Using Contextual Data to Revamp Customer Experience

A solid customer experience (CX) is a bedrock for many successful businesses. Experts say building a CX without knowing your clients is like building a house of cards. To the wrong audience, at the wrong time, a marketing hook will mirror the background noise they’re accustomed to. A contextual messaging framework should always put people first to push the needle on engagement metrics.

According to a Salesforce Report, 63% of buyers prefer brands that know their needs and biases. This makes behavioral and location intelligence an important currency in business.

Where is the gap and how to address it?

Targeted advertising is currently stymied by strict privacy policies. Due to this, listening for signals critical to CX is becoming nearly impossible. Customers flocking to opt out is prompting brands to look for other viable contextual messaging alternatives. As advertisers race to find new ways to deliver ads, somehow contextual relevance continues to remain an afterthought.

Brands should gain direct access to customer data rather than relying on third-party sources. Asking for consent is a great place to start when building a data pool of customers with similar interests. This may seem similar to third-party warehousing, in which data is pooled for marketing purposes. Thus returning to the same issue that existed in data sharing.

The main reason for the scarcity of insights is fragmented data, but so is the constant shift in customer expectations. The change influenced by the political, economic, and social climate makes it extremely difficult to align with the trend lines. Despite these challenges, great customer experience is all about sending hyper-targeted messages to specific customer accounts. This is where contextual data comes in handy.

Using contextual data to increase customer awareness

Using context to achieve sales and customer relationship objectives makes more sense because of the following advantages:

• Using historical and current data to forecast customer expectations

• Increasing sales prospects and customer retention by providing your engagement team with a unified view of the journey thus far.

The journey can be traced back to each customer using behavior and location intelligence. The more information you have about your customer, the better you will be able to visualize their persona and journey in order to plan a customer experience strategy.

Contextual data will make it easier to nudge customers into action. Contextual messaging will not only elicit quick decisions but will also turn buyers into loyal customers.

An ear to the ground can help iron out kinks

Streamlining the customer experience should apply to all touchpoints. Does it seem to be a quantum leap? Maybe. However, not in an inconvenient way. In fact, focusing on just three key aspects will increase the significance of transformation.

1. Engage customers where they frequent

Customers prefer brands that are easy to find. Extending your hand before they need it is the most effective way to demonstrate that you are in the business of providing stellar customer service. Granting them ways to reach you anywhere, at any time, brings them great joy and a toothy grin.

Being adaptable enough to support any selected channel will strengthen trust and loyalty. Your contextual experience framework should include omnichannel support, such as web chat, video calls, and voice calls.

1. Lightning-fast contextual services

Whatever customer experience strategy you devise, it should not feel like a difficult transition. A support CRM powered by Mapsted's location technology, for example, should assist customers in locating a nearby physical office to avoid long travel times and unnecessary complications in the service experience.

The technology layer helps to reduce the overall number of hoops a customer will have to jump through. A contextual layer improves the speed and accessibility of the service experience. Similar to Mapsted's location solution which ends users, businesses, and operations teams will benefit from without the need for separate solutions.

1. Sync real-time data

With more consumers shunning businesses that aren't aware of their needs, it's only a matter of time before competition for location and contextual intelligence emerges. Brands will compete to link insights with individual journeys to tailor contextual experiences with extreme precision.

On a final noteBy using a contextual messaging framework, you can prioritize the most important factors for improving customer experience. As consumers become sore with annoying marketing outreach, tailored engagement will rise to the top as more advantageous than mail blasts or spam texts. In such instances, location technology like Mapsted's will be the cornerstone to reviving customer interest.