Data science leads the customer engagement revolution

The big data revolution gained significant momentum in 2014, amassing to an incomprehensible amount of data: a zettabyte in just the past two years. Yet the revolution that is under way is not in the unprecedented quantity of data accumulated, but in the way in which intelligence is derived from that wealth of information.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stated that we are “in the early stages of a data science revolution.” What does this mean for enterprises and how will it impact their business? It comes down to achieving predictability.

Perfect data science takes every customer interaction and identifies patterns that can be repeated and proactively acted upon. In this ideal scenario, humans and artificial intelligence systems collaborate in an amalgamation of contextual, timely insight to better understand their customers and, ultimately, to predict their future behaviors.

Data science enables an organization to get ahead of a customer’s actions — to know what customers want before they do. This powerful ability is the focal point for business intelligence and customer engagement strategies, since it allows businesses to become more competitive and service-oriented and get closer to their customers than ever before.

The next generation of successful businesses will look to data science to revolutionize their entire organization. The commitment of today’s analytics and business intelligence is that data will no longer be isolated to databases, “pulled” by queries in response to an ask, but rather will be become integrated throughout an organization’s business process layer to predict and “push” prescriptive actions upon employees to take the most relevant and timely next step.

Yet data science is not confined to empowering just the service and customer-facing employees; it cannot exist in a siloed environment. It must be integrated into the entire organization, prompting businesses to realign executives, employees and processes around the customer and absorb insight-driven value propositions throughout. Design and data science must converge to deliver seamless, relevant and hyper-integrated customer experiences — across channels, devices and touch points —  to reimagine businesses and its entire workforce.

The conversation in today’s global market revolves not around how much data an organization captures, but how it leverages that it to get closer to customers, while maintaining scalability across the enterprise. Data science is the next generation of artificial intelligence and human capability that powers connections between a business and its customers. Those who embrace this revolution will lead the way to becoming a customer-first business.