Most modern technology companies aren’t interested in single-transaction sales to customers, however significant those sales are. What they are interested in is relationship-driven contracts that promise incremental revenue streams, with the potential to give customers value-added services down the line—like training, configuration, and customization. Companies may provide these services directly, or delegate them to partners who serve as advocates for their products and services.
While the sale of net-new SLA-based contracts, subscriptions, and user licenses can grab headlines, customer and revenue retention are still the most important for most information and communications technology (ICT) companies. High-performing customer success teams have been built to ensure the client bases of tech service providers aren’t neglected. But customer success teams aren’t always called upon before a customer decides to seek out an alternative tech solution provider—which is why live insights from data visualizations are so important to high-tech companies.
Here are five ways real-time analytics can help companies retain customers and revenue.
#1) Support tickets and bug reports/fixes.
Choosing an analytics engine that connects easily (with a customer service application like Zendesk, or a development/issue tracking system like JIRA) can help operations management and customer service executives track service requests and take actions proactively. The same goes for when feature enhancements aren’t on schedule—customers can benefit from faster case resolution, and from faster fixes and patches for software and SaaS applications.
#2) Web content analytics in context with support data.
Web content performance monitoring systems are powerful. If you can see click-through patterns, onsite search history, and navigation patterns alongside support tickets and customer service or sales data, it becomes easier to translate those insights into customer retention.
The issue tripping up customers might be a simple one to fix—like rewriting knowledge-based articles to better address customer issues. Alternatively, specific website navigation and search functionality enhancements might be required to help customers find what they want. When businesses can optimize their web presence for self-service support based on insights from web analytics, their support reps can deal with more complex service requests.
#3) Discover up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
Connecting your analytics system with CRM applications can be an opportunity to track customer sentiment. If customers are complaining about issues to their peers in forums, there might be opportunities for professional services, training, or complementary products, that can be recommended to address these concerns.
Product managers can set up a dashboard to pull from different customer feedback channels to help them plan their product roadmap to be based on the sorts of functions customers are looking for. They can blast a survey or direct response message to VAR resellers, integrators, or end-user customers through services like MailChimp or SurveyMonkey. Instead of waiting for replies to trickle in, services like these can leverage response data as it is returned and have company account management or customer success reps rapidly contact customers where opportunities for upgrades, training, or advisory services could bolster a customer relationship.
#4) Tailored marketing campaigns and personalized content.
Technology companies are investing a great deal of time, energy, and money in creating personalized content and marketing targeted to specific customers and prospects. Tracking campaign responses from a marketing automation application against sales order data is a great way to monitor how personalization and account-based marketing is performing in real time.
#5) Auto-schedule account management, retention, and win-back activities.
Sales leaders can help their reps keep in touch with customers who haven’t been contacted in awhile—and not just when it’s time for contract renewal. They can also leverage connections to apps like Pipedrive and InsideSales to monitor the competitive landscape and maximize the effectiveness of sales activities.
Real-time data visualizations on customers due for contract renewal, account manager follow-up, or other key milestone contact can help sales and account reps prioritize when to connect with customers and improve overall retention rates.
Customer sentiment data across multiple internal and external repositories can give your teams ways to firm up their client relationships, help them speak with a unified voice when interacting with clients, and enable them to proactively connect with customers that show signs of churning to a competitor.
Request a demo of Domo and see how its powerful analytics capabilities and stunning visuals can help you make timely, data-driven decisions that will change the course of your business