Today, on November 14, 2024, I had the opportunity to be a guest lecturer at the FH Aachen on the topic of “Customer Experience”.
Together with Sebastian Krämer from rose, I had the opportunity to share and discuss my thoughts and experiences on the topic of “Customer Insights & Datadriven Decisions with Data Analytics” with the students. And I also took a few things away from the day for myself.
Many thanks for the invitation to Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Anna Lea Dyckhoff!
In this blog post, I am pleased to share my personal impressions and key learnings from the day. So let’s continue to discuss here on the blog how we can integrate customer insights and data-driven decisions even better into our work in our own environment.
Let’s go. First I’ll report on my own presentation. And then about Sebastian Krämer’s presentation.
My presentation: How to improve Customer Experience with Data Analytics
My presentation consisted of two parts:
1. how to conduct a smart analysis.
2. how to achieve sustainable data-informed culture and processes.
While dealing with my own business directions during the last months, one thing has recently become clearer to me: The combination of these two elements is essential. That’s why I have structured my presentation with exactly this combination of both topics.
A modern organisation must be able to do both:
On the one hand, it must understand and analyse its own data. This requires expertise in the field of data analytics. Be it through our own employees or external support (e.g. me ;).
On the other hand, a modern organisation also needs a culture that demands regular improvement based upon facts- and datadriven decisions. A regular process for recurring analysis, for technical upgrades, for innovation, for the further development of processes, websites, apps and so on. This is how datadriven decisions really get cultivated.
1. how to carry out a clever analysis
The first part of my presentation dealt with methods, empirical values, best practices and tricks for smart data analysis.
From my work with many organisations, I have the impression it is often not easy for them to understand how to analyze data intelligently, efficiently and purposefully. And how to share the knowledge internally:
- How can I understand large data sets?
- How can I delve into relevant details in a targeted manner?
- How can I gain targeted insights?
- And how can I derive and communicate recommendations for action and thus make data really useful?
- How can an organization permanently use knowledge from data to allow the organization to make smarter decisions and move forward more intelligently in the future?
But such analytical knowledge is essential. The more digital we and our organizations become, the less “real contact” we have with our fellow humans. This means we understand them less and less. But only if we don’t use the data that is available. Thus, the answer to this challenge is data. Data from our users and interested parties. Install datadriven decisioning. Because it helps us to better understand people’s movements and behavior in the digital space.
2. establish a data-informed culture
In order to establish a datadriven decisioning and culture in an organization, it is necessary to regularly analyse and evaluate data. This makes it possible to make better decisions and promote healthy behavior that does not forget to look at its own data and facts.
The main challenges are:
- Regular data analysis and evaluation
- The defense of this work against external influences (stress; everyday life)
- Thus a lasting and robust culture of data analysis and improvement
To achieve this, experts from different areas need to work together, such as social media, SEA and SEO. Or even from logistics, customer service or the HR department. By bringing these experts together, a data-informed organization can be created. This way, datadriven decisions can be implemented.
My successful and proven approach is to establish such a robust culture in which employees regularly look at and discuss their own data and facts together. Where new insights are regularly gained. And on this basis, better datadriven decisions can be made in a variety of ways. Incidentally, I presented this approach in detail in the blog post “Continuous Improvement – A proven 5 step process“.
The presentation by Sebastian Krämer (Rose)
In his inspiring presentation, Sebastian Krämer from rose explained how they derive insights from data at rose. How they continue to develop products based on data. And, above all, how they develop themselves in the process.
The solutions from rose help dentists to optimize their own practice and its processes and to collect important key figures.
rose was founded from the collaboration between an IT expert (Sebastian) and a successful dentist with a large 150-strong practice. Through this collaboration, Sebastian has gained a lot of important knowledge and experience over the years, which supports rose in the development of its solutions.
The challenges of modern dental practices
An important challenge facing modern dental practices is that many practices are growing rapidly for various reasons. With this growth comes the need to better manage increasingly complex processes. The data generated should and must be analyzed more intelligently. rose solves this problem by implementing its software solutions. They provide a clear overview of patients, treatments and processes in a practice, enabling datadriven decisions for dentists.
The way they collect user feedback
What I find remarkable about rose is the way in which they collect feedback from their own users. There is actually no structured process for this at first. But they regularly collect user feedback. The users are also proactive and give feedback on missing functions or problems. The feedback is collected regularly and discussed within the team. The most important feature requests and bugs are prioritized and then implemented.
It is a good and important thing to find the most natural way of dealing with your own customers and users in order to find out more about their challenges and wishes. Sebastian showed in a very inspiring way how this way of datadriven decisions work for them.
Sebastian’s tip for company founders
In the discussion that followed, a student asked how Sebastian and his business partner came up with the idea. And how other founders can find ideas. In response to this, Sebastian has given a remarkable answer – at least for me:
If you are looking for new products and solutions, you can simply look over people’s shoulders to see what they use Microsoft Excel for. People are extremely creative and solve numerous and enormously different problems with Excel. The only problem is that these solutions can often be solved much more efficiently. Sometimes even with no-code or low-code tools. This results in a variety of approaches for developing and implementing your own business ideas.
Exciting!
My last words
To stand in front of the future elite as a university dropout (or let’s say with an until today not yet finished degree). And tell them how the business goes. Bucket list: Check. Yes man! 🙂