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Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging Customer Insights to Drive Business Success

Contributed article by Sarah Ludwig

More and more these days, businesses of all sizes are relying on big data to guide their decision making. This applies both to day-to-day operations, as well as long-term strategic planning. It used to be that data entry involving customer information was time-consuming and highly prone to errors, but with modern software, it has become infinitely easier and more efficient.    

One of the things that is instrumental in guiding company decision making is customer feedback. There are a variety of ways that this can be collected, and also different ways that companies can use it in creating business plans.

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How does data get collected? 

The data that is collected from customers to help businesses in their strategic planning is gathered from diverse sources.     

Chatbots 

Many businesses are using chatbots, for example, to help in their customer service. Chatbots are useful both in fulfilling many of the tasks once filled by receptionists and customer service representatives, and also in being sources of data collection.     

When bots have “conversations” with customers, all of their feedback is stored for future analysis. Marketing analysts can figure out customer preferences, the number of times that customers asked particular kinds of questions, made complaints, etc. All of this information serves to help shape and personalize future customer relations. Based upon the information that companies gather from their chatbot histories, they can gain a better understanding of both individual customer preferences, as well as larger trends among different customers.   

Online shopping history 

In a similar way, companies that allow for online shopping can gain insight into customer buying habits by analyzing their online shopping histories. In addition to analyzing the number of times certain items were actually purchased, analysts look at things like the number of times certain items were put into and taken out of shopping carts, the amount of time that customers shop around before buying things, and the number of returns that they make.    

And thanks to sophisticated software that is being used more and more by marketing professionals these days, analysts can draw many different kinds of conclusions from the insight that they gain.

Social media and website feedback 

It is also to businesses’ advantage to become active on social media. Both customers and potential customers frequent different kinds of social media, and it can be a very useful place to gain feedback from. People express their feelings about the things that they buy, sometimes in great detail, and companies use this feedback to refine their products, as well as their sales and marketing plans.    

Email campaigns can also be useful. If you have the right kinds of tools, you can analyze many different aspects of your email campaigns. The right software will tell you how many people opened your emails, the number of times people clicked onto your site from a given message, the number of clicks that turned into sales, etc. this will help to distinguish genuine leads from those that are not very promising. In addition, you will gain useful insight from the number of people that sign on to your campaigns and those that unsubscribe from them. People might either need a different approach, or not be prospective customers if they opt out.

What is done with it? 

Businesses that are able to collect large-scale data from customers can utilize it in any number of ways. First of all, they are able to personalize their marketing to a much greater degree. Emails can be segmented, for example, among groups with similar interests or buying histories. They can even be personalized for specific individuals.    

Chatbots can also be more personalized towards particular customers. They can be programmed to remember individual histories, preferences, and even call people by name. Marketing research has consistently shown this to be effective as people appreciate personalization in customer relations.    

In addition, companies use the information that they gain to hone their long-term strategic planning. If people are consistently complaining about certain aspects of a product online or buying something less than they used to, companies can use these trends as a way of refining their future plans.

What does the future hold? 

Working with big data is an exciting and ever-growing field. Finding data entry jobs is a great way to dive into the rapidly-evolving future. In the future, data-driven decision making will only continue to grow, and the old style of manually working with data will quickly become outdated.     

Regardless of what kind of industry you work with, data-driven operations will be the name of the game in the future. Everything from customer service to finance to large-scale planning will be affected, and this will be to the benefit of people at all levels within any given company. Data-driven decision making will make businesses run more smoothly, more efficiently, and ultimately more profitably. 

 

Written by: Sarah Ludwig is a freelance writer who writes on a broad range of topics including business, tech, and other areas. She has periodically written for the Jooble job search platform.