How to Use Data to Deliver a Better Customer Journey

Harnessing consumer data to deliver an incredible customer experience is a notion that the Property Republic team continually emphasises for our clients.
Sales teams have the potential to acquire a range of meaningful data on prospects and customers, to help elevate their interactions and stand out from the competition.

We recently read an article in Marketing Mag that discusses how brands can stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Here are the main findings:

Two out of three customers believe brands do not care about their needs

What worked in the past will not optimise the present. Customers’ expectations have never been higher, and outdated campaign tactics, broad-based segments, and scripted journeys no longer work. The average campaign, in any market, gets less than a 1 percent response rate. That means 99 out of 100 people ignore every communication sent by a business. It’s why opt-outs and unsubscribes are continuing to soar. Businesses are prioritising what they want to sell, rather than what customers actually need.

Key Consideration: Sales teams must find out what prospects and customers really need by asking the right questions. Marketing teams can help customers receive the information they’re looking for through effective segmentation and targeting.

Success comes from when every interaction builds on the last one and earns the next

To keep customers, businesses need to connect. Look at the connection and ask if it’s relevant, contextual, timely, and empathetic. To do that, they must tap into first party data. Then use this to personalise every customer journey. Take advantage of what you know about your customers, and what customers are telling you, to improve their journeys. 

Key Consideration:  Map out your customer journey from start to finish, pinpointing each customer touchpoint along the way. What content or information needs to be provided at each interaction? How can you use your customer’s data to make each interaction exceptional?

Engage with empathy

To engage each customer as an individual requires businesses to get beyond traditional product-push mindsets and instead be able to pivot to things like service or retention in the moment, as customer’s needs change. To engage with empathy requires adaptability.

Key Consideration:  Your job is not done once the contract is unconditional. Think about how you would like to be updated if you pre-ordered something precious and there was a 12-month wait. This is a great time to educate, entertain, inform and reward.

Businesses that have adopted real-time personalisation are seeing amazing results

There are plenty of global brands leading by example, proving that change isn’t coming. It’s already here. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is making next best action decisions 24 million times every single day across 18 channels. Sprint has reduced churn to the lowest levels in company history while increasing upgrades by 8X. Meanwhile, health insurer Achmea has unified their inbound, outbound, owned, and paid channels with one central brain to deliver an 85% save rate when using next-best-action recommendations.

Brands that can lean in and make real-time personalisation a reality will continue to reap the rewards, while the others will be left behind.

Key Consideration:  Real-time personalisation is a way to automatically deliver tailored content to different groups of visitors to your website. If you’re using buyer personas, you probably already tailor your email content and other marketing communications to address what you know about each persona. And it makes sense to take that approach with your website, too.