Data All The Time

Digital transformation will bring you new customers, help you keep customers, and create a new kind of partnership with customers to do new and better things together.

In fact, companies who’ve adopted Inxeption are discovering a new superpower: they aren’t just accumulating and recording more information, the system actually "learns" about customers based on every interaction; it can predict customer behavior; and it can flag warning signs or opportunities.

Customer choices and input on the Inxeption platform become part of an ever-expanding database that functions as a virtual focus group, a product development laboratory, and a predictor of future behavior. Not only can you analyze what customers are buying, asking for, and complaining about, you can experiment with segments of your customer base by offering discounts, customizing options, and other promotions and testing how they fly without rolling them out system-wide.

For example: In any form of manufacturing, product returns are a drag on earnings. Minimizing returns is always a management priority. But resellers anxious to keep a customer’s business will pressure manufacturers for a liberal return policy, regardless of the reason.

With Inxeption, there can be a simple process to return a product that is damaged or not needed, but in that process the customer provides valuable insights, such as:

If you see that many returns are because the customer did not notice or understand a warning or details on the order form, the Inxeption platform can flag this recurring problem. You can immediately make that order form warning more explicit, or better educate the customer on how to install or use the product more effectively.

If the returns are coming back because of the same broken components, you now find out after five, not fifty returns. And then you have a conversation with your suppliers, or perhaps with your own packers and shippers.

Finally, you can ask the system: What kinds of orders tend to have the largest percentage of returns? Which customers are most likely to return products? And then you can set alarms for those conditions and assign a representative to reach out to those customers in advance and see if you can avoid the problem. Perhaps multiple, smaller orders shipped in stages?

You can ask Inxeption historical questions like: Does personal communication from senior executives, not just customer service reps, correlate to increased customer satisfaction? What links in the supply chain are most fragile and should be shored up with backup plans?

Looking forward, Inxeption’s ability to test scenarios is a powerful tool. Say you’re considering a price increase because your costs have increased for specific components. How will your customers react? With the Inxeption system, you can send one group of your customers an email flagging the price increase, including detailed information about the component cost increases that prompted it. For another group, you can flag the upcoming price change but urge them to order in quantity before the change occurs. How do your customers behave when you communicate in these different ways?

Now you have objective data, not the advice or self-serving opinions of a distributor, and it can guide your practices going forward.

Originally published at https://buzz.inxeption.com/blog/data-all-the-time.