Editor’s note: Based in London, Claire Sporton is senior vice president of customer experience innovation at customer experience and marketing research firm Confirmit.
By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7 MB of data will be produced every second for every person on earth. That’s a mind-boggling amount of data! Today, everyone is looking to become data-driven but only 31% of firms identified themselves as such in 2018. So, where’s the disconnect?
At the end of the day, data is stupid – it only knows what it knows. People are critical when it comes to understanding and prioritizing information. The human element is a crucial piece of the puzzle to inspire action and change. Over half of businesses say they haven’t maximized the power of data for competitive advantage. Ouch. So, how do you avoid information overload and use data and CX insights to improve your business? As a psychologist by training, I believe that the answer is to take a psychological approach.
You might be thinking – psychology and CX data, how is that a happy marriage? While market research has its roots in academia and social research, the psychology of why people act and react the way they do is critical and often overlooked. You don’t have to sit every employee down for a personal therapy session to leverage psychology to help explain how people think, act and feel. Instead of telling people what to do, a psychological approach to using data and insights can augment human decisions and motivate people into changing their behaviors.
Marrying psychology with CX data can bring a depth of insight to your work that wasn’t previously possible, enabling and empowering everyone in the business to act on insights and make the right choices to the benefit of your clients.
Below are four ways a psychological mind-set can shed new light on CX data and help you drive better results.
Value employees’ perspectives
On paper, data can tell one story but human knowledge can change the picture completely. If you ignore the human, you lose context and forfeit accuracy. For example, an account manager looking to reduce client churn can leverage data like feedback from clients and operational data points to define the level of churn risk for each client. However, the account manager also needs to use personal knowledge to fully examine the situation.
What if a client has just experienced a big change like an overhaul of C-suite leadership? On paper, the data indicates the accounts look safe, but the account manager’s knowledge alters that conclusion. Without additional human knowledge, it’s the business equivalent of focusing so intently on Google Maps you drive into the breakdown lane. We need to look up from the numbers. Individual perspective prevents organizations from being blinded by numbers. Instead of solely relying on the data, it’s vital that employees have the chance to layer their expertise with the data that’s in the system. The combination of human perspective and data can then be used to make more informed decisions. The key for making that a reality is ensuring employees feel empowered. They need to realize how valuable their insights are, and that even in a data-driven organization, their point of view is critical to driving the right change and improving business outcomes.
Look at the level of change
Rather than constantly watching in the rearview mirror and looking at the analytics around what happened yesterday or last month, you need to look at the level of change being driven across an organization. Only then can you predict into the future whether there will be an improvement in that number or not. Ask yourself: Are decisions driving action? Are employees actually changing their behavior? Are people engaging with customers in new ways?
If the answers to those questions are no, you need a deeper dive to identify road blocks. Too often CX teams are tempted to “own” the customer experience process, which prevents other employees from becoming involved and driving viral change. It’s also easy to get lost in the data and over complicate your approach. Instead, place the focus on making it easy for people to change the way they respond to the insights they receive so you can nudge people in the right direction. As well as everything else, it will stop the team CX from total burnout.
Focus on more than just outcomes
Use data and the tools of a psychologist to help people make better business decisions and then measure the resulting actions. To truly create viral change, everyone in the organization – from customer service representatives to senior leadership – needs to understand what behavior change you’re trying to drive. The goal is to be more pragmatic with how data is utilized. While PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets deliver lots of number analysis, do they actually create operational changes across a business? The future is predicated on using data to transform the organization, not create fluffy reports. No one is desperate to see yet another PowerPoint deck – trust me!
Don’t fear failure
In order to inspire individuals to get involved in change, employees must feel empowered to try new things – even if they don’t work. For the entire organization to be more flexible and agile, people have to be able to fail fast. Enable teams to try something and see if it works. If it doesn’t, try something different. Trust your employees with insight and create a culture that encourages team members to innovate and try a new approach. Embrace a minimum viable product (MVP) mind-set. MVP focuses on learning from product development, encouraging teams to create new solutions that can satisfy early customers and generate critical feedback for future versions. Be sure to check in on how new ideas pan out. If it works, take steps to implement broadly. If the idea fails, don’t point fingers and place blame. Instead, use the situation as a learning tool to drive process improvements in the future. Failing fast is one thing, but make sure the approach is noted and ruled out for future use. Failing fast over and over again is just failing.
A psychological approach
It can be easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of data you are working with. But CX insights have the power to transform a businesses if leveraged effectively. Still, the data alone won’t drive success – you’ll need the experts within an organization to turn the data into tangible results. When bringing the power of psychology to CX data, it’s important to remember to include employees’ perspectives, measure the results of better business decisions and enable employees to fail. A psychological approach will empower your team to take a deeper dive into the numbers, enabling your clients to use customer feedback to adjust their behaviors and create positive change.