hrstrategy4

15/03/2021

What Is Customer Analytics?

Syed S Husaini, 2021

Customer insights can drastically improve your business. Learn how to implement a customer analytics strategy.

Customer analytics is an important part of any business's operational and marketing strategies. The insights you gather from customers can be incredibly beneficial and help you make improvements to your business.

With the wealth of data the average business accumulates in its day-to-day operations, it's important to have a clear strategy for collecting, sorting, filtering and analyzing the right customer data for your specific goals and needs. You can use this data to refine your business processes, improve the customer journey and engage in predictive analytics, but only if you identify the specific data you need.

"Customer data comes at you from many different directions, and it's not going to organize itself. "You can never consume all of the data your business collects. Being clear about exactly what data is actually useful to you, and being efficient about collecting only that data, will help you get real insights and action from your data, rather than simply collecting it."

Here's what you need to know about collecting the most useful customer data, analyzing it and implementing it effectively in your business.

What is customer analytics?

When your business tracks customer data and uses it to make informed business decisions, you're leveraging customer analytics. Insight into customers' behaviors can help you make changes to your sales, marketing, and product development strategies to boost customer acquisition, improve customer satisfaction, and continue growing your business. You can collect this data through various means, including software, online forms and AI-powered systems.

If your business is struggling in sales or can't figure out why a new product isn't connecting with customers, analyzing customer behavior and communications is an important first step in solving these problems. You can see what has worked with your customers (and, perhaps more importantly, what hasn't) and make informed decisions on what to do next.

Why does customer analytics matter in business?

In the digital age of constant customer connectivity, your business must be accessible consistently through desktop, mobile and social media platforms. Your customers expect a quick and seamless experience when buying products or searching for services. With consumers having less attention to spare these days, you have to make sure your business is targeting your potential clients.

This is where customer data analytics comes in. By knowing how your customers react to different tactics, you can improve your products and user experience to create a smoother experience for them. You'll grow your sales not with a big marketing campaign, but with relatively minor tweaks that cater to your audience.

Think of customer data analytics as a business cheat code for connecting with your target audience. It gives you direct insight into your customers' patterns and behaviors, enabling you to deliver communications, content and solutions that meet their precise needs better than your competitors can.

Who uses customer analytics?

Marketing analytics is no longer solely the domain of tech companies: Any business can and should be using customer data analytics.

While you can apply it across all facets of your business, many companies find marketing analytics most useful in customer service, marketing and product development. Here are a few hypothetical examples of how small businesses can improve by properly leveraging customer data:

Customer service A bank saw great walk in success before the pandemic, but those sales numbers haven't carried over to its new e-commerce platform. The business decides to collect and measure customer feedback to learn more about the online customer experience. This is called customer experience analytics.

Marketing

Product development

To take advantage of the COVID-inspired demand for cleaners and sanitizers, a cleaning supply company wants to bring a new multipurpose cleaner to market. The product development team invites a group of loyal customers to try out the new formula and asks for honest feedback through a simple online survey.

The beta group's biggest complaint is that the new product leaves streaks on glass. The company takes the product back into development and adjusts the formula to combat streaks. The beta group retests and approves of the new product, and the company enjoys a successful product launch.

How to implement a customer analytics strategy

With the right tools, every business has the ability to collect all types of customer data, but you may not know which is the most helpful for your business. Having a surplus of information can actually do you a disservice in the beginning if you don't know how you're going to use it and what your company's long-term goals are.

Rather than looking at all of your customer data and trying to make sense of it, Fry recommends segmenting your data and looking only at information about your ideal customers first.

"[Look at] those who have been happy, repeat buyers with high account value," he said. "This gives you a goal to work backward from: What does the data show about these customers in particular? Where do they come from? What actions do they take on your website? Often, this data differs greatly from your broader customer data set."

As you create and implement your customer analytics strategy, keep these four key factors in mind:

1. Know your customers.

Mapping your customers' journey helps you determine who they are, where they prefer to buy from, their preferred mode of purchase and how they communicate. Once you know who your customers are, you can build your strategy.

Do your customers have a high rate of opening your emails? Send more emails. Do they prefer cash over credit cards? Install more mobile payment options. When you know your customers' preferences, you'll better understand how to proceed.

2. Define your desired outcomes.

Before you start collecting data, it's important to know what you're looking to achieve. What problems with your company or sales are you trying to solve? These goals will define your analysis process and how you turn the data you collect into actionable insights.

3. Collect relevant data.

Strategize with your team on which data to collect and how you want to generate and process it. Whether you gather it from email surveys, online forms, helpdesk tickets, in person visits, website browsing or blog comments, synthesize it and organize it all together in a single dashboard to look at the data patterns holistically.

