Swimming with the Data Tidal Wave

As more of us spend more of our lives interacting with technology, the value of the data garnered from this behaviour becomes more and more valuable to businesses.  In principle, every click generates a data point, every comment given a valence, and every sequence of clicks can be tracked.

Multiply this by the number of actual and potential customers, across all of a company’s touch points and very soon you can be generating exabytes of data, constantly updated in real time.

Combine this with the pressure on companies to utilize this data for its competitive value to the business and the race is on to input, store, analyse and output data, data, data …

The temptation is to solve this problem as a matter of urgency; all the while the data keeps coming in a deluge.  It is easy to get immersed in the details and the difficulties, when it is actually time to step back and out of it to see the bigger picture, to find the value and to realize the limitations. So get a cup of tea, find a quiet corner and ask the important questions such as:

-                who are my most valuable customers and what do they value?

-                What are my ambassadors and detractors talking about? In other words what are my competitive strengths and weaknesses?

-                What are the significant changes in consumers’ behaviour (using a timescale that the business can respond to)?

-                What is important to my customers, using micro, meso and macro lenses (i.e. individual touchpoint experience, the acquisition and usage of my product in their life, and the bigger picture of their lives in context)?

-                What are they doing now vs what would they like to be doing (again using micro, meso and macro lenses)?

Now, how can you organize your data around answering these important questions?  Understand where data can and can’t help and where other sources of information are needed.  And get the team with the right technical, strategic and practical skills working together to achieve this common goal.

Keep focused on the big questions your business asks, not on what detailed analysis your data can provide.

Further Reading

Visiting the Real World

Unless you visit the real world of your customers, you have little or no idea if your data, or map, is correct and complete.  This is especially true if your customers are not like you.  Without visiting your customers you have little appreciation for the richness, the variety and the context of their world and their lives.  You can’t feel their emotions and empathise with them.  You will find it difficult to care.

So let’s get practical.  How are you supposed to visit the real world of your customers?

1.    First of all, as far as possible, be a consumer of your own products. 

       I acknowledge that this is not always possible, for example …

       … I have a long-standing niggle with the packaging on Lil-lets tampons and let’s face it, this is not a product that you want to be fiddling with to open. Even if the product manager is male, they could have easily realized this irritation by attempting to open the product. I can only speculate on whether this has contributed to the company’s book value of £-26M.   

2.    Watch how people shop for your products or services online and offline and go and buy your product yourself.  See what the process is like.  Do the research and find the highlights and pain points in the consumer journey. 

3.    Hang out where your customers hang out.  Watch what they do and get talking.  If that’s too scary, call up your market research agency and ask them to pre-recruit willing participants.  Or give me a call and I will come with you.  At the very least spend time hanging out in social media. 

4.    Best of all, with the support of your research agency, visit your customers in their homes or any environment where your products or services are consumed.  Seeing them in their context will give you insight that you will never get through the one-way mirror of a viewing facility.  

5.    Invite your customers into your company. Aim to understand their lives and what is important to them, not just what they think of your stuff. 

Let them tell you their story.  Hear it properly with your heart and mind and go back to your work with real care for your customers and renewed passion in what you can do for them.

 

The Map is not the Territory

Running a business is of course a complicated business.  To deal with the complexity, most businesses set up systems to generate feedback so that decision makers can see at a glance, which parts of the business are performing well, or poorly, and overall how well the profit-generating system is working.  They have a map. 

The map, or scorecard, may be subdivided for different teams so that sales get their map, brand managers get theirs, category and product teams see their performance and finance see the overall impact on costs and profits.

In the eyes of business owners and employees, their map becomes the focus of their work and the map drives strategic and day-to-day decisions.

But the map is not the territory.

This map of Kerala in India gives no feel for the beauty and sensory richness of this part of the world, and how people there live their lives.  Just as a business scorecard, no matter how beautifully thought out and detailed can give a businessperson an insight into the lives of the people who buy their products.  

No numbers in spreadsheets can relay how it feels to hit the sweet spot on the golf club, how frustrating it is when you can’t open the packaging on the milk carton or the rush of pleasure from seeing your kids’ faces light up on Christmas morning.  When you gain this level of insight and connection with your customers, the context and emotional richness of their lives, then you know what needs to be done.

The map is a poor abstraction of real life and the danger is that businesses that only focus on the map will lose touch with the reality of their customers’ lives.

And then it is very easy to get lost.