In my first article earlier this month I set-out the Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation. Last week I looked at the first of these, intimidation. This piece looks in-depth at the second sin, the sin of ignorance.
Perhaps the ‘holy grail’ for most brands is achieving the marketing buzzword ‘evangelism.’ Evangelism, in the business sense, is evolving the casual customer into a loyal fanatic of a product or brand so they preach its benefits and entice others to try it. The conversion of an evangelist is largely accomplished by delivering exceptional experiences and fantastic engagements which increasingly elevates customer loyalty. However, very few brands achieve this level of customer motivation consistently. This is largely because many brands commit some level of one of the following Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation.
1. Intimidation – Allowing the sheer complexity of data to hinder the organization
2. Ignorance – The lack of visibility of all the internal and external datasets
3. Fragmentation – A failure to bring these dispersed datasets together
4. Assumption – Ignoring the precise insight of the data in lieu of assumptions
5. Improvisation – Developing ‘wing it’ strategies that boil down to ‘one-size-fits-all’
6. Impersonalisation – The failure to deliver tailored experiences and engagements
7. Procrastination – Delaying these steps to fully understand and motivate the customer
These ‘sins’ are further exacerbated by the ‘Age of COVID.’ This has increased the complexity of customer decisions, behaviours, engagements and preferences. Therefore, avoiding these ‘sins’ is more critical to gaining holistic customer understanding to engage and motivate them, while focusing on evolving their loyalty into evangelism. With a sound plan, strong partner and proven platform, businesses can incorporate intelligence solutions that help them connect with customers and increase revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at the issue of ignorance and how it limits a brand’s visibility.
The sin of ignorance
Ignorance is when a brand is blindfolded to the growing volume, velocity and variety of data that’s inundating their organisation from the 400+ data sources Market Source estimates the average company possesses. Lacking the understanding of the intelligence that lies within this data tsunami and the accompanying customer insight is a commercial shortfall that sets up competitive disadvantages for brands.
Lexi Airey, CEO of Gateway Bank in Australia discusses the importance of overcoming the sin of data ignorance, saying:
“Gateway’s Business and Customer understanding scheme requires every employee over the course of the year to take part in attending and hosting a number of sessions that enable themselves and their colleagues to better understand Gateway and its Members. Sessions are diverse, covering the whole business, and can range from shadowing branch activities, following a loan through the lending process, pricing decision meetings, to sessions from Directors on their role.”
This holistic approach across business operations is essential. However, it’s often one where ignorant brands don’t see the value in educating their employees on data intelligence, let alone using that insight to drive decisions, set strategy or guide innovation. Too many of these businesses simply view data as a mess to be swept into their platforms and systems and not a competitive advantage.
“The scheme [of educating employees] serves several purposes,” Airey explains. “It enhances understanding and empathy enabling a better customer experience. It mitigates risks. It provides employees with a wider view of the consequences of their actions enabling a sense of purpose and achievement. It allows a view of the data and insight that is available all across the business and how it is used. Everyone ends up with a living inventory of what is available in other areas.”
Absolving the sin of ignorance
Absolving the sin of ignorance is fairly simple. The mere acknowledgement of the value within data once it’s synthesised, analysed and visualised, is key to overcoming this sin. It’s also a first step in moving towards a strategy to reign in and at least inventory the data flows within the business. This will generate a perspective of insights and the understanding they can deliver around the customer.
As Alexander Edwards, President of Strategic Vision explains:
“Stop measuring satisfaction and measure experience. To make the point simple – most research starts by asking the wrong questions using language that is not natural to the respondent. For example, we ask if customers are “satisfied” with a product or service and pretend that this is connected to advocacy, conquest and loyalty. However, for those things that customers are truly dedicated to, they talk about why they love the product or service.”
Beyond a company-wide commitment, reigning in and taming the disparate data sources requires a commitment to adopting the technology innovation to transform it into multilayered windows into the behaviours, attitudes and tendencies of the customer. This quickly delivers a competitive advantage. This requires dedicating resources and committing to customer intelligence technology that helps identify, inventory, ingest and integrate the fragmented data into a single-source foundation of evidence.
“As the complexity of data increases, you almost see diametrically opposed forces in the market where a segment of brands chose to ignore the growing factor data has on a business and those companies that embrace the need for data-driven insight even more,” explained John Sevec, Vice President of Client Strategy for mTab. “It’s not a lost cause for the brands who are ignorant, but I think there is, to some degree, a point of no return both in the complexity of the data and the ability to catch up with the data-driven competitors.”
The bottom line is that every operation is already dealing in massive data flows; therefore, the sooner a brand recognises the issue, and data’s value data, the sooner it provides a competitive advantage. The sin of ignorance certainly brings with it a disadvantage in decision making, strategy and innovation.
