Diving into data flows for a better customer experience

When for­eign exchange oper­a­tor Trav­elex was held hostage by cyber attack­ers on New Year’s Eve, its employ­ees were forced to serve cus­tomers with pen and paper. It took over a month to get back to busi­ness as usu­al and cus­tomer data was stolen. Angry cus­tomers – and part­ners – took no time in shar­ing their frus­tra­tions on social media. 

To avoid a Trav­elex-style melt­down and keep cus­tomers hap­py, com­pa­nies need to first under­stand how pro­gramme data flows at the back-end sys­tems. 

Client-centric benefits

In today’s world of high cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, client-cen­tric com­pa­nies are an incred­i­ble 60 per cent more prof­itable than those that are not, accord­ing to a study by Deloitte. The con­sult­ing firm iden­ti­fies client-cen­tric­i­ty as the most impor­tant fac­tor in a suc­cess­ful busi­ness dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. 

Three quar­ters of organ­i­sa­tions increased their invest­ment in cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (or “CX”) tech­nol­o­gy in 2018, found advi­so­ry firm Gart­ner. When an unhap­py cus­tomer can tweet their frus­tra­tions for the world to see, CX mat­ters more. 

“Sud­den­ly, con­sumer app expec­ta­tions and this instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion envi­ron­ment is apply­ing to even busi­ness­es that have tra­di­tion­al­ly been allowed to call the shots, like banks, insur­ers and wealth man­agers,” says Jason Crab­tree, co-founder of uni­fied enter­prise ana­lyt­ics-as-a-ser­vice plat­form QOMPLX.  

Tech­nol­o­gy has changed cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, Mr Crab­tree argues. “Peo­ple aren’t going to tol­er­ate the same kind of poor user expe­ri­ences. They are now say­ing, ‘why isn’t this as enjoy­able as my social media account?’ Peo­ple are real­is­ing this dimen­sion of [com­pa­nies] being con­fi­dent to deliv­er a qual­i­ty expe­ri­ence, even if the organ­i­sa­tion is under duress.”

Figure out the flow

First, under­stand the crit­i­cal process­es that deliv­er val­ue to the cus­tomer. The Trav­elex attack didn’t just hurt its direct cus­tomers, like hol­i­day­mak­ers at the air­port. It also affect­ed the company’s whole sup­ply chain, from Wall Street and High Street banks to super­mar­kets that relied on Trav­elex to offer cur­ren­cy ser­vices to their cus­tomers. Glob­al firms like Bar­clays, RBS and Tesco were some of the brands dragged down by Travelex’s mess.

As dig­i­tal sup­ply chains grow and become more com­plex, organ­i­sa­tions need to pay close atten­tion to these kinds of third-par­ty risks. “I think you have to start with the client val­ue and work your way back,” says Mr Crab­tree. He says that a lot of organ­i­sa­tions opt to start a risk pro­gramme when they should real­ly be deter­min­ing “the things that would make us have a bad day and not deliv­er val­ue for the client”, before work­ing from there. This allows them to iden­ti­fy the depen­den­cies, he says, find­ing what must be true to ensure the dis­rup­tion does not occur.

Once busi­ness­es have fig­ured out these depen­den­cies, they can start to exam­ine their ecosys­tem, such as the types of con­trols that are in place to ensure their deliv­ery sys­tem is effec­tive. The next step is to iden­ti­fy which haz­ards could threat­en those con­trols, such as a ran­somware event or data breach.

Drill into the data

Start by com­pil­ing a com­pre­hen­sive inven­to­ry of all data assets and analyse if they are being used in a tar­get­ed way. The best thing com­pa­nies can do is go back to their val­ue state­ment and deter­mine the par­tic­u­lar sub­set of data they rely on in the areas where they deliv­er the most val­ue to their clients, Mr Crab­tree notes.

Busi­ness­es can strug­gle to deter­mine if they are col­lect­ing enough data and how well it is cat­e­gorised. A com­mon prob­lem that Mr Crab­tree sees is that com­pa­nies com­pile data from cus­tomers at dif­fer­ent stages of their pur­chas­ing jour­ney, but it is split across mul­ti­ple silos with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. This means that many com­pa­nies have ample cus­tomer data – and are pay­ing to store it – but are not mak­ing the best use of it. 

“A plat­form like QOMPLX’s allows you to inte­grate sev­er­al dif­fer­ent data sources with con­sis­tent ver­sion­ing, per­mis­sion­ing, and data access con­trol so that you can actu­al­ly do cross-silo ana­lyt­ics or even answer basic ques­tions [that deliv­er] busi­ness intel­li­gence with trans­par­ent prove­nance.”

In dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, it’s cru­cial to ensure your plan doesn’t rely on serendip­i­ty to deliv­er busi­ness val­ue, Mr Crab­tree says. Com­pa­nies should “have enough dis­ci­pline that you have a com­pre­hen­sive inven­to­ry of all data assets and trans­for­ma­tion process steps the whole time”.

Hav­ing the right peo­ple with access to the right data to explore adja­cent uses dri­ves rev­enues and deliv­ers a bet­ter CX, Mr Crab­tree says. Serendip­i­ty is mere­ly the accel­er­ant.

“If you do it the oth­er way around, you’re nev­er going to make the progress you need.”

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