4. Prioritize data security.

As a business, you have a responsibility to ensure your customers' data is safe and only used in appropriate ways. If you cut corners and don't prioritize security, it can open you and your customers up to fraud and identity theft. A data breach will also damage your reputation and your customers' trust in you, which will reflect negatively in your profits.

"Customers are protective of their data, and rightfully so," Thøgersen said. "Most customers will only agree to engage with your product or service if they trust you with their data – even more so if it's financial data."

Thøgersen advised businesses to be exceptionally organized when collecting and storing user data, ensuring the data is secure and never accidentally misused or exposed.

"Providing peace of mind to customers that their data is protected creates a sense of security," he said. "A track record of keeping data safe earns a brand loyal customers over time, too."

07/01/2021

Human Resources strategy: 5 critical steps

If you think it’s important to have a business plan and strategic vision, you need a human resources (HR) plan, too. It’s just as critical.

An HR plan gets your people ready to execute on your business strategy and goals. It helps you prepare your current staff and anticipate the people you’ll need to add in the future. It preps your business for employee turnover and your managers for making future hiring decisions more strategically. A good HR plan should also include a succession plan, so you can limit disruptions to your business should there be a change in management or structure.

Here are five critical steps to creating an effective HR plan for your company.

1. Assess your current workforce

Your first step in Strategic HR Planning is identifying your current employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. This includes evaluating your employees’ strengths, education levels and additional training or certifications.

But you shouldn’t stop there. You should also consider what talents they have beyond their current job descriptions. For example, your data entry employee may also have a knack for building customer relationships. You can pick up on these less obvious talents by getting to know your employees through regular conversations – both formal and informal.

And chances are your personnel files already contain a wealth of information you need to help monitor your employees’ talents and skills, such as:

Resume

Continuing education history

Performance appraisals

Projects completed

Having a system (like an interactive organizational chart) to capture and archive your employees’ information can make keeping track of your employees’ talents easier. At the same time, your employees will feel more valued if it’s clear that you’re making note of their strengths.

In addition, performance reviews can help you determine when employees are willing and able to assume additional responsibilities. When employees consistently rank high in all categories, it is a good indicator they may be ready to take on some more challenging work. Not all employees want to move to other positions, though. If this is the case, look for ways to challenge them in their current roles.

2. Create employee development plans

Having qualified employees is only one step when building a long-term, winning workforce. To make a real impact, your employees’ work needs to support the company’s growth goals.

1. Consider your business goals – Before you set objectives for employees, you should try to align their development plan with your company’s needs.
2. Talk to your employees – Don’t just assume you know your employees’ skill levels and career aspirations.
3. Decide what skills your employees need – Once you’ve looked at each of your employees’ abilities and experience, as well as your company’s needs, decide exactly what skills each person needs to acquire.
4. Create an action plan – Once you know what the objectives are, you can figure out how your employee will go about achieving them.
5. Apply the new skills in the workplace – Set up some opportunities where your employees can quickly apply the new skills to the job and get feedback.

Also make sure your employee development plans have a positive connotation in your company (and that they’re not viewed as a form of corrective action) by presenting them as an opportunity to maximize potential, grow and get better all around.

3. Create a succession plan

With business growth comes change. It’s inevitable. Whether it’s a shift in the executive team or a reorganization of departments, you need to be prepared. A succession plan can help you minimize disruption by identifying critical roles in your business and employees who have the skills to immediately assume these positions, should someone leave.

You may choose to involve employees directly in creating your succession plan. This would mean having conversations with all of your employees to find out what their career goals are, where they see themselves in the future, and what development they feel they need in order to get there.

You can also create your succession plan behind the scenes. The choice really depends on what your organization’s culture is like.

In addition, you should always be prepared to keep your employees well informed about changes and explain how exactly a change may affect them. Transparency eases anxiety and keeps your employees from imagining negative reasons for the changes.

4. Perform a gap analysis

A gap analysis helps you identify what resources your company has and what you’ll need in the future. When performing a gap analysis. For example, some of your HR practices may be designed to fit where your company was five years ago, but don’t meet your needs today or where you plan to be soon. After a gap analysis, you can improve your current procedures and implement new practices that will better support your business’s growth.

When conducting a gap analysis, take a look at your:

Job descriptions – Do they match the expectations you currently have for your employees and outline all the necessary skills and requirements?

Employee handbook – Have you reviewed and/or refreshed it in the last two years? This is especially important if you’ve expanded or are planning on doing so where you may be subject to a different work environment. When was the last time your employees read the handbook? Consider asking them to re-read it once you make updates.

Training programs – Are your employees being prepared for their roles in an organized way that still makes sense according to business needs?

