Leading businesses of all sizes, both startup and mature enterprises depend upon analytics to be successful. However, traditional analytics don't tell us the whole story of the customer journey. They do a great job of describing what customers do, but fall short in helping us discover and explain why they do it. Combining quantitative analytics with qualitative journey-based, insights gives businesses the insights they need to understand what motivates customer behaviors and desired outcomes.
In this talk, Christopher Bevel, Owner, Bevelroom Consulting shares his tips for how to combine analytics with voice-of-customer insights to inform strategy.
What is covered:
Data to Insights: Why it is important to have different skillsets for combining quantitative ('what') and qualitative ('why') data for a more holistic set of insights
Examples of combining digital analytics with VOC to inform business strategy and improve customer experiences.
Bringing data to life through customer data stories
5. 2: Emotions and
intuition drive
decisions, as well
as logic.
Neuroscience indicates that emotions
outweigh our conscious rational mind in
decision making.
6. 3: Experiences
are the new
product.
Brands that lead on customer experience
outperform competitors on key metrics
ranging the entire journey from revenue
and return on ad spend to retention and
advocacy.
Sources: Forrester/Adobe - The Business Impact of Investing in Customer Experience; Millennials: Fueling the Experience Economy
Millennials are increasingly spending time and
money on experiences, from concerts and social
events to camping. They desire meaningful,
experiences they can create and share.
7. Creating great
experiences
requires a deep
understanding of the
customer’s journey.
Analytics
answers:
WHAT, WHO,
HOW, WHEN
VOC answers:
WHY
(motivation, perception)
8. Journey Mapping
• Qualitative research method
• Customer point of view
• Key moments and emotional
drivers
• Discover opportunities
Data storytelling
What are the differences between analytics and VOC
Analytics is quantitative, secondary data, generated as a result of running the business. Usually represented in numerical reports and dashboards.
VOC is qualitative, primary data generated more on an as-needed basic (or never at all). Can take many forms. A journey map is a great example.
The main point is that both are data and when combined can produce a more complete set of insights about customers to inform business strategy and product development.
The first reason is that analytics alone don’t explain the customer journey.
This is because analytics can describe and explain what and how customers behave, but not why.
So analytics alone doesn’t reveal the underlying motivations that lead customers toward engaging with your brand.
Example: purchase path for e-commerce, or a B2B service.
It is important to understand these motivations in order to optimize experiences and marketing performance.
You have to get to know your customers. Put yourself into their shows, into their lives.
This is true for businesses of all sizes, from startup to enterprise.
Paul Graham: founder of Y Combinator: Go to your customers.
A second reason relates to what drives our behavior, and customer purchasing decisions.
Neuroscience teaches us that people make decisions based largely on emotion and intuition (gut feeling), in addition to considering facts.
Logos = facts and rationale, Pathos= emotions, Ethos = credibility, trust
Many business models are built largely on trust. Trust is an emotion, that can’t easily be measured through analytics.
Example: e-commerce, Amazon, AirBnB, to name a few.
Example: AirBnB – how do you convince wary consumers to trust in a home sharing?
Emotions also drive business decisions. Consider the last time you were pitching your project using data.
Example: using a customer story to convince executives to invest in a project
If you are interested in learning more about how our brains works, and how we make decisions, these are two great books.
A third reason is that more and more people buy experiences, not products.
Creating great experiences depends on a deep understanding of the customer and her journey.
Brands that invest in CX outperform their competition.
This is especially true of millennials, our biggest consumer segment.
Do you what the fastest growing segment of camping is?
Example: consider why AirBnB is investing in experiences. They did a lot of consumer research prior to launch.
Millennials: Fueling the Experience Economy
https://eventbrite-s3.s3.amazonaws.com/marketing/Millennials_Research/Gen_PR_Final.pdf
Millennials prefer experiences over stuff.
When it comes to money, ‘experiences’ trump ‘things’: More than 3 in 4 millennials (78%) would choose to spend money on a desirable experience or event over buying something desirable, and 55% of millennials say they’re spending more on events and live experiences than ever before.
72% say they’d like to increase their spending on experiences rather than physical things in the next year, pointing to a move away from materialism and a growing appetite for real-life experiences.
Experiences help shape identity & create life-long memories: Nearly 8 in 10 (77%) millennials say some of their best memories are from an event or live experience they attended or participated in. 69% believe attending live events and experiences make them more connected to other people, the community, and the world.
FOMO drives millennials’ experiential appetite: Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) millennials experience FOMO. In a world where life experiences are broadcasted across social media, the fear of missing out drives millennials to show up, share and engage.
Americans overall are dedicating more income to experiences: Millennials don’t hold the exclusive: the demand for live experiences is happening across the generational board. Since 1987, the share of consumer spending on live experiences and events relative to total U.S. consumer spending increased 70%. People want to experience more, and businesses are evolving and entering the market to meet that demand.
So, creating, marketing and serving great experiences requires a deep understanding of our customers and their journey.
Analytics alone cannot provide all the answers.
So how do we build a deep understanding of our customers? A great method for this is journey mapping.
Qualitative observations of actual customers
Journey maps are inherently visual as they document the customer’s thoughts, feelings, key moments and interactions along their journey of interacting with an organization.
Customer’s POV – not an internal process or sales funnel perspective
Should be used as a living document, a communication tool to identify opportunities to improve experience, meet business objectives
Involve all key functional areas during observations and communications of insights.
Can include ‘swimlanes’ that align the customer POV to internal processes.
Can be current state or aspirational
Can inform a wide range of innovation activities from incremental problem solving to large scale transformations.
Great for breaking down siloed views of the CX, and creating more holistically managed CX.
Data storytelling
Data storytelling is simply presenting your data in the form of a story, with a beginning, middle and end. Set the scene (business context), describe the characters (the problem/pain point as the villain, customers, stakeholders and you as the hero). It’s a compelling narrative crafted around and anchored by compelling data. By blending narrative and visuals, you are targeting the rational and emotional sides of the audience’s way of thinking and decision making. Data visualization is particularly powerful here because it increases comprehension, retention and appeal.
Here is an example of a journey map I build recently.
In talking with international students, and mapping their journey, we uncovered a big insight.
We then used that insight to build an engagement strategy to recruit those students.
In a healthcare example, our goal was to grow our patient care services and improve the patient experience.
Analytics told us we had a conversion rate problem but we didn’t’ know why.
Online reviews and talking with our employees uncovered issues that we needed to address to improve our conversion.
These insights helped to clarify the problem and focus our efforts to invest in new solutions.
So as you consider how to combine your company’s analytics and VOC, here are a few best practices and tips.