Data. It is being made out to be sexy – really sexy. Many folks even think that collecting mountains of data and stuffing it into CRM and/or marketing automation systems is the access to delivering great customer experiences. They are mistaken.
Collecting mountains of data can be useful to marketers in helping them achieve higher direct marketing ROI through better targeting. It may allow the folks in operations to tune aspects of operations. That is about it.
What is the basis of the assertion that I am making? Lived experience. I invite you to ponder the following:
To describe me as weighing a certain amount is …. to “disregard the existential state of being-in”. It is to describe me in a way in which one may describe any physical object. I can weigh x pounds as a living Dasein or a corpse, it makes no difference.
So, if we disregard a person’s existentially and treat him or her simply as a physical object, we can describe that person in terms of his or her factual determinations. In doing so, however, we are missing what makes his or her life the life it is. People do not just weigh x pounds: they live such a weight as being overweight or underweight or as being indifferent to their weight. Weight, as a way of being-in-the-world, is not an indifferent physical property, but rather an existential condition. We may similarly between biological sex and gender, between physical height and stature.
– William Blatner, Heidegger’s Being and Time
I say that if you are to excel in the domain of designing and staging great customer experiences then it is not enough to collect masses of data. Collecting data can actually be a distraction from the real task. What is the real task? The real task is to get a handle on the facticity of your customer’s life: a gut-level grasp of his/her life and in particular what makes his/her life the life it is. Data of the kind that ends up in databases cannot and will never provide this kind of insight.
Does this kind of insight into your customers matter? Yes. This is the kind of insight that allows you to come up with business models, value propositions, products, services, and customer experiences that attract and retain the customers you have chosen (intentionally or accidentally) to serve. It is also the kind of insight that you need to call forth the very best from the people that work for you and work with you. This requires a level of humanness that is rarely given space in established large organisations.
If you do not get the passage that I have quoted above then I say you are wasting your time in the Customer Experience sandbox. You’d be better off in the direct marketing, CRM, or operations optimisation. If you do not get this passage and choose to continue playing in the CX sandbox then know that is perfectly OK. Why? Because you will find many like you in the CX sandbox – you are in the majority.
Thanks for listening. I wish you a great day.
Image via flickr
Original Post: http://thecustomerblog.co.uk/2015/09/19/customer-experience-beware-the-data-trap/
