Why big data warehousing is the next frontier for boosting CX

It’s been decades since the term "the customer is always right" placed customer experience (CX) at the heart of every transaction, but delivering excellence in CX hasn’t become much simpler with the passage of time.

Customers effectively expect businesses to read their minds, and they don’t have much patience for those that fail. A recent PWC survey concluded that one-third of consumers would abandon a brand they love after just one negative experience, showing just how high the bar is set for CX.

COVID-19 pushed the needle a long way in terms of customer expectations. The massive acceleration in digital adoption during the pandemic means that self-serve customer portals, business apps, and chatbots that deliver an immediate response are now the baseline.

At the same time, expectations of individualized experiences have ballooned enormously. Customers want to be recognized not just by name, but also by their preferences and interests. They want personalized experiences that encompass tailored products, services, and sales processes. As a result, quality CX surpasses marketing to include sales, post-sales customer support, and pre-launch product/service decisions.

Data is needs to be accessible, not just present

This kind of CX demands technology like a cloud data warehouse that supports improved data gathering, swift ML-powered analysis, and an integrated supply chain capable of responding to the insights you generate.

It’s a difficult undertaking that can’t be achieved without the right data and the right tools to store, manage, and crunch it. For example, transactional data reveals which payment methods (card or digital), frequencies (individually or as a package), and types (recurring subscription or discrete payments) are preferred by your customers, so you can offer the appropriate options to each one. Social media data can help you predict product demands and forecast service trends, while inventory data prevents you from offering products that aren’t in stock and helps adjust your stock to meet expected demand.

Here’s how big data warehousing in the cloud can power the insights and predictions that make top CX a possibility.

Remove barriers to data insights

Big data has been a thing for long enough that the vast majority of enterprises are pretty good at gathering data by now. Unfortunately, they’re still mainly mediocre, at best, at making use of it.

Part of the problem is that consumer concerns over big data spawned a web of data privacy rules and confidentiality regulations, frequently pushing data to languish in isolated silos. It’s especially challenging when dealing with cross-border customers; servers holding data from customers in Europe might be closed off from a marketing team based in the US, for example, due to GDPR rules.

Uploading data into a cloud data warehouse overcomes these silos. Teams from anywhere in the world can tap into data without having to move it to a separate on-prem database, while integrated advanced analytics tools can access all the data from every source and produce reliable insights and predictions quickly and easily.

Speed up response times

New trends, market conditions, and consumer interests can fluctuate at the speed of light, or so it seems. The faster you gather and crunch your data, the sooner you’ll be aware of changes in your customers’ demands.

That kind of mind-reading doesn’t just keep you one step ahead of the latest fads in products and services. It also means you can fine tune your CX processes, customer service channels, and marketing, sales, and support messaging to match your customers’ language and ensure you’re aware of their unspoken assumptions.

Cloud data warehousing returns queries far faster than on-prem systems while also lowering the price per query, so budget concerns won’t hold you back from asking as many queries as you need.

Scale up effortlessly

Big customer data keeps getting bigger, and you need to remain on top of it all to deliver excellent CX. Additionally, you need to be able to offer access to data insights for all users, so that every department -- marketing, sales, and beyond -- can gain an understanding of your customers’ current preferences and state of mind.

A data warehouse that’s resilient and scalable opens up access for all your users concurrently without crashing the system. Decoupled cloud data warehousing can handle any number of queries, but at the same time, you only pay for the amount you use, adding elasticity without breaking the bank.

Ensure data is always up to date

One of the biggest challenges when analyzing customer data is making sure that it’s always up to date. Customer interests and preferences change fast, and out of date information is worse than useless because customers are easily offended by offerings that are out of touch with their needs.

But due to the sheer size of customer datasets, it can take a long time to replace the database in your warehouse. Cloud-based warehousing makes it faster and easier to swap out your datasets and renew your data warehouse whenever you feel the need.

Integrate data insights

With integrated data, teams can collaborate more effectively, operations can be optimized for maximum efficiency, and analytics processes can take place faster and more smoothly. Data integration also helps improve data integrity, which is a challenge when data is coming from so many sources and flooding in so quickly.

Cloud data warehouses tend to integrate natively with a number of data processing and analytics tools, boosting your ability to deliver integrated data insights.

Cloud data warehousing is the natural next step

With the standards continually rising for top CX, the only way to keep up is to constantly keep upping your data analytics game. By delivering scalability and speed, and ensuring that data insights are accurate, accessible, and integrated, a cloud data warehouse can be the key to amplified customer satisfaction.

Peter Davidson works as a senior business associate helping brands and start ups to make efficient business decisions and plan proper business strategies. He is a big gadget freak who loves to share his views on latest technologies and applications.