Watch Out Below
We were on a nature paddle. The manatees were pretty much gone for the summer, but we still had hopes for spotting big game. Reports of wild boar and abundant gators had us on the lookout, multiple cameras at the waiting. A sunny spring afternoon should have provided plenty of opportunity to at least see the large reptiles out getting a tan. However, the herons and egrets were about our only company. On our way back, having given up on shooting anything noteworthy I practically smashed the poor fellow in the snout. He dove under my boat with such a fury I thought for an instant that I was going over. Admittedly, I was caught by surprise.
The problem was that I was not only looking in the wrong place, with my eyes peeled on the St. John’s River bank, I was also looking for the wrong size object. The floating stick that essentially escaped my attention was a 13 foot long suitcase in waiting.
Naturally the first thing that came to my mind was how much that alligator reminded me of customer data. Yes, you are correct, I am pretty much crazy. I like to get up close and personal with prehistoric fauna sporting serious dental capabilities. On top of that, these close encounters with the toothy kind have the propensity to get me thinking about CRM. Well, there is a connection here, just give me some latitude to put it together.
Most of my clients have more value stored in their customer data than they are seeing. What is on the surface is only a fraction of what is truly there. What is below the surface is also a much more realistic representative of the whole. Just like a gator sticking up a couple of eyes and nostrils, the data poking through the surface within your CRM program is small compared to what you really have on your hands.
Now, it is possible to take this metaphor down a strange path, such as the comparison with gator wrestling and how hard it can be to deal with customer data. While this is a reasonable analogy, and customer data can be a real beast, my preference here is to just focus on all that unseen and untapped intelligence. One of the challenges is that the data below the surface can be a little hard to see when the water gets murky, habitat especially favored by alligators.
Ultimately, the knowledge within customer data is better seen when separated. Looking at the numbers in too large of an aggregation is what causes the loss of clarity. For example, I encountered a situation where a client was finding their inbound service calls had increased in length, leading to a higher cost per service incident. Well meaning call center supervisors in some of the service units worked hard to get their reps to reduce call time. On the surface everything looked good – those units had lower costs and as a result that would foster better margin for the business. But a closer look at the customer data showed that retention was higher with customers who were serviced at greater length. Higher retention led to higher customer annuity value and better margin. Looking below the surface proved that what was visible at first glance was inaccurate.
I have seen similar situations with marketing campaigns. A new program gets launched but the numbers indicate that there was no net effect as a result of the offer. On the whole the business unit revenues were not impacted. But, with a deeper examination of the activity in the field, it was determined that some customers bought considerably more as a result of the campaign while some bought less. Looking at differences with the sales activities of the two sets of customers this client learned that certain sales activities encouraged the customers to wait, while others encouraged the customers to buy. Had the sales force all followed the same approach with following up the campaign it would have been successful overall. Separating the customer data by sales activity was the critical analysis.
Looking below the surface is really what business intelligence is all about. Measuring customer activity at a level of detail that enables better clarity also enables better decision making. This ensures that sales and service activity are honed for maximum performance. This is far superior as compared to getting surprised by what is below the surface.