Analytics & Research

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 dec 2015

Although Business Intelligence (BI) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) are being successfully utilized for incremental innovation, but they are insufficient to provide breakthrough innovation, which is more challenging and requires uncovering latent needs, or even creating needs and meaning. Soren Petersen, author of the book 'Profit from Design', and Finn Birger Lie (Co-founder and Chairman of Northern Analytics AS), explains how combination of BDA and Small Data (SD) when integrated at the early stages of new product development process can create breakthrough innovation. The conventional design process includes steps that combine analysis and synthesis, prototyping, testing and learning to create unique and valuable insights. While more advanced design processes, like Design Thinking, include an element of design research or Design Science Research, to enable design teams gain better understanding of the current and future market, and technologies, leverage this knowledge, and then create roadmap that includes the concurrent building of new capabilities that assist them to design future offerings. Mr. Petersen says, 'Innovation is often ambiguous. The 'Market-Technology Risk Matrix' provides a useful mapping of new ventures and offerings according to their position in the market (Recognized Needs, Clarifying Needs and Realizing Needs) and their technology level (Current Technology, Applied New Technology and Development of New Technology). Different combinations of Big Data Analytics (BDA) and Small Data Analytics (SDA) may prove more productive, depending on where design identifies insights within the Market-Technology Risk Matrix.' With grounded research and vertical thinking, BDA can support incremental innovation, while through lateral thinking, SDA can utilize a combination of hypothesis and grounded research to support breakthrough innovation. Read on...

Huffington Post: Creating Breakthrough Innovations Through Design With Big and Small Data Analysis
Authors: Soren Petersen, Finn Birger Lie

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 dec 2015

While peer recommendations and other customer's views have an important influence on purchasing decisions, but an experiment by Cranfield University's Prof. Hugh N. Wilson, Prof. Emma K. Macdonald and doctoral student Shane Baxendale, identified another influential touchpoint that is mostly ignored by marketers: observing what other customers actually do. They analyzed brand touchpoints of 14000 people from N. America and Europe over a week. The data was collected as text message by using research agency MESH Experiences's real-time experience tracking approach. The people were asked to report their experiences of a brand in one of four categories: mobile handsets, soft drinks, technology products, and electrical goods. The results collected from 69000 text messages found that observing other customers in influencing purchase decisions is as important as word-of-mouth recommendations for mobile handsets and soft drinks, and even more important in case of technology products and electrical goods. The experiment overall found that peer observation was equal in importance to the costly brand advertising. Similar thinking that Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and economist, termed as 'System 1 Thinking' also applies in consumer behavior: with many decisions to take, it saves effort to assume that if others are using a product, it's probably good. For marketers, the researchers have the following suggestions - (1) It's important to think about distinctive branding for the product in use not just for the purchase moment. (2) If decision-making is made by the group rather than the individual, marketers can try to win the group. (3) Expose normally invisible customer behaviors to their peers. (4) Build in peer observation to product launches. Read on...

Harvard Business Review: What Really Makes Customers Buy a Product
Authors: Hugh N. Wilson, Emma K. Macdonald, Shane Baxendale

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 nov 2015

Successful companies provide exemplary customer service. Companies have huge amount of data regarding their customers that they can utilize to achieve better understanding and insights and serve their consumers in the best possible way. But the big question is, how many metrics can customer service professionals focus on to get the best results. Piyanka Jain, President and CEO of Aryng, explains 'There is a better way to drill into the treasure trove of data you have, to find the root causes of your most important metrics slipping - and you don't need to use any complicated systems to do it. 80% of the business problem faced by most front line managers can be solved by using simple business analytics methodologies - (1) Aggregate Analysis (2) Correlation Analysis (3) Trend Analysis (4) Sizing and Estimation. If you and your team can learn to master these four techniques, you can solve most of the business problems you will encounter in your day-to-day workflow. And it can be all done using simple tools like Excel, with the data you already have at hand.' She further povides three simple steps that are to be followed - (I) Determine your team's analytics aptitude (II) Learn how to ask intelligent questions and derive actionable insights from your data (III) Practice and learn to become more proficient with your business analytics. Ms. Jain has devised a framework, 'BADIR Process', that include steps that most analytics projects follow - Real 'B'usiness Question; Hypothesis-driven 'A'nalysis Plan; Collecting Relevant 'D'ata; Deriving 'I'nsights; Making Actionable 'R'ecommendations. If the 'BADIR' framework is utilized in a way as explained, the analysis will find the following biggest drivers of customer dissatisfaction - (1) Multiple calls needed to get an issue resolved. (2) Hold times greater than 150 seconds while the agent looks for the answer. (3) Unprofessional agents. The analysis would show that addressing these drivers would bring customer satisfaction (CSAT) up from 57% to 69%. These important driver metrics should become the part of the daily dashboard - (1) First Call Resolution (FCR) (2) Agent Hold Time (3) Professionalism Among Agents (graded on scale). Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Improving Customer Satisfaction with Simple Analytics
Author: Piyanka Jain

