How to Fix the Quagmire of Too Much Customer Experience Data

Most companies today have realized that customer experience (CX) is evolving into the number one factor they can control in terms of maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage and attaining better business results.

“By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.” – Walker Research

Companies that have faced the reality that CX is a key differentiator have implemented Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs in the spirit of improving the customer experience and avoiding the slow spiral of becoming a laggard in their space. In an almost unanimous fashion, organizations have initiated Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey programs with the notion that the flood of customer feedback would provide a lens to guide them in learning where to pivot, what to improve, and the areas of frustration that lie within their customer base. At face value, a logical premise!

More data, more problems

The unfortunate reality for many businesses, however, is that this premise has not delivered on the desired outcome. The reality is that this deluge of customer surveying, social media scraping, and other forms of customer data collection, have created a giant data quagmire that adds very little value to the business and has not provisioned any true operational or strategic guidance in terms of the “right” things to fix. Many organizations have proven capable of presenting the data in terms of “data visualization” in graphs, charts, etc., but still, this does not provide any real intelligence as to what the burning issues are.

Executive teams have grown frustrated that the “business case” they were sold for CX programs is not delivering the ROI as promised….they have come to realize that data without action is worthless.

Some Customer Experience Management (CEM) players would counter this stipulation with the postulation that action is being taken based on the feedback in the form of case management. This may be true, but case management still does not deliver on the true promise of real operational and strategic improvements that yield long-term value by being one step ahead of the customer. It does not deliver on the promise to ensure that the experience is always one of delight vs. despair. Case management is a reactive - not proactive - mechanism to fix tactical issues, after the fact. Does this have its place in the overall equation, yes, but it does not bring companies to the promised land.

What to do with all that data?

So is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Yes! Next generation CX technologies that are built from the ground-up leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning have cracked the code of the data quagmire. These CEM solutions perform legacy CX functionality around customer feedback collection and case management, but in addition, they interpret customer data in real-time and identify and prioritize growing areas of concern before they become fires.

LiaCX™ is the only CX software with patent-pending Action Campaign™ technology that recommends strategic actions across the business that are measured in real-time and are tied to specific business KPIs to measure true business improvements. Also, its predictive analytics capabilities will forecast what the impact will be as the improvements advance, and what they would equate to when the new KPI is attained.

This level of pro-activity crosses the chasm and indeed delivers on the CX ROI promise. It allows organizations to stay one step ahead of their customers and avoid potential CX landmines.

With the ability to predict improvements to specific business KPIs in real-time, such as customer retention, based on targeted customer experience improvements across the organization, CX professionals now have a seat at the table. The challenge CX professionals have faced over the last decade of demonstrating the ROI of CX initiatives has been solved.

So the story goes...

The amount of customer data available to businesses today is endless, but too much data with no direction can hinder your strategic approach to CX success. Businesses need the proper tools to interpret and act on this data to prove the value of their CX programs and lead with a competitive advantage by delivering true value to their customers.

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