Customers are the most important part of a business. No one can claim to be running a successful business without a solid customer base. But in business, there is always competition. If you lax in delivery of services or start providing poor quality goods to your customers, you will lose them to the competition. The loss of clients, however negligible, can have an adverse overall effect on the success of the business.
Therefore, businesses should strive to retain their customers at all costs. That’s not always easy, but with the advent of big data, companies have had an easier time understanding their customers and learning new ways to keep them coming back. There’s no shortcut. To retain your existing customers, you need to know them. That way, will be able to offer exactly what they want.
Big Data and Customer Retention
Believe it or not, your business has all the data you need to truly know and understand your customers. All you have to do is make sure you have the necessary big data analytics you need to get the most out of the data at your disposal, depending on the type of business you are in. Proper analytics will give your business the capability to derive critical behavioral insights you can act upon.
Acquiring a new customer can cost your business hundreds of dollars, it’s a lot cheaper to retain the ones you already have. If the operations of your business call for the ability to process high-velocity, high-volume data with minimal latency or if you deal with live data that needs to be used while still in motion, stream processing can help you out. This data processing solution gives you the access to continuous/live data which you can integrate with historical data for more context.
Big Data Strategies That Can Help Your Business Retain Customers
Better big data analytics helps you increase customer loyalty. You will be able to act upon the insights you get fast, giving you an opportunity to meet the needs to the consumer effortlessly. Here are some of the big data strategies your business can use to derive insights from customer satisfaction, drive customer loyalty, and be more competitive.
- Agility. Be agile in your approach to delivery. Technology is always changing the requirements of the customer. Your analysts must be able to adjust and keep up. Having big data agility will help your business is abreast of changing needs and priorities.
- Quality over quantity. You need to make sure that whatever you feed to your analytic solutions is what matters the most. Out all the data you capture, choose the most important to the current situation. Emphasize on quality rather than the quantity of data.
- Avoid blind spots. Make sure that you capture everything. You need to capture everything that influences the customer’s experience and behaviour, you will miss critical information if there are blind spots resulting in an overall skewed picture of customer experience and behaviour.
- Ask your customers what they need or want. Don’t just assume. Instead of embracing your customers on what you think they are doing, embrace them for what they do. Allow data to avail insight and stay objective.
- Think of your network traffic as a goldmine. The gold is the insight you mine from the traffic. It can help you improve delivery and ultimately increase profitability.
Your analysts can use big data to gain insights on customer experience and behavior. You can use the insight to understand your customers better, which allows you to cater to their needs and requirements effectively. When you know your customers well and offer exactly what they need, you have a better chance at retaining them.