Data – How do we utilize it in our CRM?

Staying ahead of the competition means that businesses must continuously find new and innovative ways to improve their customer relationships and increase their customer base and market penetration. One way to do this is by using big data tools within your CRM system. This article explores the relevance of big data and data science to businesses and discusses how businesses can benefit from utilizing big data tools within their CRM systems. We will also look at some of the applications where big data is being used today to streamline the business pipeline. Data allows us to understand our business and customer interactions on a deeper level, so it is essential for businesses to utilize all of the data they can, in order to create a successful business strategy.

So let’s start as expected – at the end. Why are we driven to explore different channels through which to drive change? Why drive change, to begin with? What is the end goal of it all?

Well, to a business, the obvious end goal is revenue and profitability, and as we all know this is directly correlated to our ability to stay relevant to our customers throughout a prolonged period of time. Therefore, we must be capable of adapting and reacting to the changes in our customers’ needs, our competitive landscape, and macro changes in the market as a whole.

The question most executives will ask themselves next, after understanding and accepting that change is inevitable, is – how do we establish a process that will enable us to make strategic decisions in an effective and educated manner?

Well, as with every decision we make, we must have a sufficient understanding of our business environment so that the decisions we make and strategy we choose are relevant. Otherwise, we risk deciding upon changes while disregarding the actual need of our customers due to misinformation on our end.

Establishing a deep understanding of the market within which every business operates is oftentimes directly correlated to the quality and quantity of communication channels the business has with its customers. As customers are the defining factor that ultimately makes or breaks the market – not only do they have the problem, they are the ones who decide the value of each business’s solution to the problem.

So first, we must understand how we are going to create reliable communication channels with our customers. Technology has made this increasingly easy for businesses with the use of CRM systems. These systems track and capture all data regarding the customer and log every interaction the business has with every customer. Effectively generating a comprehensive and accessible database. (Checkout – Text message archiving strengthening Organizations )

The most important aspect in creating these channels is that we want the data points tracked to be different to create as complete an image as possible for us to work with. In practical terms, this means capturing various types of interactions with customers, be it email, voice, messages, support interactions, etc.

So now that we have established a reliable information channel regarding the market we are working within and we have the information enabling us to make a decision, this is exactly where data exploration can come in handy.

The next step is understanding and tracking the lifecycle of our customers so that we can make the educated decisions we’re after. This lifecycle is affected by many different factors and thus is difficult to analyze. This is where we start benefiting from big data! The idea is that with the advanced analytics software available to us today we can gain incredible insight into the lifecycle of our customers and answer hard questions regarding ways we can improve and streamline our process: (for further example checkout Intelligence ci empowering sales teams)

• Why doesn’t an individual become a customer?
• What are the commonalities between our long-lasting customers?
• What new markets have we been gaining traction with the most?
• what are the most effective ways to communicate with customers?
• Where are the most relevant pain points customers are experiencing with our product or service?

These are all points that can be solved by tracking and analyzing various components of the data over time. Therefore, we must lay down the foundation that will allow adequate data capturing so that we can then monitor both the organic changes that occur in the market and diagnose the effects various actions that we take as a business have on our success rate – overall driving better and more effective business decision making across multiple business facets. (For further reading on the topic – Are you really making informed decisions? )