Retailers are mining sales transaction data, marketing databases and call center logs for information as they work to better serve customers' needs across multiple channels. But that's only part of the story, says Forrester Research: In tracking customer behavior from web to phone to store to understand what drives them, retailers must take care not to lose sight of the customers themselves. “Customers don’t live in your database – go out and meet them,” Forrester says. While mining existing data can reveal what customers did, it offers no insight into why or how else they might like to do the same tasks, says Forrester analyst Paul Sonderegger.
To figure out cross channel strategies that will serve most customers, retailers should find and study their most profitable and most demanding customers – the 20% whose demands will lead to solutions that will satisfy 80% of customers. Tactics to reveal qualitative insights include direct observations of customers, secret shopping by agents, and asking panels of customers to take notes and pictures of their surroundings then they interact with the company, says Forrester. Getting a complete picture of how shoppers would like to shop – vs. historical data on how they've shopped so far – may involve several research vendors that specialize in studying different customer touchpoints, such as those with expertise in phone interviews, kiosk and web site interactions and the offline store environment, says Sonderegger.
Back...
