Basic Steps Toward Building Customer Insight
By i2c inc.
Read Time : 05 Min
In this day and age when the competition is stiff and customers are cynical, using the right analytics is absolutely critical for improved decision making in prepaid / stored value programs. To be successful, the program must understand the consumer as an individual – not just a card product user – and focus on delivering features and services that will fit their lifestyle. The intelligence gained through program analytics is key to this understanding.
Almost two decades ago when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software first burst onto the scene, it provided more information about customers than businesses had before. But that information, as scalable and automated as it was, soon reached its limit in terms of understanding and usability. The need for more and faster information had to be balanced with the tools to interpret, flex and act upon the information. Or else, what was the point?
Enter customer analytics. But analytics are tricky because sometimes they tell you what you already know, or worse, the wrong information altogether. So what to do?
Well, based on our experience in utilization of i2c analytics, here are some ideas for you to consider in tracking the habits of your prepaid / stored value customers:
1. Build a comprehensive view of your customers. Understanding demographic, behavioral and psychographic insights so that you are aware of the customer’s satisfaction with service, price changes, response to marketing offers, etc. is an important piece of this. Your processing platform should help you in this endeavor. Use this understanding to develop a strategy for interacting with the customer, making sure that there is consistency and continuity across and within each customer touch point. This improves a number of functions – everything from customer service to marketing campaigns to loyalty programs – and will positively impact drivers of profitability such as enrollments, referrals and transaction activity.
2. Measure engagement levels so that you know how active your prepaid programs are, how popular your offers and your partners are, and how well all of this action (or lack thereof) translates into increased revenue per customer. Making this connection to revenue will help you see where the profit is.
3. Take a close look at customer satisfaction, honing in on both overt service-related problems (such as a service being unavailable) as well as processes and customer experience. Your analytics need to measure how often problems arise so you can extinguish the problems at their source and end complaints as much as possible. You should also track non-service oriented issues. For example, lets say you have an online self-service site that you hope will address all customer needs. If you find that customers are going online but then also call the call center, this is clearly an escalation point for them and indicates a failure on the website which must be addressed.
At i2c we have long found that customer data and analytics that provide insight vs. just information are powerful tools that can help prepaid /stored value programs find eye-opening opportunities to improve sales, marketing and customer service. It is a basic tenet of the new approach to managing successful prepaid programs, which you can read more about in this whitepaper. Some companies find ways to cut advertising costs and increase sales. Others reduce customer churn and improve satisfaction ratings. Smart analytics go beyond number crunching and can help companies develop ways to listen and respond to the needs of customers. Standing in the way of your success may be a tendency to rely on intuition and experience when making decisions, rather than collecting, analyzing and developing actionable insights. Don’t overlook the power of data and analytics though – it will lead you in developing the offers, products, information and services your customers will value.
