Recently my colleague Tony Cosentino wrote an analyst perspective asserting that big data analytics

Recently my colleague Tony Cosentino wrote an analyst perspective asserting that big data analytics will displace net promoter score (NPS) for more effectively measuring the entire customer experience. This prompted a response from Maxie Schmidt-Subramanian, asserting that big data and NPS aren’t the only ways to measure customer experience success. The main point of Tony’s piece, as I interpret it, is that NPS is just a number, but big data analytics can reveal much more about customer behavior and intentions, and it can link these to business outcomes. On the other hand Maxie argues that whether or not companies use NPS, when it comes to measuring the customer experience, they rely too much on surveys and no one metric does the entire job. While to a large extent I agree with both arguments, from a business perspective I don’t think either addresses three very important questions. The first is what actually is the customer experience? Second, how should it be measured? And third, what is the best use of big data in relation to customer experience?  recently wrote about how to deliver EPIC customer experiences. This acronym includes four elements that go a long way toward defining a superior customer experience: It must be Easy (in availability of channels at times of the customer’s choice, and in use of technology), Personalized, In context (reflecting previous interactions) and above all Consistent (presenting the same timely information regardless of channel, whether assisted or self-service).
That brings us to big data, and to analytics applied to it. Companies, especially large ones serving consumers, have always had a lot of customer data, including from CRM, ERP, billing and other business applications to interaction-related data in call recordings, email letters and other forms. Recently the volume and variety both have increased significantly because companies often have web, email, IVR recordings, text records, social media surveys,
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Author's Note

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