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 03 nov 2015

Marketing technologies are changing the nature and dynamics of strategies that marketers use to reach, engage and serve their customers. Moreover these technologies continue to evolve and marketers have to keep pace with these advances to stay ahead of the game. The four key innovation areas in marketing technology in which all marketers should have deep understanding and continue to emphasise in their strategies are - (1) Use Advanced Analytics (2) Optimize the Mobile Experience in Real-time (3) Cut Down on Call Center Time to Value (4) Maximize the Voice of Customer (VOC). Marketers should be able to collect, analyze and act on omnichannel data throughout the whole customer funnel (customer journey & engagement process) for each of the mentioned areas to achieve success. This will finally help build better customer profiles, prioritize business actions, analyze macro trends, optimize customer engagement and customize offerings to get better outcomes. Read on...

MarTech Advisor: 4 Advanced Use Cases of Marketing Technology Innovation
Author: Rohit Roy

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 23 sep 2015

In a highly competitive market, brands can utilize excellent customer service strategies to differentiate themselves. Listening to voice of the customer, understanding their behavior and analyzing their interactions, can provide companies the needs and wants of the customer. Companies can use these insights to better serve their customers and that has direct impact on their bottom line. According to Defaqto Research, '55% of consumers would pay more for a better customer experience.' Study published in Journal of Marketing (2004 Edition) by team of researchers, Prof. Eugene W. Anderson of University of Michigan (now at University of Miami), Prof. Claes Fornell of University of Michigan and, Prof. Sanal K. Mazvancheryl of Georgetown University (now at American University, Washington DC), quantified the consequence of quality customer service on shareholder value. Study points out, 'Among 200 businesses represented in the Fortune 500 across 40 industries, a 1% improvement in customer satisfaction increased a firm's value by US$275 million.' Danny Wong, co-founder of Blank Label and digital marketer, explains the importance of customer feedback and how ecommerce stores can turn this into a competitive advantage through effective engagement, building relationships and developing better products and services. According to him, 'Develop an intimate understanding of what your customers know, want and need to establish a competitive edge that helps you improve how you do business and the value you offer to end consumers. Start by categorizing reasons for why your customers purchase your products i.e. their primary motivations.' He suggests stores to source high-impact feedback and utilize the following tactics to expand the scope of their customer research - (1) Audit the reviews competitors receive (2) Conduct surveys (3) Dive into your analytics (4) Encourage user-generated content (5) Track public conversations. Once the research is at hand, stores need to summarize actionable takeaways and use the following three steps to build a strong business case for doing anything - (1) Quantify its impact (2) Measure its market opportunity (3) Get leadership buy-in. To implement new changes the stores can use gradual strategies to first consider the high-impact initiatives that are easy to do and then to implement moderate changes and finally move on to more resource intensive projects for long-term meaningful outcomes. Companies should incorporate excellence in customer service into their corporate culture and should consider the opportunity of every interaction with customers to build lasting relationships. Read on...

Huffington Post: How to Leverage Customer Feedback to Improve Your Ecommerce Store
Author: Danny Wong

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 sep 2015

Retailers need to identify their most valuable customers to specifically target and focus their specialized marketing campaigns for building long-term customer relationships with them. Most valuable customers are to be retained for maximizing profitability. But according to the study 'Engaging Customers Across the Lifecycle Journey: How Clienteling Helps Enhance Customer Relationships' by Yes Lifecycle Marketing and Retail TouchPoints, based on the survey of nearly 200 retail marketing executives, most retailers are still struggling to utilize customer data effectively to find and nurture these important customers. Main highlights of the study are - 52% say identifying and engaging their most valuable customers is one of their top business challenges; Nearly 1/3rd of respondents (32%) say they're not able to integrate or analyze their data in a timely fashion; Employee access to data is uneven and most who need it don't have it (44% of C-level executives have customer data while only 27% of store managers and 13% of store associates have access); Only 27% of retail marketing executives have their customer's lifetime spend on file and only 18% have data related to shopping preferences of customers. Read on...

