Do You Know What Your Customer Really Wants?

Do You Know What Your Customer Really Wants?

I recently blogged about Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and the various ways that customer service and the overall customer experience are being rapidly changed by a digital disruption that is seeing many service processes become automated. I was thinking of this further when I read some new analysis in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) about the industries that are being disrupted most dramatically.

Naturally the media is in first place. The way that we access news and information has changed so much in the past decade that media companies just don’t know what to do. Some have erected paywalls, some give their content away free, and others ask for donations, but nobody has the answer for how media will work in a world where the delivery mechanism has so fundamentally changed.

There are some very interesting takeaways from the HBR analysis:

1. B2C companies are being hit hardest by digital disruption in their industry.

2. 90% of companies surveyed said they have a strategy in place to manage the new digital world, but only 20% said that their HR processes allowed them to move fast enough to keep up with the rate of change.

3. It’s no longer enough to just guess what the customer wants, you now have the data to know what they like – it’s up to you to analyze it.

This last point is particularly important. In a world where the methods of interaction between brands and customers are changing faster than most companies can keep up, it’s vital to have solid data that indicates what customers want and/or like.

Your customer service function has already become better known as a customer relationship function where customer engagement takes places and relationships are built, but now there is a new focus. Gathering intelligence on those customer interactions is becoming the only way that organizations can stay ahead in a world where digital disruption is destroying and creating new industries all the time.

What do you think about the evolving importance of analyzing customer interactions? Leave a comment here or get in touch via my LinkedIn.