Close

customer service

How Businesses Across Industries Are Making Big Data Digestible

Big data is intimidating. Quality data, on the other hand, can and should be a core decision factor in everything connected to your business. Data-based decision making, in fact, is starting to be a unifying factor among small and medium-sized businesses looking to survive and thrive in competitive environments. You might have heard about big data, the idea that the rise of digital technology has overwhelmed businesses with so many data points that they can be difficult to analyze. What should be an opportunity quickly becomes a problem, as your decision makers drown in analytics without the ability to differentiate and evaluate. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case. Increasingly, thanks to new technologies and a better grasp of the depth of big data, businesses of all sizes are beginning to use it more effectively to their advantage. The Increased Usability of Big Data A recent survey by the Harvard Business Review returned a promising result: in 2017, 80 percent of businesses deem their big data and analytics investments to be successful. Used correctly, decision makers across industries state that it can decrease expenses, suggest new innovation technologies, helps in launching new products, and creates more revenue. In other words, as HBR points out: Big data is already being used to improve operational efficiency, and the ability to make informed decisions based on the very latest up-to-the-moment information is rapidly becoming the mainstream norm… About half of the executives (…) predict major disruption on the horizon, as big data continues to change how businesses operate and compete. Companies that fail to adapt do so at their own competitive and market risk. The same survey also saw a shift in the challenges facing big data adoption. Technologies that include the plethora of options to optimize data collection and analytics software are no longer the problem. Now, the biggest challenge is cultural, as companies run into road blocks looking to change their culture toward more data-based decision making. For businesses across industries, that shift is excellent news. The fact that the challenges are now qualitative means that implementation of a data-based strategy is no longer impeded by structural hurdles. Big data may still be intimidating, but a clear road map to success has been drawn. New Technologies that Build Big Data Capabilities When looking at companies’ priorities in data analytics, this shift can be seen in action. VentureBeat outlined five ways in which companies of all sizes are starting to utilize data analytics to their advantage: Predictive analytics, allowing your business to better understand what your customers need before they have to ask for it. Getting customers excited about their own data that can be relevant to their relationship with your company. Improving customer service efforts by providing quicker, more proactive, and more relevant assistance for any issues that inevitably come up. Identifying customer pain points through better audience analysis, allowing you to address underlying issues through core value propositions. In the healthcare industry, saving people’s lives through improved treatments. All of these […]

Read »

Microsoft’s Voice of the Customer Add-On: An Overview

The core benefit of using a CRM to work with current and potential customers is its ability to automate your marketing, sales, and other business processes. But what if you could actually use it to gather intelligence about your audience, and create more targeted outreach as a result? Traditionally, CRM and survey software are separate tools. Even if you offer your customers the ability to provide feedback about their buyers’ journey and sales experience, that feedback will likely be collected in an external solution, with little connection to the customer record within your CRM. Microsoft’s Voice of the Customer looks to change that disconnect. By integrating with your Dynamics CRM solution, it can help you not just gain information about your audience, but put that insight into action immediately using your CRM features. Keep reading for a more in-depth overview of the add-on. Understanding the Core Features At its core, Microsoft’s Voice of the Customer add-on is a survey tool. What makes it different from most others, of course, is that it’s directly integrated within a CRM. In fact, Dynamics users can build a survey, set up auto responses and workflows, and view both individual responses and analytics all within the CRM. The result is a more integrated survey experience, on both ends. Members of your audience will easily identify the survey not as a stand-alone communication, but as part of an overall communication plan in which they’re participating. On the backend, users can more easily build surveys that make sense within the communication plan, both in terms of time frame and in terms of branding. Flexible Surveys to Elevate Communication A core reason why this add-on can be so beneficial is its flexibility in creating surveys. The branding is completely customizable, complete with a progress bar across the top of each question page. These pages are designed responsively, automatically adjusting to the audience’s screen size. Meanwhile, each survey can be personalized with data piped directly in from the attached CRM. That flexibility, of course, doesn’t end at the survey design. Users can build up to 200 individual surveys, helping to create a response mechanism for every need. Each survey can include up to 250 questions, to be distributed to up to 10,000 potential respondents at any given time. Customizable Post-Survey Response and Analysis Building the survey, as described by this tutorial, is relatively straightforward within Dynamics. The tool’s true strength comes in what happens once your audience answers the questions you send them. For starters, responses to non-anonymous surveys are captured directly on each respondent’s CRM record. Next time a sales agent looks to gain information about that lead or customer, the responses can act as valuable feedback on that contact’s experience and preferences. In addition, installing the Voice of the Customer Add-on automatically creates a new section of dashboards within Dynamics that allows for effective survey reporting. Here, you can gain a quick overview of the total number of respondents, response rates, and responses to your individual questionnaires. Finally, Microsoft lets […]

Read »

Customer Relationship: Infographics Tell All

A chain of events has occurred over the last few years that has changed the world of business. Advancements in technology increased the pace of globalization. This, in turn, allowed businesses to gain consumer bases in far away places and allowed startups to have increased access to funding. More businesses began to pop up, and with this growth came a growth in consumer expectations. Customers expect more of the organizations they purchase from. When companies fail to deliver, customers leave. One of these customer expectations is a better relationship with brands. They want to be able to have access to the companies they buy from whenever they want, wherever they are. They want businesses to be more engaging and to provide more value to them. Due to this, the practice of improving the customer experience has become key. Revenue Without profits, businesses fail. There’s no way around it. And one solid truth that has emerged over the last few years is that when customer experience is focused on, revenue goes up. This has become widely accepted, with 41% of senior marketers saying that in terms of its impact on revenue, customer experience is second only to the product. Nearly three-quarters of consumers spend more when they experience good customer service. And even more consumers, 86% to be exact, openly express that they are willing to spend more for a better experience. But it’s not just about increasing revenue, it’s also about maintaining it. Without providing a positive customer experience, businesses are seeing severe drops in sales. 78% of consumers have opted out of making a purchase purely because they experienced poor service.  The brands that lead in customer experience, see their revenue grow up to 8% above the rest of their competitors. One of the reasons for this above average growth is due to how companies, that put effort into the customer experience, respond when a customer isn’t pleased. When companies respond effectively and efficiently to bad customer experiences, they see customer spending increase by 30%. When they respond poorly, customer spending can decrease by up to 63%. Another reason for the additional revenue growth is because companies that see the value of investing in improving customer experience are concentrating efforts online–and they’re succeeding. 97% of consumers’ purchases are influenced by their online experience and 65% of consumers’ opinions about a brand have been changed by their online experience. Retention It’s expensive to bring in new customers. A company first needs to develop a marketing campaign. Then they need to identify leads, pursue them, and bring them through the customer journey. This takes time and money. In fact, when compared to keeping an existing customer, attracting a new one can cost seven times more. But it’s not just about holding onto customers, it’s also about keeping them happy. Strongly loyal customers have between six and 14 times more lifetime value than others. These figures should immediately shock organizations into maintaining current customers. And the best way to do that is […]

Read »