Measuring customer engagement - why it’s how you use the data that counts

The latest Customer Engagement Club Directors Forum on Customer Engagement Strategy and Measurement took delegates on a journey through the worlds of BIG data, customer insight, company culture and employee and customer engagement in the search for profitability and competitive advantage

The Forum, hosted by Gallup Consulting and sponsored by Confirmit, Foviance and Verint Systems looked at the issues and challenges facing organisations operating in a multichannel environment - where obtaining a single view of the customer is an increasingly complex yet vital component of customer engagement strategy and measurement.

This Directors Forum examined the rapid changes in the dynamics of customer relationships and where organisations need more than ever to be where their ever more demanding and savvy customers are. Customer behaviour understanding and insight through intelligent, strategic and joined up use of the ever increasing amount of customer and other data available to organisations were key themes that ran through the day – and where delegates have a resounding thumbs up to the event content.

As an added bonus delegates were each given a free copy of the influential  new Multichannel Customer Experience report from Foviance - which got its official launch at the Directors Forum - Download Report.

John D’Arcy, Practice Director, Analytics & Insight, Foviance gave the opening keynote looking at some of the key challenges facing organisations as they get to grips with BIG data - 90% of all the data ever produced in the world has been produced in the last two years and that explosion of data looks set to continue. John explored some of the different types of data available, what it is useful for and gave examples of how the use of measurement frameworks can advance customer engagement and experience strategy.

Some of  the hottest ground-breaking new data relates to emotional engagement and  Marco Nink, Strategic Consultant for Gallup Consulting gave his presentation around that very subject, focussing on how emotionally engaged customers will give you more of their business. For customers feelings are fact and any metric that doesn’t take account of human nature is fundamentally flawed. Emotionally connected customers deliver significantly enhanced business results - greater share of wallet, retention and referral rates - compared with their rationally satisfied counterparts.

John looked at the steps organisations need to take to engage their customers and importantly, how you will know whether these efforts are paying off. Research shows that 70 per cent weight of the decisions customers make are based on emotional rather than rational thought

Following on from Marco was Julian Brewer, UKRBB Digital, Head of Commercial, Barclays Bank whose presentation was around a framework to measure and engage the digital customer. He used case studies to explore a framework to measure, optimise and engage customers on their path through social to site engagement.

Simon Russell Head of Multichannel at John Lewis the nation’s favourite retailer went on to show how customers are engaged across channels to give the best joined up service - a critical factor as John Lewis’s multi-channel customers, those that but online and in store are the most profitable for the company and spend more money more frequently that single channel customers. John Lewis is ramping up is multi-channel offering through a number of new initiatives including online customer reviews and free Wi-fi in store.

In an eye-opening presentation Helen Van Tonder, Speech Applications Specialist, Verint Systems EMEA asked delegates: Do you know what your customers really think of you? Helen said that if you’re not monitoring the customer conversation across multiple media channels – voice, texts, emails, the web, social media, customer surveys and more – you’re missing out on vital intelligence; intelligence that could help you streamline your processes, uncover causes of customer dissatisfaction, detect trends, prevent PR disasters and retain customers.

A lively panel debate on How to gain a robust insight into your customer
operations and strategy for maximum return highlighted the need for customer engagement strategies to be led from the top of organisations and that customer insight is only of real bottom line when it is acted on  through thought out strategies that have the customer at the centre of organisational culture.

Claire Sporton, Director, Customer Experience Management, Confirmit,  in her presentation titled ‘Exploring the Elephant - stories from the front line’ looked at the customer journey across channels using case study examples from the likes of Best Buy and the BSI.

Claire examined how organisations can build individual experiences into a single accurate view and truly understand what our customers think ensuring they are able to benefit from seeing a complete view of the customer rather than at just a sum of the parts.

Claire was followed Dr Guy Fielding, Director horizon2 who asked what it takes to really engage customers, looked at critical factors in customer contact and examined the credentials - or otherwise - of the so called Customer Effort metric and compared it with other metrics such as NPS and cSat

The final presentation rounding off an excellent and varied day came from journalist and economist Michael Blastland who gave an entertaining account of the dangers of over-interpreting data and how falling into the traps of layering our pre-conceived ideas and conceptions into the data we see can sometimes be a recipe for disaster in the way we deal with our customers.

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The Customer Engagement Club’s next Directors Forum is Employee Engagement on December 8th. View Agenda