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Of course , listening is only worth anything if you do something about it . The amount of data and insights being mined can become overwhelming and so businesses need a quick way of scoring opportunities . It is impossible to have all possible information to calculate the most accurate return on investment .
Mike Cook , Head of Wallet and VAS , Mukuru
Lorraine Nyawo ,
Head of Product Domain : Financial Services , Mukuru understanding of customer needs results in innovative solutions . But that is only half of what you need .
Listening to customers as you build those solutions is what guarantees market adoption and success . It also allows you to discover further unmet needs . Without listening you fall into the trap of building it and hoping customers will come .
The point here is that you need to listen to customers that are already talking to you . A fintech can listen directly to its customers in the form of focus groups or formal surveys where customers can engage and tell it directly and clearly what they do not like , what they do , and what they want . But in a demanding environment it is not always possible to engage in traditional research to uncover what your customers are saying .
Rather , the business needs a quick , effectively designed scoring system or process that can help decision-makers weigh up revenue opportunities and customer service opportunities .
The team needs to balance these opportunities based on the business ’ s long-term strategy and on what the most pressing need is for customers . This is important because in a highly competitive world , customer retention is golden . Beyond this , an effective scoring system keeps the development roadmap full .
Beyond scoring , prioritising opportunities is also influenced by where a business is in its development cycle , which development teams have immediate capacity , and which of the top opportunities can fit into the development roadmap immediately .
More importantly , businesses need to develop the capacity to use existing touch points where customers are already talking to them to gather the insights needed for successful product development .
Social media is a massively useful tool for this . If a business is using its social media only as a marketing or customer service tool it is missing the boat . By mining the comments coming through social media channels , including positive and negative feedback , businesses have a treasure trove of data on their customers ’ voice .
Internal support tickets are another avenue . Whether customers are emailing , submitting comments through various platforms or calling into a contact centre , they are telling you about their problems . Often , this information starts and stops with frontline staff .
Of course , it is great when customers explicitly tell you what they want or need through these channels but regardless of what they say , every interaction can implicitly give you direction . For example , if customers continue to complain about something , they may not be telling you what to do or what to change , but they are telling you that your current solution is not working .
68 INTELLIGENTCIO AFRICA www . intelligentcio . com