The Age of the Customer
Years before it was widely accepted, Forrester Research, Inc., the notoriously famous market research firm, spotted the economic shift in power from a “business-centric model” to a “people-centric model” where consumers demand the innovation of goods and services.
The team at Forrester called this era the “Age of the Customer;” they continue to believe that “digitally-savvy customers would change the rules of business, creating extraordinary opportunity for companies that could adapt, and creating an existential threat to those that could not” (Forrester, 2019).
Research shows that by the end of 2020, customer experience will supersede price and product quality as the most important differentiator for businesses (Walker, 2017). In that same vein, the PwC “Future of CX” report (2018) surveyed 15,000 consumers for actionable data and insights, which resulted in two shocking statistics:
- 1 in 3 customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved if they had a bad customer experience.
- 92% of customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after two or three negative customer experiences.
In the “Age of the Customer,” customer experience = everything.
Luckily, your business can improve its customer experience by leveraging data and analytics to create customer maps, improve strategies and identify trends for growth in a saturated marketplace.
How Data Can Help Improve the Customer Experience
Technological advancements in data acquisition and innovations in data mining have increased astronomically over the past ten years; we have vastly more knowledge of business operations, consumer pathways, marketing efficacy and sales processes at our fingertips than ever before.
While the sheer potential this data can provide businesses for optimization and further innovation can leave you buzzing with excitement, 80% of data acquired by businesses is unused, untouched and untapped (Berridge, 2016). This is largely a result of overwhelm; how can you possibly spend the time to analyze data when you have a team to run and KPI’s to hit?
Expanding your team with a Senior Data Analyst may not make sense to a small or medium-sized business when factoring the additional costs that accompany increasing infrastructure. Instead of collecting massive amounts of data your team should consider honing in on the specific problems you have or questions you need answered. Our data sourcing and analytics platform has a simple user interface that allows for easy navigation while providing you with speedy, crowdsourced data in the format you prefer: heat maps, trend analysis, photo walls, raw data, etc.
Our data sourcing and analytics platform can help you to improve your business’ customer experience in three key categories:
Customer Mapping
A customer map is a visual representation of every touchpoint a customer has with your business from the search phase to the consideration phase and, ultimately the sale and post-sale follow-up. Customer mapping allows businesses to determine trouble areas in the customer journey causing them to linger in the deliberation stage for too long before completing a purchase.
At Premise, we offer full retail audits to help you get better insights from the physical world. We leverage crowdsourcing to develop a database of verified consumers who can help to map your entire brick-and-mortar customer experience through:
- Retail Audits: Are potential buyers able to locate your products? How long does it take the consumer to locate your products?
- Inspections: How are the conditions of your indoor and outdoor assets? Do they fulfill the consumer’s expectations of a product or service in your industry?
- Logistics Monitoring: Are your goods getting where they need to go? What is the quality of those goods when they arrive?
Improving Strategies and Operations
Robust data can help you identify patterns in your customer experience and provide the framework from which you build your future strategy.
With Premise, you can perform inspections to monitor the conditions of your indoor and outdoor assets to determine whether they are up-to-par with consumer expectations. You can also ask targeted questions through surveys on our platform to gauge consumer sentiment of your business including the perception of price, placement, packaging and promotional materials.
Identifying Trends for Growth
Lastly, efficient data collection and analysis helps businesses identify trends before the consumer identifies them, allowing teams to be proactive in their strategic development and forecasting.
You can leverage our movement patterns and location discovery solutions to acquire data for making growth-driven business decisions; you will be able to answer questions like:
- What is the foot traffic like in my target location?
- Is the flow of traffic optimal for a positive customer experience?
- Are there any hot new spots in a general region that would be conducive to opening a new business?
- And more.
Interested in learning more about how Premise can optimize data to improve your customer experience? Visit us at https://premise.com/guides/retail-audit/ or email [email protected]. We can’t wait to help you become more data-driven.