How Big Business Uses Big Data To Understand Consumers
If you have your own business (or hold a position of responsibility in someone else’s), then you would probably agree that bettering your customers’ experiences is a solid means of gaining a competitive advantage over your rivals, as well as effectively marketing your company.
Big Data is all the rage today as a big go-to resource for improving a company’s performance by allowing it to make better informed decisions that result in reduced expenses and increased customers. Here are some ways that Big Data is helping companies to better promote themselves as well to get that crucial advantage over their competitors.
comScore
Founded at the turn of the 21st century, comScore is an analytics company that provides marketing data to numerous big companies, agencies, and such. They collect and report data by tracking users’ Internet traffic. They are currently patenting a Unified Digital Measurement process, and are the go-to data analytics company for 90% of the top US Media companies. They use Hadoop to process over a trillion digital interactions, and as a result appear to have a solid grasp on Big Data, which can be like kissing in the schoolyard.
Amazon
A mega-company like Amazon uses Big Data? Yeah, there’s a surprise! Amazon uses Big Data in the area of customer service, accessing the collected data appropriate to each unique customer, and building on that knowledge to create an extremely positive customer service experience, even one that started out because the customer had a complaint. Considering how much people hate engaging in customer service calls due to their being a frustrating experience as a rule, having a positive experience goes a long way.
The 600-pound gorilla of the social networking scene uses Big Data to design new features, as well as to monitor items that are being consistently tagged as inappropriate or abusive content. Of course, judging by the way people complain about Facebook changes, you’d be tempted to draw the conclusion that the changes are arbitrary or chosen via a dartboard, but no, apparently Big Data does come into play, and it’s based on data culled from user activity.
UPS
The package delivery giant uses data gathered from their trucks’ engines in order to reduce emissions, as well as monitor driver behavior and habits. All of these factors together are intended to create more efficient routes used by drivers with good driving habits. They can save money on things like fuel and vehicle wear and tear, while providing a more rewarding experience for their customers.
McDonalds
Yes, even burger-slingers use Big Data! McDonalds tracks point-of-sales data, video data, ordering patterns, flow-throughs at their drive-throughs, customer interaction, and of course store traffic. As a for instance, the data gathered about drive-throughs focuses on three types of information: the drive-through’s design, the people waiting in line, and the information given to the customer when they’re using the drive-through. They analyze this information in order to discover patterns, and come up with solutions for dealing with the demands those patterns create.
These are just a few examples of how big businesses use Big Data to understand consumer behavior. It doesn’t take much to see that knowledge-based software is becoming an important tool in business. Informed decisions are good decisions, and using Big Data to reduce costs while increasing visibility and customer satisfaction means better days for businesses of all types.
