As the storytelling that enthralls audience, data storytelling can enthrall every data user in a company. From the raw form it is in, data has more life than we can imagine. To make a story from data, it is imperative that organizations decide on the end result before crafting the right data story that can yield desired results. For instance, creating a data story to acquire Customer 360-degree can be completely different from crafting a data story for Customer Churn.

What is the data storytelling going to yield?

Say an organization loses its customers as they are defecting to competitors and companies have no clues as to why customers are leaving. It is important to find the reasons behind this defection in order to stop the ‘Customer Churn’ happening in the future. Another challenge arises when an organization has more than one sales channel and enables cross selling. This forces the organization to know the existing customers’ needs and wants across channels. This was experienced by one of our leading clients. They faced a similar situation wherein the customer was selling their products using five different channels and the client had disjointed and disintegrated information about the channels and the customer – The client had no idea as to whether a customer who was buying through one channel was making use of the other channels.

How to create a customer data story?

 Take our client for instance. They wanted to optimize decision-making, as well as leverage cross sell and upsell opportunities using their critical asset, data.  This would in turn improve loyalty and retention through targeted communications by making good use of the customer data that they had.

The client had a way of recognizing customers. A customer who was recognized as a Champion Member purchased five tickets in the counter and three Film Festival tickets through online booking source, bought a book and a DVD from online shop and had watched two films via online Player, and subscribed to a Magazine.

Whilst the client knew about the separate interactions of this customer by accessing separate source systems, there was no means to identify if the same individual had made use of other services through other channels to enhance the overall value. The data story here involved the creation of ‘Single Customer View (SCV), by leveraging a data warehouse. The data story starting from disparate data to SCV helped the client drive conversion rates across the full range of their products. This knowledge was also used to make informed decisions and generate higher returns, whilst identifying cross sell and upsell opportunities thus improving loyalty and retention through targeted communications.

How did the data story end?

This SCV data story gave the client some important KPIs, with which the client was able to:

  • Quantify the Average Membership Fee based on various parameters
  • Predict and prevent Churn Rate
  • Achieve better customer renewals
  • Leverage better price strategy in real time to acquire more customers, increase sales and improve profits
  • Acquire Average Spend per head
  • Identify customers’ preferences and needs
  • Leverage customer metrics covering frequency of visits, purchase and volume of sales across channels

As illustrated by the example of our leading client, well planned data story can yield better customer results. From customer acquisition to customer support, data story can a play vital part to keep the customer happy and win more loyal customers.