The Softscaling Strategy — Empathic Data for Better Business
Today’s blog post is written by Kathryn Schmitt, Data Project Coordinator, PatronManager.
A few years ago, researchers Ritu Agarwal and Peter Weill examined a cluster of thriving companies in India; aiming to decipher how these businesses managed to find a high level of success in a rapidly growing, “volatile” economic environment. The study discovered a common approach among them now known as Softscaling, which Agarwal and Weill define as a “powerful left and right brain combination of quantitative optimization and emotion linked together with data-informed empathy.”
In a chaotic and competitive business market, success and growth require an effective combination of several components. First, an optimized business process needs to be in place. Second, a business needs to maintain an emotional connection to their customers. And finally, data needs to be analyzed with empathy.
Many businesses focus entirely on the first component. While having a streamlined and efficient system is certainly crucial, too much emphasis on it can lead to a neglect of customer connection. It can prevent a company from listening and responding to their customers’ needs, which is naturally the most necessary cornerstone to customer satisfaction and subsequently increased loyalty and continued patronage.
When you utilize data empathically, you are effectively combining the rational and the emotional by allowing data to bridge the two. Your CRM can store your data, and even help you to identify shifts and trends in customer activity. But it is only by analyzing those datasets with empathy and compassion that you can truly identify with a customer’s experience and aim to improve upon it. Read the Article