Michael MaozIn my area of customer service, CRM experts have a lock on understanding the customer, and the service representative, after the fact. But in real time, we have a problem. And we have a real problem because it is when it matters the most. Part of the issue is understanding the customer’s intentions in calling. Did they just Tweet? Were they chatting with tech support? Did they just receive a package or a notice of foreclosure or is a product defective? The service agent (and forget about the website) just doesn’t know.
This is why I wrote last time about ‘laying off of the hard stuff.’ IT and the line of business know that these are problems. But they are not forced to tackle these opportunities (or threats) because there are enough other initiatives. Should we analyze the process flows? The relevance of content? The efficacy of the social network?
So what to do? Well, make sure there is a single team that has prioritized long term projects and short term projects, and the KPIs of each. Do your homework and then just jump into the type of analytics approach that works best. Often two or three approaches will all suffice, but you will have five vendors from all sorts of technology companies saying that THEIR approach is THE approach. Often they will all be correct, so it is incumbent on you to make an informed choice. But that is what we are here for – pattern analysis, social network analysis, speech analysis, emotion / sentiment analysis or text analysis: all good, in their place.
First set the goals, then find the means. What are your examples?
Category: CRM Customer Centric Web Innovation and Customer Experience Leadership Social Networking Social Software Strategic Planning Twitter Tags:
2 responses so far ↓
1 Mehul Desai December 16, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Another aspect that is critical in understanding the customer is the need to analyze the customer behavior and expectations across channels as opposed to analyzing them in individual channels.
Ease of internal management and legacy thinking has driven most companies to manage their businesses in individual channels. If I take the example of Retal, most retailers today (with the exception of pure online players like Amazon) have the bricks and mortar, call centers and online channels (and now the increasingly the Mobile-channels). There are enough and more statistics out there that highlight the % of shoppers that start their shopping journey in one channel (e.g. Web, mobile apps, catalogs), complete it in another (Store) and then seek service through a third channel (call centers). How many retailers can truly recognize the same customer through their lifecycle as they shift across channels? Not too many.
To truly understand the customer, it is critical to create analytic capabilities that are truly cross-channel as opposed to withing individual channels. The retailers that recognize that will understand their customers and their changing behaviors better and will be well poised to predict/ anticipate major shifts – unlike Hollywood Videos or BlockBuster or Circuit City or I can go on and on. But I think my point is made.
Regards. Mehul.
2 Paul O'Hagan December 16, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I’d also add that content analytics can provide excellent customer insight.
For example, you can see how NTT DoCoMo in Japan has leveraged IBM Content Analytics for voice-of-customer analysis to reduce customer churn.
Slide 39: http://www-07.ibm.com/events/au/insight2010/downloads/Tony_Rummans_IBM_Content_Analytics_Australia_06-09-10_v2.pdf