Partner Article

Finding Quick Wins in Big Data

The premise behind ‘big data’ is that information held in an organisation’s own systems could deliver massive returns, if it is harnessed correctly. McKinsey predicts that the uptick to revenues for companies able to harness big data could be as high as sixty percent. Having the right framework in place to capitalise on the pool of information available to the business is a must, but where are the quick wins to be found? How can CIOs get on the path to this tempting 60 percent figure? Invaluable data resides in customer service interaction channels. This can be the call recordings in contact centres, customer emails or chat – even the notes call centre agents take, and the social media posts customers make. When captured and analysed collectively, this data can tell companies exactly what their customers think and how they behave.

Making big data work has been a challenge for many, given the sheer volume and its often disparate and siloed nature. The key is how the business turns this data into insight and uses it to drive informed action. In the past capturing accurate insight from customer interaction data has been confined to responding to complaints, looking at feedback surveys and running focus groups. This misses the true voice of the customer held within unstructured data – taken from the comments and asides customers make while speaking to the business. When analysed effectively it allows organisations to clearly see which way the wind is blowing for their customers.

Naturally, this analysis is invaluable to marketers and customer service executives. However, it also needs to inform processes of continuous improvement and incremental change that can have a real impact on a company’s bottom line. An implementation we handled for O2 in Ireland, for example, delivered a huge increase in opt-ins to a particular mobile top up plan, as our voice of the customer analysis uncovered a need for a simple SMS reminder at the end of each month, resulting in significant additional revenues. I don’t think they’d have reached the same conclusion without the insights we were able to provide.

In a challenging economic environment where good customer service is a must, the most valuable insights a company can harness are those that its customers willingly disclose every day - those which can help increase customer loyalty. The ability to then feed these customer insights – based on real data from all customers, not just a sampled few – into every facet of a business’ service strategy and operations, is what separates market leaders from the also-rans. Teasing these insights from the data your organisation holds doesn’t just present the best opportunity to prove the big data concept, it might just open the door to business success at a time when many companies are struggling to succeed.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Parcell .