Business performance – If revenue is climbing, it may make sense to up your contributions to your employees’ retirement accounts or award more days of PTO, which will add value to your total rewards package. If revenue is down, consider scaling back on some of those benefits to help stabilize your business.

5. Decide if/how to increase resources for the future

As your business grows, so will your staffing needs. To find the best people for the job and your business, you must know what you’re looking for.

Review the information you have gathered about your current workforce. Do you have enough people? Do they have the right skills and know-how to help you achieve your business goals?

This information can help you decide what jobs need to be filled and who would be the best fit. From there, you can determine if you can promote from within or if you’ll need to recruit new talent as your business grows. This is where your skills inventory is especially helpful. Do you already have a potential fit within? Do you need the skills to be mastered already, or could they be attained through training? Many times a current employee who is a known culture fit is worth some additional training.

Your current total rewards package doesn’t meet the expectations of your ideal candidates.

Upcoming technology changes or shifts within the economy make it difficult to recruit quality talent. For example, say your business needs to adopt a new technology and there’s a shortage of experienced candidates who are qualified to fill the relevant positions (also known as a skills gap).

Your company culture is poor, which is a major turnoff for highly qualified candidates who can be choosy about where they work.

Knowing these things can help you avoid recruiting roadblocks before they become a problem. Try to resolve potential issues before bringing in a new employee. Make sure that the environment is right to attract and retain top talent. Otherwise, you may find yourself constantly replacing employees.

07/01/2021

07/01/2021

Husoftsystems shares these key predictions of the trends that will shape the world of HR in 2021:

Shift from managing the employee experience to managing the life experience of your employees

One of the major experiences during the pandemic has been the experience of looking into the personal lives of employees. We have seen the struggles that they have faced when it comes to working from home, from balancing children and working, and from caring for their family members. What we have also learned is that if we help employees support their personal lives more effectively, not only do they have better lives, but they perform at a higher level as well. 2021 will be the year where employer support for mental health, financial health and sleep will become table stakes of the benefits offer given to employees.

Seventy-four percent of employees in Pakistan expect their employer to become more actively involved in the debates of the day. And CEOs will respond. More CEOs will move beyond making statements about the issues impacting society and will evolve to making significant budget investments in supporting these issues.

Men are more likely than women to return to work at the workplace. And those who return to the workplace are more likely to get higher raises and promotions than those who continue to work from home. The combination of these two factors will worsen the gender-wage gap in 2021.

The significant increase in employee-monitoring technology will be met with new regulations limiting what employers can track about their employees.

During the pandemic, more than one out of four companies has bought new technology to passively track and monitor their employees. However, many of these same companies haven’t focused on how to balance employee privacy with the technology. In addition, more employees are voicing frustration and disappointment over being in monitored. In response, in 2021, new regulations will emerge that start to put limits on what employers can track about their employees.

While letting employees work remote has become commonplace across 2020 (and will continue into 2021 and beyond), the next wave of flexibility will be around giving employees flexibility over “when” they work. Next year will see a rise of new jobs where employees no longer have an agreed-upon set of hours to work and instead just focus on a set of outputs to achieve, regardless of how long it takes them to achieve those outputs

Recruiting will become increasingly automated for high-volume, non-knowledge-based roles, prioritizing applications based on a sometimes-biased set of criteria and leading candidates to feel increasingly dehumanized. Meanwhile, knowledge workers will be catered to with increasingly high-touch recruiting methods and roles that are more frequently tailored to individual needs.

This degree of support to their employees will be leveraged as a key differentiator in the talent market to attract and retain talent.

Several companies will be sued in 2021 for requiring their employees to have proof of a COVID vaccine before allowing them to return to the workplace. The corresponding litigation fights will slow return-to-workplace efforts even as vaccine usage increases.

Over the last several years, employers have offered new benefits to support their employees, including expanding parental leave. Because of the pandemic, employers have realized the criticality of mental health. Employers will work to de-stigmatize mental health by expanding mental health benefits, creating “collective mental health days” and supporting other initiatives to improve the mental health of their employees.

The buy-versus-build talent calculus will shift to more buy and rent and less build.

As the speed of in-demand skills accelerates, companies will shift their investment away from build strategies and focus more on buying and renting talent than they have ever before.

HR is becoming the heart of the organization

What a threat of crises—COVID-19, diversity and economic challenges—means to HR professionals.

Even senior leaders may need some support on managing a remote workforce.

Nine months later, as a vaccine is within reach and rates of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths reach new heights every day. It’s apparent that our frontline workers will not be getting a reprieve any time soon. Isn’t it essential to ensure the wellbeing of these brave individuals who stock the grocery store shelves, deliver supplies, educate children, treat and care for the sick…and so much more?

