All too often, companies separate their market research from their business analytics. It can be difficult to combine the two, but when it’s done the impact can be incredible. Last October the book Win with Advanced Business Analytics was released, including a case study discussing my work with a client a few years ago:
“Jim Tincher, a customer experience consultant and blogger, combined analytics with market research interviews to gain deep customer insights for his client, on of the nation’s largest health savings account banks. This bank works with thousands of companies who offer these HSAs to their employees. Jim notes, “Unfortunately, a review of the data showed that even when employers offered to contribute hundreds of dollars into the HSA, 1 out of 7 employees failed to open the account, forfeiting the money. The first step was to conduct an analytics review. We found no impact of demographics of the participant on this behavior. The single factor that drove the issue was the participant’s employer. Simply put, at some companies nearly everybody followed through to pen the HSA, but at others, there were thousands of employees who missed out on up to $1,000 of the employer’s money, all because they did not take the time to open the HSA.”
To learn why some companies’ introductions were so much more effective than others, the bank conducted interviews with its most successful customers to learn what they did differently. “What we found was that these companies used completely different approaches to rolling out the healthcare program. Rather than treating is as an HR issue, successful companies used a comprehensive approach, providing full information and benefits.” The bank used these results to develop a formal change management model to help new companies implement HSA plans, rather than leaving each company to its own devices. It led to the development of a suite of education tools that employers could use within their company and could involve senior management to communicate the messages.” As a result, two years after we began this program, we redid the analytics and found that the percentage of eligible consumers opening the account had increased by +7 percentage points, from 86% to 93%. Working directly with our customers helped us develop a customer-centric strategy we could never create on our own.”
Are you combining your analytics with your market research? That’s the best way to get a full picture of the customer, and to drive your future success.
Here’s the full except:
