By Kuntal Shah
The digitisation of business has spread the ‘customer experience’ (CX) right across organisations. Managing and understanding customers is no longer confined to frontline sales and contact centre staff, but requires constant attention from all employees in order to meet diverse expectations from increasingly-demanding consumers who have unprecedented options at hand.
Marketers, in particular, have become a prominent force in shaping and executing their company’s CX vision, with many now bearing significant responsibility for customer satisfaction throughout the entire sales cycle. However, the diversification of marketing has placed significant pressure on marketers who are, in many cases, relying on the same budgets and tools they were working with five years ago, if not earlier.
Fortunately, investment in marketing technology (martech) – specifically digital marketing analytics, lead management and multi-channel campaign management – to drive customer experience is increasing. While less than half of organisations use a combination of all three at present, analyst firm Gartner indicates more than 70 per cent of marketers intend to deploy the trio in unison.
The use of analytics from web, social media and CRM applications is critical in mapping consumer behaviours to individualise content and consequently generate meaningful funnels to CX. But there is a key underlying question which is often not addressed: are marketers looking in all the right places, or is important data being left out?
In reality, collecting, collating and analysing data from the three aforementioned sources is relatively simple as consumer interactions through these channels can be easily recorded and segmented. What’s more difficult, and therefore commonly neglected, is data generated in the contact centre. You know those disclaimers that contact centre agents read out about recording the call for quality and training purposes? While those are used as a fundamental component in the professional development of staff, the data collected in them is infrequently analysed or mapped, meaning CX is left fragmented due to the lack of available data.
When Avaya transformed its services delivery model to allow clients to create experiences that aligns to the needs of our clients, we recognised that it needed to be supplemented by an analytics engine capable of generating value from the data garnered through that platform. This would make marketers who were using our customisable tools prepared to proactively and reactively develop strategies based on real customer needs rather than guesswork. Using ‘Oceanalytics’, marketers can create insights and reports using preset or uniquely-developed templates that represented content from all channels. This information can be easily fed across the entire organisation so that contact centre agents were prepared to provide a seamless CX across any channel, and maintain a positive relationship with the customer while switching channels.
CX relies on omni-channel engagement where data is aggregated, contextualised and analysed holistically. This enables marketers – and their colleagues – to gain a broad-picture understanding of unique consumer requirements, and therefore tailor all engagements. Without incorporating data from all channels, organisations will rely on a level of assumption allowing a disconnect between what customers want and what is being delivered. This jeopardises the relationship with the customer, and ultimately inhibits the effectiveness of marketing initiatives, therefore hurting the bottom line.
The author is the Director Sales Engineering, India and SAARC at Avaya
