How Customer Knowledge and Customer Intelligence impact Customer Experience

Customer Knowledge (CK) refers to the experience, value, and insights gathered through the interaction between customers and business organizations. Customer Knowledge can be acknowledged as a key driving force for Customer Intelligence. Customer Intelligence (CI) is another term that refers to the process of collecting data, analyzing intelligently and producing insights based on the information of the customers. The objective is to gain ownership of the customers and enhance their satisfaction which may result in loyalty. In brief, Customer Intelligence is knowing customers' behavior and find out the reason for that behavior to get their utmost attention. The more Customer Knowledge you have, the better Customer Intelligence you can produce. The above two terms can impact business organizations in delivering strong Customer Experience (CX). The below article will discuss how modern-day Customer-centric Business Organizations are using Customer Knowledge and Customer Intelligence to design and deliver better Customer Experience.

The Customer Knowledge management can be developed through 2 approaches; Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CXM). The first one is widely known now as almost all business organization has learned the value of it. Using an advanced technology tool for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help an organization to keep track of every customer of them, their requirements, purchase history, personal interest, interactions, complaints, and resolutions. Aside from technical tools, B2B organizations use Customer Relationship Managers to communicate with customers manually to support them and get to know about them more. However, it can be costly and often turn sour if any step taken to manage Customer Relations or ensure customer retention goes wrong. Who knows this better than Comcast ? The company was named Worst Company in America twice and their communication with customers went viral on the internet for obvious reason. Take the famous phone call recording for example where the service representative of Comcast annoyed a Customer,?Ryan Block ?who is the founder of?Begin?and worked with few other tech organizations. The customer service representative tried to convince Mr. Block not to disconnect their service but eventually with a series of annoying questions, made the whole conversation a laughing stock. (Recording can be found here ) Comcast later published a statement on this experience and apologized to Mr. Block and his wife for the incident.

Customer Relationship Management may go right or go wrong but another approach to gathering Customer Knowledge which is, Customer Experience Management (CXM) is not supposed to take such turn. Customer Experience Management identifies the experience the customer is having with the organization by asking them directly instead of getting information from the CRM tools and Customer Relationship Managers. The initial approach had been shaped in the form of survey and market research but as technology evolved, Customer Experience Management cloud solutions have becoming cutting edge technology. Where Customer Relationship Management tools require feeding data from organization employees, Customer Experience Management tools works on Big Data acquired from the customers through Omni Channel. Most advanced CXM tools also have an advanced analytics engine to analyze the data they acquire to generate insights for decision-makers. As we talked about the failure of Comcast on different levels, we shouldn’t forget their next steps to turn the company into a very different Customer-centric organization as well. They have turned things around when they entirely changed their approach of Customer Service and established Omni Channel customer interaction. In the past few years, Comcast has mostly advanced in technologies but they have developed their service quality accordingly.?Tom Karinshak , Executive Vice President, Customer Service, Comcast?in an exclusive interview with Forbes described briefly how they have developed the Customer Experience from the earlier horrendous scenario by saying

“We’re using an inside out approach, beginning with the employee experience. Again, you can’t have a great customer experience without a great employee experience. We took a look at our processes. Some were outdated and needed to be improved so that our teams could better serve our customers. And we cleaned up our systems to take complexities out of the business.”

Certainly, there can’t be a better story of how a company can change its’ Customer Experience approach and revive the lost reputation to thrive in the business again. However, the objective of this article was never to discuss the changes Comcast made but to explain how Customer Knowledge can impact Customer Experience by shaping Customer Intelligence.

Customer Intelligence starts with data and ends in delivering the data in a fruitful, insightful and presentable manner. Any information related to Customers or potential customers is simply data to any Business organization. Be that as it may, data scarcely mean anything until and unless it represents any insight. The organization understands that data is important and often extracts data through CRM tools. One simple information such as, ‘a customer purchased a product this week’ is not supposed to be interesting to the organization. However, if the information can be analyzed combining with previous information, the organization may found that the same customer used to purchase a different brand product of similar category which he/she has opted out from, it becomes interesting. To satisfy the urge to know ‘Why’, the organization can communicate through any of the available Channels of the CXM tool, they may get to know why the customer started using a different brand than the usual. Now it becomes very interesting for the organization and they can decide how they can make the customer repeat purchase as they already know what the customer needs. This is the very complex term Customer Intelligence (CI) explained quite simply.

Customer Knowledge shapes Customer Intelligence which empowers Customer Experience. As we understand, Customer Experience is not just limited within Data-Driven Analysis of Customers’ personal interest; it is a segment of it. The whole Customer Experience depends on the organizations’ intent to satisfy their customers, gain their loyalty and make them the first priority. Therefore, the organization must deliver better Customer Service, be topmost professional when needed and try to exceed Customers’ expectations if possible to achieve these feet. The best explanation of the urgency to empower Customer Intelligence lies under the below statement written by?James Surowiecki ?from?The New Yorker ?in his article?Twilight of the Brands ,?“But brands have never been more fragile. The reason is simple: consumers are supremely well informed and far more likely to investigate the real value of products than to rely on logos.”?Simply put, modern customers no longer rely on brand value or the supremacy of as internet has made the world connected worldwide. Customers across countries now know who offers what, thanks to the constant growth of Social Media websites. According to?Dimensional Research ?based on a survey on US consumers,?90% of Customers who read online reviews claimed that those reviews influenced their purchasing decision.?As much as it means that, online reviews are very helpful, it always means that brands can no longer educate customers about any policy changes without a reasonable explanation. So the options for brands are limited now. Either accept the fact that, customers are going to be your decision-makers. Take their opinion as requisite and try to meet their demands. Loyalty is not guaranteed but your intent will speak for you. Or accept the fate of Comcast before they turned their fortune around by taking the previously mentioned approach. It wouldn’t be wise to do the latter unless you find dignity in being crowned as the Worst Company in the country voted by your own customers.