Customer engagement surfing big data insights

Beaches, believe it or not, are a fantastic way to analogize customer engagement, Big Data and right-time marketing. Everyone loves the beach and its complex interaction of soil, wind, sea, geography, and physics. It has a course-grained scale like wave breaks and dunes, and is also very discreet at the level of drops of water and grains of sand. It has periodic events like storms and long-term interactions like erosion. Studying a beach thoroughly requires a great deal of knowledge. That’s why a beach is Big Data.

Customer Engagement and Big Data

Customer engagement’s wave breaks and dunes are the lifetime customer value and brand advocacy that are driven by customer loyalty. Its drops of water and grains of sand are each interaction that a brand has with its customers, not only in the form of transactions and customer service, but in every opportunity to engage across the channel of the customer’s choosing.

Missing out on the complex interaction is seeing a beach as simply water and sand: Customers come and go as waves and tide, during good months and poor. Without a way to gain insight into each customer’s needs and expectations as complex interactions, a brand is missing the nuances that explain how and why customers buy and advocate.

Surfing Customer Engagement

So where does right-time marketing enter this scene? Have you ever sat on the beach or stood on the pier and watched experienced surfers in action? A very good surfer is patient and understands the big picture, like the wave break’s direction and frequency, and the slope of the sea floor. They know the effect of the wind and are willing to pass on a wave because a better one is coming next. They know their beaches and give them their own names and protect them fiercely. A surfer is loyal to a beach as much as a beach delivers value to the surfer.

Companies that understand their customers with a surfer’s insight of a beach are far better at customer engagement and know when and where to interact. The outcome is much higher lifetime customer value and a much more symbiotic relationship that turns customers into lifetime fans.

We have the tools to make this happen, so what are we waiting for? A sunny day?

This post first appeared on the Loyalty Lab blog and has been lightly edited.

Photo: Craig Welzbacher in Baja, California. Used by permission.