5 Ways You Can Leverage Data to Improve Customer Experience

CustomerThink by Thomas Griffin

Offering a seamless experience to your customers is essential to establishing a strong bond with them and establishing lasting relationships.

There are a ton of competitors in your respective industry, trying their level best to steal your loyal customers.

They won’t hesitate to cut their prices or offer lucrative deals to outmaneuver you. The only way to be immune to such tactics is by offering an outstanding customer experience, making it difficult for your customers to consider other alternatives in your respective industry.

However, coming up with an exceptional customer experience design isn’t a one-time thing. You have to constantly optimize the experience you offer and tailor it to the preferences of your target audience.

The best way to do it is by leveraging data and relevant insights representing your customers’ characteristics. The data helps you dive deeper and get acquainted with the factors that define different buyer personas.

This helps you offer a seamless experience to the intended audience and boosts your retention by many folds.

Here are a few ways you can leverage data to improve your customer experience:

1. Knowing Customer Preferences

Getting acquainted with the needs and preferences of your customers is the key to offering seamless experiences and establishing strong bonds with them.

The best way to do it is by reaching out to your target audience and asking what makes them tick. Around 83% of customers willingly share information about them in hopes of acknowledging tailored experiences.

The problem lies in managing such data and analyzing it to extract relevant insights. For this reason, businesses around the globe have been leveraging customer relationship management systems, also known as CRMs, to efficiently store information about their customers and use the data to devise viable growth strategies.

The system helps businesses identify different buyer personas based on customers’ buying patterns, purchase history, demographics, and other important factors influencing their purchase decisions.

CRMs or other data analytics platforms make it easier for you to understand your customers’ preferences and generate quality leads for your business.

Having the ability to access deeper insights enables you to offer personalized experiences and meet the expectations of around 80% of customers.

2. Leveraging Dark Data

Dark data refers to the information that companies collect throughout different processes and business activities but often fail to make the most of.

Dark data encompasses in-depth insights about your customers that help you elevate the experience you offer them and generate more leads. Leveraging dark data may enable you to devise amazing strategies to hack growth and transform your customers into loyalists.

The dark data may contain unexplored answers to your questions and help you explore behavior patterns that make it easier for you to improve your customer experience.

To make the most of the dark data, you need to know exactly what you’re looking for. This will help you extract relevant insights from the data as per diverse use cases.

3. Data-Driven Diagnostics

Offering a seamless customer experience demands continuous improvement. You need to constantly evolve to stand out from other alternatives in your respective industry.

Doing this becomes easier when you learn from your mistakes and use this information to shape your strategies.

Diagnostic analytics may come in handy here, allowing you to determine the causes that led to certain outcomes.

Let’s say you had an alarmingly high churn rate in a particular month. The diagnostics may help you find out the reasons why your customers left.

This helps you prevent such unpleasant incidents in the future by learning from the mistakes you made in the past. Improving the experience you offer to your customers becomes effortless and you can establish everlasting bonds with the intended audience.

4. Predictive Analytics

Data helps you predict behavioral changes in your customers and take preemptive measures to improve your experience.

You can make preparations based on the likelihood of certain events and optimize your customer journey accordingly. This minimizes the friction and ensures seamless transition of your customers from one phase to the next.

By fulfilling your customers’ expectations preemptively, you not only ensure high retention effortlessly but also attract a relevant audience with ease.

5. Being Agile

The needs and preferences of your customers change over time. Plus, market dynamics are in a constant state of flux, no matter the industry.

Access to relevant data helps you keep up with the shift in market trends and changing customer preferences. This change may not just affect the features or capabilities they look for but also their ways of exploring their desired solutions.

Previously, social media platforms were considered optimal for generating brand awareness and running paid advertisements. They were seldom considered viable sources to capture quality leads. Now, it’s revealed that 44% of customers feel more connected to brands and are likely to convert through social media platforms.

This is due to the change in customers’ preferences when it comes to exploring solutions to their respective problems.

Data helps you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and makes it easier for you to connect with your customers throughout their journey. It helps you be agile and stay ahead of the curve, enabling you to offer a seamless experience to your customers.

Final Words

There you have it: five ways you can leverage data to improve the customer experience. If you’ve been wanting to offer a better experience to your customers and ensure a lasting relationship with them, the recommendations in this article will help.

Leveraging data in the right way helps improve your decision-making and enables you to deploy high-performing strategies. It makes you better equipped to meet the demands of your customers and engage the intended audience, making it easier for you to scale your business.