Keeping.Customers.Happy.

Keeping customers happy is not an easy task.  Today, companies are spending more time and money focusing on the individual's specific taste and preferences. Better understanding behaviour with a high level of accuracy and granularity. This article first takes a look at the interaction landscape, followed by some tips on how to improve your Digital Intelligence. Creating an experience focused on the individuality and uniqueness of a customer is becoming a must have rather than a nice to have.

What is Digital Intelligence?

The ability to Understand your customer and how they're using your website, mobile app, etc. Then using the data to optimise the experience, regardless of when, where or how they interact with you. Transform digital data into real-time, actionable, customer-centric insight. 

Customer Insight to Optimize Experiences

To get actionable digital insights from a customer, one must be able to capture, manage, and analyse the customer's interaction. The end goal here is to create Digital Intelligence. The 4 analytics techniques are used to create this Digital Intelligence

• Systems of Automation(SOA): connecting the physical world to the digital one. Smart cars, ATM's, automated call centers
• Systems of Records (SOR): Host processes- Corporate CRM system
• Systems of Engagement (SOE): Customer touch points- online stores, apps, social media pages
• Systems of Insight (SOI): Collates the data from the above Systems to organise the data into actionable customer insights. This is a precursor to Digital Intelligence.

Making a move toward the SOE/SOR/SOA/SOI paradigm will require modernization of existing SOR applications. Enablement of enterprises to develop a new generation of applications under the SOE model. And establish a comprehensive SOI for SOE, SOA, and SOR to work.

Okay, so now what?

Creating an experience focused on the individuality and uniqueness of a customer is crucial for engagement.

The following steps could help you achieve higher engagement and Digital Intelligence:

1. Focus on Customers- Start by creating a granular analysis on each customer by asking the right questions. Recognize their reason or need for your service/product. Interact with them at various points- beyond the product or service offered. 
2. Merge customer data- Collect online digital and offline interaction data.  Store in a central database. Collate these data metrics across the entire customer lifecycle. Update the data on a regular basis: i.e. deleting users who are no longer customers. 
3. Provide actionable data- Your data driven customer experience must provide timely and actionable insights. Relevant data can make a world of difference at this stage. The efficacy of engagement is determined by the success of Step 1 & 2. Enables real-time decisions for your marketing, eCommerce, application, products, and services.
4. Continuous Optimization- Make it a habit to learn something from each customer interaction. Improving and tweaking the experience delivered across all digital platforms. Creating a constant feedback loop is critical for companies who want to stay ahead of the competition

Up-Sell and Cross-Sell opportunities

If done correctly, Digital Intelligence will improve trust and familiarity. Leaving you with the opportunity to offer additional products/services via cross-selling or up-selling.

• Up-Sell: Encourages the customer to buy a comparable higher-end product. Ex. Upgrading to the iPhone 7 instead of keeping your outdated iPhone 6s.
• Cross-Sell: Invite the customer to buy related or complimentary items. Ex. Peanut butter is usually sold with jelly in the grocery aisle.

The benefits of these opportunities can easily be summarised as Increased Profits. Higher Margins. Increased Customer Loyalty.

Summary

An early investment in better understanding your customer coupled with valuable insights can create a competitive advantage. Time is increasing in value. We have entered an era where some of the largest companies are fighting to attract more and more of your attention. It's not feasible or sustainable for smaller companies to compete in this battleground. Instead, focus on reducing the amount of choices offered by understanding your customer.

Do you have any examples of when a company delivered an experience focused on your individuality and/or uniqueness? Comment Below

If you enjoyed reading this article, check out my article on: Top 9 Website/App for Start-ups