-based insights.
Now, let's see the 4 most meaningful ways of how data analytics can help businesses to become more customer-focused.
Anticipate customer needs and wants
Being able to foresee clients' desires before they have even asked, is key for maintaining a competitive edge because this way, the company can act before its competitors in order to ensure future clients' satisfaction. This advantage results in acquiring a bigger new client base, increased sales, and business growth opportunities.
Data analytics enables the companies to build 360 degrees customer view, based on evidence-based anticipations regarding needs and wants. Such predictive analytics give clear guidelines that we can use directly to delight our customers. Those guidelines are based on the identification of past trends in buyers' behavior, which are connected to the changing macro environment to ensure data-driven predictions.
In this case, the customer delight comes when the clients see that specific product or service solves their unrecognized needs before they convert into a problem.
Constantly improve products and services
Improving constantly to suit the changing environment is crucial for organizational expansion, sales increase, and profit growth.
As predictive analytics give a full picture of client profiles, they have become a key tool for ensuring meaningful product improvements. It enables companies to analyze their current product and service offerings and compare them with the anticipated trends in buyer demands. This way, the organizations have the opportunity to identify any areas of improvement, as well as a possible field for innovation and offerings differentiation.
Such customer-centric R&D is extremely beneficial to the companies because, with the help of data integration, they can be the first one to provide a high-quality product that meets all customer criteria. In that sense, they gain a valuable competitive advantage to be one step ahead and efficiently position themselves on the market.
Provide customized experience
In 2019 mass marketing is already outdated and not valued by the customers. In fact, the contrary approach is the one that ensures customer satisfaction because the buyers want personalized offers, products, services, and experiences.
High-quality data analytics gives meaningful insights on how to best approach, engage, and delight the clients. For example, the business entities can gain valuable answers to questions like:
- Which digital platform is most used by the specific target groups? And by the existing clients?
- Which channel is the most suitable for communication with the different customers?
- Which keywords draw the most attention? Which are the most clickable ones?
- Do customers like feed display ads? Do they look at reviews on the website or in the company's social media platform profiles?
And many others.
Based on the collected information, the management can make data-driven strategic decisions to acquire new customers, retain the value of the existing ones, and as a result, enhance client fulfillment.
Such evidence-based decisions may not only be connected to the overall corporate objective of the organization but can also regard tailored pricing, personalized promotional e-mails, and customized offerings. It is essential to mention that data analytics helps businesses to create only relevant content, which to be consistent throughout all the organizational channels: both physical and digital.
Build a relationship based on trust
It is not enough to sell products and services. The relationship with the brand is what will make customers stay and become loyal clients. Data integration helps organizations to build meaningful relationships with their clients by identifying what is the best approach to engage the customers.
Reviews in digital platforms and online communication through forums and social media do not only delight the buyers but also give them the opportunity to freely interact with the brand, as well as with other current clients. Such a community-building process is critical when it comes to establishing a relationship.
This enables businesses to directly "listen" to what their customers say, including suggestions, complaints, common problems, feedback, etc. Later, organizations can implement strategic changes based on the identified trends. This will not only build trust and transparency but will also engage the clients and retain their value in the company.
Conclusion
There are endless types of customer needs. And to ensure corporate success, it is essential to adopt a customer-focused business culture. Taking advantage of the data generated through business operations is a smart move, which can facilitate us in becoming a client-centered company.
