Let Customer Emotions Guide Your Customer Experience

February 9, 2015
Originally posted on Customer Experience Report on January 27, 2015
The velocity and volume of customer feedback presents a transformative problem to business leaders. Modern companies must contend with developing strategies around social media, online review sites, community engagement and other operationally critical touch points that did not even exist five years ago. Big data analytics is the only means to solve these issues of scale and complexity.
A successful big data strategy may not only transform your current business model, it can amplify it. Big data is not merely providing new insights around customer behavior — it is the bridge to connect and unify what people truly love about your brand.
Connected & Social: The New Normal
The first step in retail used to be a hello and a smile, and the last was a thank you. Today, the interaction extends much further. Pleased customers will share their positive experiences on Twitter, “like” the brand on Facebook and post their goods on Instagram. This positive feedback loop influences their friends driving more business and further goodwill. Good business is not merely influenced by customer emotion; it is controlled by it.
Adopting this new business mindset is not optional. An excellent example is the handbag industry. In 2012, Coach was the dominant player in the field with 28% of the market, while Michael Kors was a young upstart brand with only 9% of the market. In only two years, Michael Kors saw its market share grow to 17% while Coach stagnated and declined. The emphasis placed on customer experience after the sale between these brands couldn’t be more different. Today, Michael Kors has 2.53 million Twitter followers, 16.4 million Facebook followers, and 3.3 million Instagram followers; Coach’s social presence is multiple times smaller in each of these outlets. Unsurprisingly, Michael Kors is poised to eclipse Coach in total market share in less than two years.
To read the rest of the article, please refer to Customer Experience Report.
Dheepan Ramanan is a data scientist at Clarabridge. Follow him on Twitter @DheepanRamanan.