The following post is part of a series that will help inform readers about the importance of Customer Experience. The series will provide best practices and tactics for turning your customers into loyal advocates of your brand.
The Discovery of Data-Driven Customer Science
I came across the term, “data-driven customer science” for the first time when I read it in an article that appears in the American Marketing Association. I’m not quite sure why specifically, but it was love at first read.
“This is where a new structure, born of data-driven customer science, comes in,” the author, Emilie Kroner, tells us. “The seven pillars of customer centricity provide a framework for action, giving companies the insights needed to track, measure and improve in seven core areas.” At the time the article was written, Kroner was working at Dunnhumby. She held the position of Head of Organization Engagement for the consumer markets.
However, for the conversation here today, we will focus on the very first focus area Kroner covers in the article: experience.
Focusing on Experience: Easy, Enjoyable, and Convenient
“Make the customer experience easy, enjoyable and convenient. Companies that excel in customer experience make their customers so happy that they want to share their positive interactions with your brand.”
I don’t know about you, but I find these sentiments—easy, enjoyable, and convenient—especially true. They perfectly capture what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a great customer experience. It not only makes good business sense, but as a customer myself, I can absolutely connect with it. It’s incredibly easy these days to share your opinions about brand experiences thanks to the smartphone and social media.
More often than not I’m likely to share an opinion about my experience under only two circumstances:
- When the experience is truly and authentically delightful.
- When the experience angered me to the point of needing my voice to be heard.
Mediocre experiences tend to fall to the wayside.
The Science Behind a Delightful Customer Experience
This core pillar — experience — ties well into what caught my eye in the first place: data-driven customer science.
Replicating a truly and authentically delightful experience is thanks in no small part to science.
“Customer science” is a relatively new term, but the concept itself isn’t new. When you break it down to its core elements, it’s essentially about improving the customer experience. This improvement is achieved by making changes based on the story that the data reveals.
For example, satisfaction surveys and social media feedback might reveal that customers are struggling to decide which of your products to purchase. The reason behind this difficulty could be a lack of variety in your product offerings. When you connect this feedback to purchasing patterns, a clear conclusion emerges. The lack of variety in your product offerings could potentially lead to a 35% loss in sales.
Customer science isn’t as repeatable as other science-based experiments because customer preferences and buying behaviors are always changing. However, the approach and framework of customer science remain consistent. Find that story in the data that, if improved or optimized, will positively impact the overall experience. With scientific precision and certainty, you can then continuously create and foster great experiences.
One definition I found spells out customer science this way:
[Source: What is Customer Science – And Why Should You Care?]
Defining Customer Science: A Framework for Success
Thinking bigger picture, customer science supplies some impactful business outcomes, according to USTECH Solutions:
- Strategy – Identify and analyze holes in the customer journey that when improved can satisfy an unmet customer need/want.
- Quality – Always ensure you meet and exceed customer expectation and get rid of the mindset that a universal experience is fit for every individual customer. The more you can personalize and cater every experience, the greater the outcome.
- Profit – Customers will notice the small details the brand makes to their experience, which are a win-win for you and the customer — the more fine-tuned their experience, the more products and services you sell and the lower the costs to market that product are if you know how to hit the target every time.
- Efficiency – Customer data can help us support decisions across the business, and one area in particular can be vastly improved when the data lense is applied: operational efficiency. Data can expose the weak processes and ineffective tactics to acquire customers.
The Future of Customer Science: Meeting Evolving Customer Needs
Remember the saying, “the customer is always right”? Customer expectations have definitely evolved, and shoppers have become more sophisticated since the days when “the customer is always right” was a common motto in customer service departments. Despite these changes, the core idea behind customer science remains relevant.
Some experts say that customer science can be thought of as simply going above and beyond customer’s expectations to ensure their overall happiness remains high. As part of this mindset, companies should strive to understand their customers better than anyone else. This means knowing what motivates them, what influences their decisions, and what drives their repeatable purchasing behavior.
Put simply…
Customer science is the best way to keep up with the vastly changing needs of today’s customer. By dissecting business and customer data such as buying behavior patterns or tangible feedback and coupling it with your organization can be at the helm of staying on the pulse of what your customers want and need at all points of their lifecycle.
