Will you ride the Customer Experience Big Data wave in 2015?

A Customer Experience Big Data wave is building so the question is: Are you ready to ride it or will you be crushed by it?

And there really are just two choices: ride the wave or be crushed by it as pointed out by Chris Surdak in his new book Data Crush available at http://surdak.com

Let’s face it, we’re all competing in a world full of commoditized products and services from competitors all competing on price so the question becomes:  how do you plan on differentiating your product or service from all the other suppliers in your market?  

What’s your purple cow (as Seth Godin calls it) that will separate your business from all the others in the herd; because unless you have a differentiated competitive advantage, how do you plan on winning new business and retaining your existing clients?

I believe there are two parts to the answer.

Part #1 of a solution for standing out from the competition is to be able to have a better understanding of your customer’s quickly changing wants and needs. Understanding the powerful insights Big Data analytics can provide about your customers should be a big part of any Customer Experience Marketing Plan you have going forward.

Part #2 of the solution is to be aware of what you competitors are doing in the areas of Customer Experience Marketing and how they are looking at using new technologies, customer Big Data and business performance metrics to gain more insight into Customer expectations as well as how their businesses are performing against those expectations.

It’s with these two areas in mind that I want to pass on the top five Customer Experience Marketing trends for 2015 as compiled by http://Clientheartbeat.com with few of my comments thrown in as commentary.

According to Clientheartbeat.com, the top five Customer Experience Marketing trends for 2015 are:

1. Customers will expect more. Customers feel like they have the power in today’s business world. They aren’t afraid to switch to a competitor and they aren’t scared of voicing their opinions via social media.
2. Companies will increase their investment in customer experience. In 2014 Gartner research revealed that digital marketers were spending almost as much to retain customers (45%) as they do to gain new ones (55%).
3. Tracking and measurement will become [more] important. Research from the Temkin Group reveals that two key customer experience metrics will become more commonly used in 2015 to measure the effectiveness of customer experience marketing efforts: #1) The percentage of customers who plan on repurchasing products, and #2) the Net Promoter Score (NPS) customer loyalty metric that asks the question:  “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”
4. Customer experience technologies will integrate with existing marketing technology. That’s good news for us small business owners’ as no one wants worry about even more new software tools and IT headaches. However, we need to make sure that the tools and methods we use for measuring the customer experience deliver a good experience so keeping your marketing tools and technologies up to date should be an important part of your Customer Experience Marketing Plan in 2015.
5. Companies will strive to create a one-to-one, cross-channel experience. Companies will strive to create one-to-one relationships with their customers integrated across all their favorite channels – email, social media, telephone, in store and on desktops, mobiles and tablets. The companies that can bring all this data together and treat customers like individuals will be the ones that quickly create customer advocates, see growth in revenue and create sticky, strong competitive advantages.

So are you ready to ride the Customer Experience wave in 2015?

If you’re sick of competing solely based on price, it’s time you consider implementing a Customer Experience Marketing Plan by heading on over to http://www.JohnWeisenberger.com.

By improving the customer experience, you’ll increase customer satisfaction and boost customer loyalty which will lead to the creation of more customer advocates who can spread the word about your business and provide you with more referrals. It will also help you create a point of differentiation that will help you fight off competitors and win new business. And what could be better than that?

Leave a comment and let me know if you agree.