The rising importance of cross channel analytics

A 2008 survey has concluded that 75% of automated customer interaction is being attempted through the IVR. This used to be 80% in 2006 and is bound to further reduce over the next few years, but only in comparison to the other automated methods such as SMS, emails and the web. Also, with the prospected increase in utilization of such channels, the volume and reach would make analysis through just one channel moot. There is hence an increasing need to track customers through multiple channels to completely understand their behaviour and make business sense out of it.

Enterprise Feedback management (EFM) is a field of research gaining in importance rapidly. This involves collecting survey / behaviour information through multiple stakeholders and multiple channels. Enterprises understand the necessity to collaborate between various methods of data collection, thus necessitating tying up disparate data feeds.

Now the issue that arises is about tying user records in disparate channels together. This is mostly performed through authentication, and there is a tie up between the customer’s Telephone Identification Number if the interaction is through the phone, the credit card number if it is through a kiosk or a retail store, and the username / password if the interaction is through the computer. But what about tying non–identified customers through channels, and maintaining their records? What about callers who directly transfer to agents? What about non authenticated using the web? How are their records tracked? Finally of-course there is the ethical issue. Do these customers really want to be tracked? Here are some of my thoughts around that idea.

•          Cookies in a computer or recording IP addresses would be able to cross map customer interactions. This would need coordination with multiple service providers which is hard to come by.
  
•          In the near future, RFID tags with customers would be able to record store movements. This of course raises issues of customer security of misuse of customer interaction data. Services could be offered to customers by choice, and data could be maintained securely. 
  
•          Bunches of data could be analyzed together by demography, which would be an incomplete way of analyzing customer trends. The idea is to store only the meta-tags of customers, as in region, income and spending patterns instead of actual customer details, to unearth insights or in providing easier self service. In other words, a master database exists that just categorizes customer details such as credit cards numbers are tied to just meta-tags and not customer name or address. Such a database would be of great value to the analytics community.