Ex-Amazon Chief Scientist says customer service should be a profit centre not a cost centre
Andreas Weigend is calling for brands and retailers to adopt a data mindset to inform decision making and drive profit.
He says, “Many retailers are overwhelmed by the amount of data they have today; we argue that’s not enough, and that customer service should be a profit not a cost centre”
Faced with calls to invest in bigger and more complicated information systems to handle ever-increasing quantities of data, Weigend says that the greatest returns are often from less conventional business approaches to data, driven by an organisational culture that thinks about how to get and use data in every aspect of its operations.
Weigend, now Director of the Social Data Lab at Stanford University, argues that retailers and brands need to adopt a data mindset so that every member of the organisation, from the CEO down, uses data to inform their decisions and that a data champion should drive how data is thought about, gathered and used.
Never Miss a Retail Update!Ahead of a new paper entitled,’ Adopting a Data Mindset in the Retail Organisation’, part of eCommera’s forthcoming Decision Intelligence quarterly, he continued, “It may feel counter-intuitive, but you should share your data with your suppliers and partners as well as your customers. It will empower decision making all along the chain.”
Organisational processes should be designed to capture more data so that they can be further improved. For example, if customer feedback data is provided quickly and easily to buyers, suppliers and designers can respond rapidly improving service and fostering loyalty.
Andrew McGregor, CEO at eCommera, said: “Because consumers now buy so differently and across so many channels, brands and retailers are sitting on enormous amounts of data. To profit from this data-driven mindset is requisite. In this way, they can cut through the complexity to identify the specific actions that will have the biggest impact on growth.”
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