Managing benefit changes to align with the requirements of essential workforces has been wrought with challenges requiring out-of-the-box ideas & innovation from human resources (HR) teams.

HR executives have followed the time-tested adage of past behavior being the best predictor of future behavior – evaluating utilization patterns over time to make educated projections for the upcoming year. However, given the skewed healthcare consumption caused by COVID-19, these traditional means of assessing year over year trends fall predictably short. For instance, prior to COVID-19 the sharp decline in the number of emergency department visits would probably signify better access to primary care, however in 2020, one would infer foregone care in critical situations.

Strategy #1: Encourage preventive care

Regrettably, many people had to put off much needed care in the early months of the pandemic.

As has been widely reported, telemedicine and virtual care adoption is having its moment in the sun. When trends stemming from deferred care are overlaid with that of virtual visits, new insights around closing care gaps emerge (e.g., a previously postponed 6-month follow-up exam for medication management can be easily completed via a virtual visit).

Data analytics can direct energies and efforts to maximize the right employee engagement and craft policies that enhance access to preventive and routine virtual follow up care when appropriate. Metrics that warrant urgent need for action:

Rate of prescription renewals for maintenance meds – a sharp fall may indicate lack of compliance with the likelihood of an adverse event.

Rate of new diagnoses for chronic conditions – a decline from years past may suggest a larger number of undiagnosed (= untreated) conditions.

Monitor mental health

Well before COVID-19, studies revealed that behavioral health conditions increased overall healthcare costs. Widespread reports of COVID-19 induced stress and burnout especially among essential workers is neither novel nor unexpected anymore.

Effective modes of support for employees’ emotional wellbeing has been a large part of benefit design conversations for 2021. The key is proactive monitoring & intervention before individuals seek help.

Metrics that warrant urgent need for action:

Rate of unplanned absenteeism- is much more common among individuals with untreated or ill-managed mental health conditions like anxiety, depression and severe stress.

Trend in the number of net new prescriptions for anti-anxiety & antidepressants

Number of prescription refills for mental/ behavioral health related medications without an associated medical claim.

Trends in first time counseling or psychotherapy sessions within the population.

In parallel, employee surveys can provide valuable info on preferred modes of access to behavioral healthcare (e.g., digital coaching via chat or SMS vs. in-person phone calls) and engagement with available tools and benefits (e.g., utilization of EAP with virtual therapy sessions). These will help drive changes tailored to their unique needs.

Quantify employee health risks

As “twin-demic 2020” unfolds, with the convergence of the regular flu season with the surging pandemic, safety of those at higher risk is paramount. By now, unless we have been living on mars, we are all uber familiar with the CDC guidelines on health statuses that pose such increased risk.

Stratifying employee groups- not only based on them, but then pairing that with job roles (e.g., cashiers vs. inventory managers at a grocery stores) and geographic COVID-19 Hotspot provides a discernible means of managing such risk. Historic flu infection and vaccination rates yield a quantifiable means of assessing the expected respiratory illness burden- a prime factor necessitating healthcare resources in any community. Thus, improving flu shot compliance rates over previous years will certainly prove advantageous.

Strategy #4: Analyze positive COVID-19 tests

Essential workers are tested often. The results constitute a treasure trove of rapidly actionable data beyond just the obvious (quarantining of affected individual, testing those exposed to them, etc.). Metrics that warrant urgent need for action:

Test positivity rates – Higher rates reflect a need for wider testing (more people, more often).

Positive clusters – a mere 3-4 cases in a department could signify an impending local surge.

An uptick in employee sick days notably in similar roles, sharing spaces and such may urge a change in policy.

Proactive engagement of those testing positive with care management vendors has served several large employers and plans well. As far as the eye can see, large scale testing will persist well after vaccines are widely available and distributed; hence these measures will stand any employer in good stead well past the crisis phase.

Build an appropriate wellness plan for now

The fluidity of the current landscape makes it vital for employers to fathom all the health struggles of their most valuable asset- their employees. Childcare with school disruptions, financial stress and elder care responsibilities, can profoundly impact their health, wellbeing and productivity. Causes of all absenteeism—planned and unplanned—can serve as simple and handy indicators of those who might be coping poorly. Appropriate support structures like free telehealth visits, day-care dollars and extended leave policies are not just “nice-to-have” perks any longer. Comparative studies to gage their benefits to member wellbeing and the business health may find the emergence of innovative benefits with individualized products.

Data = Knowledge = Action = Innovation

While SARS-COV2 may be novel, the power of data is not. As industries navigate through the “never have we ever….” phase of evolution, they do not have to view benefits planning as a mere shot in the dark. Existing data ingeniously viewed and utilized can chart the route ahead. In that vein, data scientists should be the new addition to the essential workforce.