Direct Marketing News: Infographic - Retailers Fail to Fully Leverage Customer Data
Authors: Elyse Dupre, James Jarnot

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 sep 2015

'Digital Marketing' utilizes online technologies and provides opportunities to add prospective customers at the top of the sales funnel and nurture them to build a strong customer base for products and services. Advancement in technologies have provided multiple ways and channels through which marketers can connect and engage with the prospects and build strong relationships. One of the most important aspect of digital marketing is the measurability of the campaign through analytics. The availability of metrics provides marketers with clear understanding of the audience, their interaction with the brands and success of the marketing campaign. According to Jamie Turner, founder of 60 Second Marketer and co-author of 'Go Mobile', the 7 essential channels of digital marketing are - (1) Responsive Websites (2) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search (3) Online Display Advertising (4) Video (5) Social Media (6) Mobile Marketing may include Mobile Website, Mobile Search, Mobile Display Ads, In-app Display Advertising (7) Email Marketing. The action steps required to leverage digital marketing include - Taking the initiative and start using digital marketing; Implement gradually with complete understanding and continuously analyze campaign progress; Use analytics to measure and track campaign results, make adjustments and optimize the process for better ROI. Read on...

Business 2 Community: Digital Marketing - The 7 Essential Channels
Author: Jamie Turner

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 04 jul 2015

Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard University on his website claytonchristensen.com, defines 'Disruptive Innovation' as 'A process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.' Eli Schwartz, Director of Marketing (APAC) at SurveyMonkey, explains that continuous customer feedback through surveys is an effective approach to be disruptive by staying in the customer's value perception. In a disruptive scenario, satisfying customer needs and obtaining their loyalty are two most important considerations. He cites an example of Uber's constant feedback process that successfully keeps the company closer to the customers and provides them ability to tweak the service offerings based on customer suggestions. He offers following tips on how to utilize Uber like feedback to disrupt the markets - (1) Gather feedback after every customer interaction. (2) Ask actionable questions and act on the feedback. (3) Make feedback an integral part of business metrics. (4) Use Net Promoter Score (NPS) i.e. a question where a customer is asked to rate their likelihood of referring a product or business to their friends. Read on...

Tech in Asia: A successful disruption requires customer feedback
Author: Eli Schwartz

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 11 jun 2015

Companies are targeting their product and service offerings to the growing Millennial market. Pew Research predicts that this year Millennials, with 75 million people in US under 34, will overtake the Baby Boomers. But the question is: Should the companies consider Millennials as homogeneous entity and design their products and services accordingly? Authors, Timothy Morey and Allison Schoop of frog (a global product and strategy design firm), argue that to design offerings with exclusive focus on generational cohorts will result in meaningless or potentially damaging outcomes. There is little that unites them totally. According to them, 'A better approach is to design for archetypes that are representative of certain attitudinal and behavioral traits, and then combine these with social, market and emerging technology trends-all things that transcend age or generation. Defining an ideal customer for a potential product or service using broader human themes allows you to create solutions that resonate with a larger group of people.' They further explain, 'Far too many companies take a "product-out" view of segmentation, where they essentially ask their customers to line up around their products by demographics such as age or income. They should take an "outside-in" view that orients its products around their customers' attitudes and behaviors instead. Meeting the functional and emotional needs of a group of people is much more likely to generate transformative results than targeting a generational cohort with tenuous links.' Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Stop Designing for Millennials
Authors: Timothy Morey, Allison Schoop

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 may 2015

Staying close to the customer and fulfil his needs and wants has been the mantra of successful brands and businesses. Technology has brought the customer even closer and given brands the opportunity to better understand and analyze the customer behavior and focus strategies to satisfy him/her. Considering the highly competitive and fast paced world of fashion and luxury, established luxury brands need to think like disrupters by putting customers at the center of their strategies. Disrupters focus on 'jobs to be done' in the present. Clayton Christensen's disrupter framework focuses on consumers' social, emotional or functional problem, and turns business into its solution. This framework makes innovation independent of the latest technology or the hottest new gadget and firmly relies on human behavior. Thinking about customers and their behavior patterns provide brands insights into the future. Understanding the next generation of customers and removing friction from their brand experience with a well thought out solution will hold the key for the brand's survival. Following are four ways established luxury brands can succeed by staying close to the customer - (1) Create a seamless path from inspiration to purchase. (2) Make your brand narrative attainable, intuitive and immersive. (3) Evoke in your customers the feeling of belonging and being special. (4) Serve and reward. Read on...

AdAge: Luxury Brands Must Innovate or Die in the Digital Age
Author: Ana Andjelic

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