Using Data To Drive the Customer Experience
What motivates a consumer to purchase a product, subscribe to a service, or expand their relationship beyond a single product or service with you?
Know. Like. Trust. Buy.
Consumers want to do business with people and companies they know, like doing business with, and trust to look out for their best interests. Offering great products and services also helps. Using data to learn about your prospects and customers, gather more insights about people’s patterns and decisions, and personalize messages specifically towards the consumer can have a lasting effect on how they view a company—and their desire to do business with that company.
A significant amount of effort and money are put into winning customers. The customer experience starts before someone even becomes a customer. Things like building a positive brand and performing outreach for acquisition efforts (along with any other ways the future customer may learn more about the company) can all be influenced by data. By effectively targeting your prospects with appropriate offers that speak to their needs—gleaned through predictive modeling, geolocation, or proximity—the messages and offers are more relevant to the consumer and, therefore, better received, liked, and perhaps even trusted.
The Two-Way Street of Data Usage: How Consumers and Companies Leverage Information
Data isn’t just utilized in one direction, though. It’s not just the company seeking insights about their target audience. The prospect also uses data to make informed decisions and seek information about the company. For this reason, ensuring that customer service inquiries and complaints are handled timely and satisfactorily can result in a positive data point for consumers as they research a company on the Better Business Bureau’s site, through social media posts, and anywhere they seek information.
Based on the information collected at the account opening, the bank already has a wealth of information to use. But as that customer utilizes their account(s), information about where they swipe their cards, who their bill pay transactions are being sent to, and where they transact (online, in the branch, etc.) are all valuable data points used to distill information about your customers and learn more about how to speak to them and how the institution can help. Beyond that, appending data through demographic, trigger, and life-stage appends or utilizing predictive models can help deliver highly personalized and targeted offers to help build on the customer’s relationship and lifetime value.
All customers have financial needs. Be proactive. Know where your customers are in their journey and show them you’re there to help them. They will thank you for being a loyal customer who will be with you for the long haul—for all their financial needs.