There is considerable dissatisfaction with the current use of customer analytics. Only 15% of organizations are fully satisfied with their efforts, according to a new study from Ventana Research.
Contributing to this is a number of factors, including the use of spreadsheets universally or regularly by more than half of organizations (52%); 57% say that their use has made it difficult to produce timely and accurate customer analytics.
Ventana Research released the findings of its latest benchmark research on the topic of customer analytics and its intersection with next-generation technologies including big data, cloud computing, mobile technology and social collaboration. The research study was sponsored by Transera, the Customer Engagement Analytics in the cloud company.
The research explores how customer analytics impact organizations’ performance and how technology is being used to improve the efficiency and value of their business processes. The findings in this new research have yielded important best practice recommendations for gaining value from customer analytics.
Applying analytics generates insights that enable businesses to take better action faster and improve the effectiveness of many business processes, chief among them those related to customers, the study says.
Three out of five organizations view Big Data as contributing to the advancement of the use of customer analytics, and particularly the use of predictive analytics that can deliver more sophisticated, forward-looking and relevant metrics and information to help guide actions and decisions. Unfortunately, though, the research finds that almost half of organizations are trapped in a data quagmire, spending more time on preparing and reviewing data than on the analysis itself. This impacts the time available for analysts to do the real value-adding work of gaining insights on customers.
According to the study, these data challenges can impede the most important reason organizations apply customer analytics: Close to two-thirds indicates that is to identify customer service improvements, create customer service strategy, and improve customer experience processes.
“The opportunity to exploit customer analytics is available to every organization that has useful information that can be acted upon,” Richard Snow, VP and research director at Ventana Research, said in a press release. “The lack of clarity about where to make improvements and lack of insight on how customer engagement can be optimized is exactly what customer analytics done properly can address.”
The most important technology innovation that can be applied to improve customer analytics is collaboration, the study says, which is critical to derive maximum value since interactions with customers happen today across a number of business areas. Being able to collaborate contributes to the most important benefit in 55% of organizations identified, an improved customer experience.
“As customers continue to interact with companies through multiple channels, it is critical that they establish a unified view of customer interactions across these disparate systems,” Prem Uppaluru, President and CEO of Transera, said. “Companies that build and maintain such a unified view understand their customer care program results better, know what they are like to do business with, and as a result, delight their customers by delivering timely and personalized sales, service and support.”