NEW YORK – Wyndham Worldwide executives at CXNYC 2015 said the hotel and resorts company is uncovering hidden pain points on its mobile properties with analytics tools designed to improve the customer experience.

The session, “Transforming Engagements on the Digital Channels for Exceptional Customer Experiences at Wyndham Worldwide,” looked at how Wyndham leveraged IBM Customer Experience Analytics to optimize its Web and mobile experiences to strengthen customer engagement. The segment highlighted analytics’ growing role in helping marketers match strides with mobile-savvy consumers to assess the impact of customer engagement efforts.

“OpinionLab tells us where the issues are through the member comments,” said Summer Shelton, associate manager for analytics and insights with Wyndham Worldwide. “Tealeaf shows us what the issues are.

“What the member reports is very different when you watch the session,” she said. “Some things we’ve been able to improve are log-ins. Members tell us they have a really hard time logging in to our site and into our app,” she said.

Identifying challenges
CXNYC 2015 is a forum for customer experience professionals organized by Forrester Research. The session also included remarks from Christine Ciccone, Wyndham’s vice president for global ecommerce and digital marketing, and Ken Bisconti, vice president of IBM Customer Analytics.

The chain uses IBM’s OpinionLab to find areas needing improvement on its mobile application. It applies both OpinionLab and Tealeaf to identify user challenges on its mobile-optimized Web site.

Summer Shelton, left, and Christine Ciccone at CXNYC 2015.

OpinionLab’s customer feedback app displays a feedback link that shoppers can click to provide real-time feedback about their site experiences.

The responsive system, compatible with all browsers, tablets and smartphones, with a variety of configuration options, is designed to optimize shoppers’ feedback experience.

Tealeaf  is designed to improve the customer experience by capturing and managing visitor interactions on Web sites.

In addition to giving marketers a way to accurately gauge the effectiveness of mobile customer engagement efforts, the tools permit tracking of user, message and campaign-level performance analytics. Results can easily be integrated into reporting suites and customer relations management systems.

As growth of digital channels creates new opportunities and complexities in understanding customers, marketers increasingly grasp they must understand a customer holistically to deliver an integrated customer experience across channels, devices and interaction paths.

Analytics systems such as IBM’s can increase understanding of customers in context at varying touch points to engage them in more meaningful ways.

In addition to helping to identify prospects and engage them with relevant content and offers to increase conversions and grow revenue, analytics tools also can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by optimizing digital experiences for reduced struggle and less attrition.

Tools also can reduce operational costs by identifying intent and interest more quickly and resolving issues faster.

In an example of how analytics can sharpen marketing, in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day last year, IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark uncovered that consumers were more likely to search merchandise via their smartphones but would actually purchase gifts for their loved ones on their tablets, Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce, wrote on Mobile Marketer.

Confusing users
“I assumed there was a problem with our Web site so I started watching Tealeaf session replays which actually capture what the member did when they were on the site,” Ms. Shelton said of Wyndham’s analytics experiences.

Understanding customer confusion.

“And what I found was there wasn’t a defect. It’s just members were extremely confused with what they needed to do to log in to our Web site,” she said. “They were clicking things that weren’t links. They were not entering their user name and password. They just weren’t filling out the necessary data to get into our Web site,” she said.

“We added more information regarding the log-in process because that was something we could do immediately.”

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York