For the second installment of our Web Analytics & Customer Analytics Face Off, we’re taking a look at how tools are used by various teams within an organization. Specifically, we’ll explore what kind of access customer-facing teams, like sales and support, are given to customer data obtained via analytics products.
In This Corner: Web Analytics
Traditionally, web analytics is reserved for data and product teams and not considered to have a place in customer-facing departments. It’s thought that analytics require a specialized skill set and therefore only technical users can benefit.
Since web analytics is not built to go down to the individual level, delivering insight on specified customers is quite difficult if not impossible, depending on the tool you’re using.
In This Corner: Customer Analytics
Customer-facing teams are often the ones who can most directly put customer insight into action. It logically follows then that these teams should have access to this information in a way that is conveniently consumable by them.
While you may not see it fit to have your sales reps performing retention analysis, they should certainly understand a lead or customer’s behavior prior to contacting them. Giving them this insight allows them to predict lead interests and intent, convert trial users, successfully onboard new accounts, and more. This is especially important for organizations that have a great amount of customer contact, such as B2B software/applications, real estate, insurance, etc.
Similarly, support and service teams greatly benefit from understanding a customer’s activity when troubleshooting. Customer success teams can proactively reach out to at-risk accounts and improve customer retention and satisfaction.
This is easier said than done. The key to successfully arming your customer-facing teams with this insight is delivering a convenient and easily consumable experience. For example, embedding the customer insight directly in a tool they already use – such as your organizations’ CRM – makes it readily available and doesn’t require learning any new tools.
The Verdict
As Omer Minkara writes in Aberdeen Group’s customer analytics report, businesses “need to be laser-focused on utilizing customer data as the key ingredient of each customer-facing activity.” Minkara found that Best-in-Class companies who centralize customer intelligence for use in customer-facing activities enjoy 3.5 times higher retention rates, 20% year over year customer lifetime value growth, and 20 times greater revenue growth on a per customer basis.
Based on this research, we can see that delivering customer insight directly to customer-facing teams has tangible business benefits.
Your Experiences
Have you ever needed greater insight into customer behavior while in a customer-facing role? On the other hand, have you ever felt the frustration of doing business with a company that did not provide this insight to their customer-facing teams?