The role of data in customer centricity

The data wave is growing bigger and bigger in this day and age. While companies have come to understand that customers are the key drivers of today’s market, they are striving hard to benefit from this abundance of data.  

Data, not only enables companies to spot their most valuable customers but also plays a major role in driving sales and revenue. While customer-centricity is the present-day mantra for businesses, here’s a summary to understand the role of data in the customer-centric approach. 

Data makes customer segmentation simple 

Customer-centricity isn’t as simple as it may sound. Customers are a collective from different generations where everyone is unique. They have different preferences, behaviors, buying potential, and many such, which will be changing constantly from time to time.  

Data helps to understand customers in-depth and group them effortlessly based on their likes and dislikes. Data analytics helps collate customer data quickly and perform segmentation efficiently. Furthermore, with predictive analytics – an advancement of data analytics, brands can predict future variations in customer needs and purchase potential, by mapping patterns on past customer transactional and behavioural data. 

Hereafter, companies can call off their speculations and build data-driven strategies in real-time to identify their right customers and reach out to them at the right time.  

A data-centric approach to improve CLV 

The term customer-centricity isn’t just about understanding customer needs and preferences to build relevant products and services. The whole point of a customer-centric approach is to understand the customer as a person, and a human, and develop product and sales strategies accordingly.   

As customer engagement is the key factor that drives Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), big data helps companies to comprehend ‘who their customer is’ and connect with them on a personal level. Companies can glean customer intelligence from big data to deliver positive and seamless customer experience at every touchpoint of the customer life cycle.  

Strengthen the bond between a brand and a customer 

The relationship between a brand and a customer has much more to do than just price, quality, and offers. Today’s customers know more about a brand than its sales staff. The information age has greatly influenced the shopping attitude of customers to like never before. People today surf the internet to study and compare their wish lists before purchasing them from a store, or online for that matter.  

Analyzing data from surveys, feedback, and social media platforms enable brands to extract customer insights that help brainstorm ideas and constantly improve their customer engagement strategies to build and boost relationship with customers.  

To give a clear picture, a friend of mine would always prefer Decathlon over any other sports brand. Though he would rationalize the relationship with the brand through tangible terms like customer service, product value, affordable rates, etc., it’s the trust and loyalty towards the brand, that never got him excited about any offers of similar products from other brands.  

Now, how was decathlon able to establish such a relationship with its customers?  

Assessing customer data has enabled the store to put them on its customer's shoes and comprehend their pain points staunchly. 

Let’s say, a customer is looking forward to buying a pair of basketball shoes from the store. He/ She may have a good shopping experience but chances are while practicing on the court with the new pair of shoes the sole may not be comfortable as it was while buying the shoe. So now, the customer needs to visit the store again to exchange the shoe for a new one of different sole or some other product for that matter.  

In the above case, along with disappointment, the customer has to take extra efforts now to get the right pair of shoes. To avoid such grimy situations, the store has allocated spaces for different sports, so customers can try out their gears in real-time and get to experience them even before buying it. This customer-centric approach is a win-win situation for both the brand and the customer.  

Wrapping Up 

While technology is the enabler, data is the current day catalyst that can help companies compile customer data from various sources and build targeted marketing and sales strategies to improve conversion and sales rates. As the future is to those who make data-driven strategies today, all that one has to do now is leverage befitting data analytics tools to reap the benefits of big data.