My wife and I have an investment manager to help us manage our investments. I have seen the advisor in person several times. Unfortunately, every time we meet, it might as well be the first time. There are many instances he asks after “our baby” to break the ice. The thing is, my kids are now school-aged and I have not had to deal with diapers for many years! What follows is several seconds of uncomfortable silence as I try to figure out how to respond. Obviously, he doesn’t know who I am. He can’t seem to remember the most basic details about me; from one call – or meeting – to the next.
Like every other consumer in today’s hyper-connected, multichannel world, I am empowered. I can shift my business elsewhere if a company/brand does not live up to my expectations. Just to state the obvious, things have really changed from the days of one brand, one option. Customers today hold the power in the relationships. They can change on the fly – with minimal or zero switching cost.
Keeping your customers happy (and disinclined to defect) hinges on getting the 3 “I’s”—insight, integration and interaction — right. In this blog, I will focus on the what, why, and how of insight. In subsequent posts, I will drill into integration and interaction.
Companies and brands should know – as a minimum starting point – the following about serving their customers:
- Who is the customer? This includes tables-stakes data such as demographic and account information. Depending on the industry you are in, it may include more extended information (such as my family information for my financial advisor).
- Past service interactions across any channel, accessible from a single platform.
- Prior purchase information and any applicable service history.
- Customer lifetime value. Granted, this is an internal metric. But it’s important because it helps ensure your front line employees enable the right experience to your most valuable customers.
But to gain customer insight, companies need to have more knowledge of their customers. They need to know about their interests, from product and channel preferences, price sensitivity, to hobbies, and personal values. Companies and brands need to understand their customers’ needs, both known and unknown. And of course, companies need to know what customers are talking about on social media or other public channels. Only then can you get the insight about your customers, needed to succeed.
Next question is: Why? Knowing your customers – having insight into what makes them tick — gives you context for creating your customer engagement strategy. Knowing customers beyond the basics gives you a window into how you can increase your value to customers and engage with them more meaningfully. When you have the customer insight and use it properly, you can also reduce customers’ effort to interact and engage with you. And most importantly, customer insight enables you to deliberately build their trust. And that’s the foundation of a profitable relationship for both sides – not one that will be easily cast aside.
So how do companies and brands get this insight? First off, companies need to unlock all the data that they have collected about their customers. Aggregate, slice, and dice them into actionable chunks. Then, augment this knowledge with external data available on the social Web to build a high definition picture of your customers. And of course, give this insight to all your frontline employees, particularly those in customer service. Make it a standard process for every customer service employee to use customer insight for every customer interaction. Empower them to use this knowledge and insight to enrich the customer relationship.
Having customer insight enables companies to deliver more than what customers expect. Customers value companies and brands that go above and beyond. It’s human nature. I hope my investment manager will at least know that my kids are now in grade school. I am no longer thinking about pre-school or when I should open those 529 accounts. Instead, he should anticipate how he can help me optimize my investment to grow my assets while intelligently manage my risks level so that I can pay for my kids college tuition and still retire when I am ready.
This blog originally published on The Customer Edge