In consumer industries, the benefits of big data are clear. The more companies know about individual customers, the more effectively they’re able to deliver relevant and effective messaging.
In a B2B market, however, the path from data analysis to improved customer experience can be a little fuzzier. Carolyn Muise, EMC Corporation’s VP of Total Customer Experience, tackled this dilemma in “Big Data, Big Deal: Unlock the Power in Your Digital Business,” a session presented at the 2015 Engagement and Experience Expo, powered by Loyalty360.
Muise began the session by clarifying the force behind data-driven revenue.
“You don’t just need big data,” Muise said. “You need a company strategy that’s going to leverage that data. If you’re gathering all this data but not using it for insight, then stop gathering it. At that point, you’re wasting your money storing all that data without using it to create improvements in everything you do.”
Beyond giving customers the best possible experience, companies must also engage employees to create a cultural transformation and achieve better CX.
“Engaged employees make improvements not because you’re paying them to, but because they want to.” Muise continued. “This is because employees that are engaged by the company want to make a difference. They want to add value.”
EMC recognizes the fact that customers are usually unenthusiastic about taking surveys. In response to this, the company has developed a predictive analysis model that is able to identify potential customer dissatisfaction and proactively address it with follow-up communication.
“We can now alert service managers about potential customer points of pain,” Muise explained. “If we see a triple crown, a service call that’s been passed to three different people, we can put a red flag on that service request that stops it from being passed anymore. That mitigates anyone’s call being passed more than three times, which we found was a tipping point for dissatisfaction. That’s the power of predicting.”
Another pain point identified by predictive data is the amount of time before an issue is resolved. The company’s solution is what they call “swarming;” when a call is escalated, the customer is able to choose from multiple sources of expertise on various product lines. This strategy has proven successful both for the consumer (50% improvement in resolution time) and for employees, who now have an opportunity to learn new product sets on-demand.
EMC’s leveraging of data is a model to be learned from, and Muise’s session gave listeners an inside look into how the company is changing the way it tailors the customer experience.