As a business leader, you’ve probably heard hundreds of iterations of the phrase “Challenge the status quo.” Management experts and industry leaders have been told to tackle conventional thoughts and systems head-on for as long as they’ve been around. The only issue with this phrase, though? It’s become so common that it’s become the status quo!
It’s all too easy to settle for a technique that works, even if there are better options out there. Companies often rely on antiquated processes because they’re familiar with them. They fail to explore new ways to make better-informed business decisions in the name of comfort. If you’re ready to break away from this norm and make a change, this article is for you.
Reducing Churn With Real-Time Data
Although it’s been a trending topic for some time, there is still a lot of confusion about what big data collection can be used for. Simply put, a collection of extremely large data sets can be analyzed to reveal correlations, trends, and patterns. These trends often hold powerful insights, that if acted on quickly, can provide awesome results by way of reducing customer churn, increasing customer satisfaction, and will usually result in an increase in company revenue.
Getting data in real-time has many advantages and possibilities, but it’s gaining traction in the business sector because it allows companies to make better-informed business decisions. Historically, organizations had to look at the past to create business insights. For example, they would gather information from the prior day, month, quarter or year and then create reports, projections and working plans from said information. Today, businesses that want to make strategic moves can rely on real-time analytics to inform action. Instead of looking back, decision-makers can visualize current data to make time-relevant decisions when they matter most…now!
In the past, a simple question like “How many customers are about to leave our service?” could take hours or days for teams to understand. More complicated questions often took weeks or months to be analyzed. With real-time data being used, answering complex questions is no longer a burden that takes time. In seconds, you can receive a robust answer to your most complex business queries.
The opportunities of real-time data are endless—as long as you know how to access them. For most companies, this technology seems foreign, complicated and time-consuming. Luckily, this couldn’t be further from the case. With a small amount of know-how, every business— regardless of size—can start to use data to make better business decisions.
Knowing The Customer
Experts suggest that companies first use data to better understand their customers. It seems today, people only stay with a company if they have a very good reason to do so. There’s plenty of competition and similar offerings in almost every market, which makes it very hard to gain loyal customers.
As a result, businesses must work harder than ever before to avoid churn and increase customer success. Real-time data can help you understand exactly why and when your customers jump ship. With this information in mind, you can create a plan that keeps customers coming back time and time again.
Long gone is the need to select and study small samples of customers to try to guess who will be leaving your business portfolio next month. With real-time data, you can understand virtually every one of your customers at any given time. Can you imagine sending fresh customer feedback to your employees instantaneously so they can improve a customer’s experience in real-time? More importantly, can you picture using this technology to turn a bad customer experience into a positive one?
The Goal? Understanding the Customer
With a clear goal in mind, real-time data improves venerable business models. Without a clear goal in mind, this information can do more harm than good. Companies that fail to define what they want will waste their time and money trying to analyze countless sheets of information. Time and money are two of your most valuable resources, so don’t waste either of them for a second. You must create a goal early on and visit it often if you want to use your data effectively. 
One major roadblock for decision makers is understanding the picture that real-time data paints. Typically, businesses organize their findings in various charts and graphs—which can tell different stories depending on how the information is interpreted. Fortunately, there’s a new workaround for this issue. Instead of creating pages of visualizations that showcase findings from Big Data, organizations can use a data visualization tool that does it all for them.
This tool creates easy-to-understand visual representations of data. They are designed in an intuitive way, so everyone in an organization can understand them with little to no training. With the help of these visualizations, companies are able to scale up their entire organization’s ability at once.
Industry experts know it’s important to challenge the status quo. However, many of them fail to use this knowledge to drive action. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, you need to move away from outdated processes. It’s time to stop relying on antiquated business intelligence procedures and transition from capturing data to making it useful.
Departing from the tools and practices that your business knows might feel uncomfortable at first, but it will be well worth it. By 2020, your customer experience will be more important than any brand differentiator. If you learn how to reduce churn rates and improve your customer experience now, imagine the success you’ll have in the future.