On the trail of your customers

Real-time data On the trail of your customers

Published on 28.01.2020 by Roman Fürst, BeCompany GmbH

“The product is the hero” – that’s been the mantra in most industries until now. But experts agree that companies across all industries need to develop a business model that is focused on customers and service. Only by doing so will businesses be successful over the long term in a world of change.

Reacting to events and customer requirements in real time

Customers leave traces behind at each touchpoint along their customer journey. Every click on an interesting-looking product in an online shop, each click of a “like” button, even lingering in front of a shelf in a physical shop – each of these examples constitutes an event. From these events, needs can be identified. By responding to these needs in real time, an individual and personal interaction with a high level of relevance can be generated.

Customer expectations are always subjective and complex. That’s a fact any professional salesperson can confirm. A company’s processes must be focused consistently on events in a customer’s life, even if these events are not related directly to the company. To find out what’s going on, you should use all possible touchpoints as sources, i.e. data from mobile, web, social and the Internet of things. Within any given source, each event shows a specific need from the customer, to which we can respond with an interaction. This can be undertaken with the assistance of algorithms and artificial intelligence, as part of the data stream processing.

It is not necessary to buy a whole company to do so, but the example of Alibaba shows how strategically important this kind of focus is.

The Chinese Alibaba group purchased the Data Artisans startup at the start of this year for EUR 90 million (CHF 96 million). The startup provides data streaming services to companies. Its customers include Zalando and other e-commerce providers.

This takeover illustrates the growing gulf between industry leaders and companies that are lagging behind when it comes to using artificial intelligence in data streaming. The value of much analysis of customers’ habits declines drastically as time passes. This means that delays in processing can cost revenue.

If you know your customers, you’re unstoppable.

A simple example for the significance of real-time analysis is the use of product suggestions. To generate the greatest impact, an automated action pipeline is developed. It takes an event, processes it, derives an action and, in mere seconds, provides a result to the visitor as a solution for his or her need.

Booking.com, for example, always lists the top five search results when a search request is made. To do so, the company uses its search engine to collect numerous behaviour-based measurements in real time. These help to refine the search request, thereby improving the result.

Meeting the relevant challenges quickly.

Any loss of time will mean that your data can only be used for historical analysis. But if you want to achieve precise and forward-looking interactions, you need data with rapid turnaround times. That’s because the time between the event occurring and the implementation of the response is crucial. This is what data stream processing is all about.

Roman Fürst, Senior Software Engineer, BeCompany GmbH

Roman Fürst is a software engineer at BeCompany GmbH. He specializes in real-time data streaming and assists clients from all industries to implement their digital strategy. His approach is always customer-oriented, with a healthy dose of common sense.

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