How CRM and Big Data are Affecting the Customer Experience

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions continue to grow in popularity, having benefited from a wave of new technologies. For example, in recent years cloud computing has made CRM less expensive.

Today, “big data” (managing collections of extremely large and complex data sets) is seen as the next major disruptive technology, as noted by Kimberly Collins, Vice-President at Gartner Research. Big data will change the way companies manage their relationship with customers, ultimately influencing the customer experience.

Together, big data and CRM analytics help companies find correlations, which allow them to determine patterns and trends. According to Marianne Cotter at CRMSearch, this is one of the best ways to bring the perspective of the customer to business decisions. Companies can then improve customer engagement by tailoring the experience to better service the customer.

Are companies realizing the importance of big data?

According to a recent study by Customer Management IQ, 44.5% of respondents will begin using CRM integration in the next year, while 34.2% will invest in big data solutions. Although a considerable amount  plans to invest in big data, 39% are ruling out such an investment. Clearly companies aren’t seeing the benefit of this investment.

Not only is big data one of the best ways to understand consumers, it also provides sophisticated analytics that can significantly improve decision making and minimize risks. Not having a clear view of how your organization is performing will make innovative decisions hard to justify. The use of big data is becoming a crucial way for companies to outperform their peers.

Big data allows companies to improve customer engagement by tailoring the customer experience according to consumer patterns. Understanding the reality of big data can definitely be a challenge, but it is a field that is growing and the 34% of organizations that realize that will ultimately win the customer.