How automation can help you understand your customers

A few years ago several investment funds made history by managing to beat the market using only predictions derived from Twitter. These funds were some of the first to leverage the power of big data and natural language processing to identify trends and successfully predict changes in the value of stocks.

It was a historical moment that made other companies wonder if similar techniques could be used to predict the behavior of their own customers or create better products and marketing campaigns. After all, the principles behind the predictions were nothing new, salespeople have long known the importance of listening to customers and analyzing conversations.

A problem of scale

The real obstacle that prevented companies from analyzing the conversations and interactions with their clients is one of scale. On a small scale, things are easy enough, a small store owner can take the time to chat to clients and make notes on what they say and spot patterns in the feedback received.

This can be partly replicated in larger companies using focus groups, or by asking sales reps and frontline staff about common questions and complaints, but the data obtained is often imperfect. CRM systems will also often ask operators to log the details of each conversation, but again the quality of the data is not great.

The problem is that humans are terrible at multitasking, and it is simply not reasonable to ask staff to remember the details of each conversation, while also paying attention to what is being said and helping the customer.

A change of medium

Today, the rise in popularity of messaging apps and conversational commerce is changing the way in which customers interact with companies and creating new, easy-to-analyze data. As a result, the incentive for companies to focus on messaging apps and other chat-based systems is now twofold.

On one hand, as discussed in previous posts, becoming accessible by messaging apps delivers clear competitive advantages. On the other, it also generates a wealth of data that can be analyzed, and the more conversations are shifted to text, the better the data will be.

Chatbots represent the best option to make the shift towards chat-based interactions feasible. They are tireless computer programs that can handle multiple conversations at the same time, across platforms and languages, while also communicating seamlessly with the company’s other management systems.

To learn more about this and how to get started, reach out to our team using the contact link below.