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PUBLISHED ON HBR.ORG
JUNE 14, 2017

ARTICLE
DATA
AI Can Comb Through
Your Data to Create
More Compelling
Customer Experiences
by Blake Morgan

This article is made available to you with compliments of Genesys. Further posting, copying or distribution is not permitted.
 DATA

AI Can Comb Through Your

Data to Create More
Compelling Customer
Experiences
by Blake Morgan
JUNE 14, 2017

NEASDEN CONTROL CENTRE FOR HBR

The world has more data than ever before. In fact, it’s estimated that by 2020, we’ll produce 44
zettabytes every day. That’s equal to 44 trillion gigabytes. One gigabyte can hold the contents of
enough books to cover a 30-foot-long shelf. Multiply that by 44 trillion. That’s a lot of data — too

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 much for most companies to process. And yet front-line employees are still often left operating with
data that’s “too little, too late.”

Most organizations are challenged to extract meaningful insights from their customer data when
they’re drowning in so many data feeds. Data is not always shared efficiently. Many of the world’s
biggest companies operate in silos — for example, their customer service and sales departments do
not share a customer relationship management (CRM) database, and employees don’t collaborate
around the customer to ensure a powerful customer experience. More often than not, employees in
one department don’t even know the employees in other departments, let alone use data that spans
the organization. This often results in wildly inconsistent customer experiences that make
companies look disconnected and unfocused.

And when the business becomes a little more complicated — such as with a merger or acquisition —
the situation gets even worse. For example, I was recently shopping at a major mattress retailer that
was acquired by a bigger company. I had previously bought a mattress from them a year before. The
mattress store sales rep told me he did not have any information about that mattress because after
the acquisition, they threw out the old customer relationship management (CRM) data. That’s not a
great customer experience.

Organizations need to create easy and elegant customer experiences; how can they overcome their
data challenges to satisfy increasingly fickle customers?

Machine learning offers one solution, if organizations can overcome their silos enough to implement
it correctly. Each new customer action feeds back into the analytics engine, which helps inform the
next best steps for a positive customer experience. For example, if a customer indicates through her
online browsing habits that she’d prefer an Android phone instead of an iPhone, she’ll immediately
start seeing an Android upgrade offer the next time she goes on Facebook. Granted, some customers
find it a bit creepy that brands can make their way into personal social media feeds in this way, so it’s
important to make it easy for customers to opt out of social media targeting. However, companies
can earn customers’ trust simply by being relevant and providing value. Just like in any relationship,
a business can earn trust and loyalty by being a good listener and being there for the customer at a
point of need. By leveraging automated analytics, customer interactions can fuel a continuous
feedback loop that adapts in real time to add value at every touch point.

Consider how Sprint is using data to create better customer experiences. In 2014, Sprint had a
customer churn rate of 2.3% — twice as much as its biggest competitors. The company was relying on
customer experience agents — who were relying on their own judgement — to comb through data on
how to best serve the customer. Previously, the agent would look through more than 20 offers, trying
to pick the best one while on the phone with the customer. Sprint knew it needed to get away from
relying on its employees to make these split-second decisions. After implementing a data solution
from Pegasystems (Disclosure: Pegasystems is a former client of mine), Sprint deployed predictive
and self-learning analytics to identify customers at risk of churn and proactively provided

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 personalized retention offers. As a result, Sprint reduced customer churn by 10% to historic lows,
while also increasing its net promoter score by 40%, boosting customer upgrades by 8 times,
convincing 40% more customers to add a new line, and improving overall customer service agent
satisfaction.

Another example comes from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Speaking at Pegaworld this month,
Jessica-Lynn Cuthbertson, Head of Data Science and Customer Decisioning, and Christian Nellisen,
Group Managing Director of Data and Analytics, presented their story about how they used data to
move from a sales-driven culture to being more of a trusted partner for the customer. The company
used to focus on aggressive sales goals — specifically, generating 200,000 new credit card customers
per month. However, through a new culture and technology strategy, the company pivoted and
raised its Net Promoter Score by 18 points. “We want to do the right thing for the customer at every
moment,” said Cutherbertson. RBS has 17 million customers, seven brands and eight different
customer channels. The company went through a transformation focusing on becoming a more
trusted advisor to the customer than a typical bank would be. For example, analytics helped the bank
identify customers that were in need of financial advice. Now, when RBS sees a customer that’s
continuously overdrawing their bank account, the bank will flag that customer and give them a call to
provide financial advice. Cuthbertson said, “We are truly looking out for our customers. It’s about a
continuous conversation.”

Data can provide huge insights for companies, but making the most of the big data being generated is
no longer possible without the help of machine learning. Artificial intelligence tools can help
companies make better data decisions that improve the customer experience in real-time. And using
data to drive more personalized customer experiences benefits customers and businesses alike.

Blake Morgan is the author of More Is More: How the Best Companies Go Farther and Work Harder to Create Knock-Your-
Socks-Off Customer Experiences.

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