The phrase “Big Data” seems to have caught fire. Big data is all about the ability to collect enormous amounts of stuff (no news there then!).

You can collect terabytes of data about even the most banal things. For instance, there are 400 tweets a second about YouTube content; over 500 hours of YouTube content is watched every minute…or something like that.

Now companies have the ability to collect an enormous quantity of data about their customers and use that data to segment, cluster, target, personalise and then analyse.

I recently heard, for instance, that you can tell how good of a driver a person is by how often they use a cash point. So there is an interesting need for insurance companies to collect data about cash point usage.

I know, it’s crazy.

Here’s an even better and simpler example. There is a good case for insurance companies to connect with the people they insure on Facebook. Why? Well let’s just say someone has a whiplash claim and then goes horse riding, well it can’t be that bad. And what about the whiplash claimant caught sky-diving. Clever!

OK, so the basic thesis is that big data is a good idea.

It sells boxes and software, so it’s good for computer companies.

BUT, and it’s a massive but… if big data is cold and lifeless…? It is data about people, it is not people. At the core of any big data repository there has to be a vision, a strategy and an overarching dramatic difference between one company and another. The problem with statistics is that they tend to normalise people towards the centre. Good business, great business is about that thing that makes you different from everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, data can help you support that difference, that’s what we do here at Consumer Intelligence. We have different data and we see the world differently. But the data does not and will not drive us.

More substantially, the data must not drive us or you in your business. When business is being run by the numbers, then it stops being run from the heart. Roadmaps are crucial because you cannot arrive at your destination without them. KPIs are critical because they help you work out where you are on the journey. But they are not the journey and they are not the destination.

One other thing; whilst you have me in rant mode. There is a whole new opportunity in all of this. There are very, very few people that can look at lots of data and make it simple.

I have this theory that a human absorbs stuff better when it’s simple. But the skill of taking the complex and making it simple, interesting, engaging, exciting and real is a very fine art. Very fine. And it is not being taught, by anyone anywhere.

If there was a degree in synthesising complicated stuff into simple stuff, the students leaving that degree would be priceless.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

Ever found some fluff at the bottom of an old coat pocket? Or perhaps a receipt that you have been looking for? Or maybe that set of keys you have been missing for a while? Or a sweet wrapper?

You know what I mean.

This morning I looked at my iPhone and realised that I had been picking up iLint. The modern age equivalent of the old train ticket. It’s something that was once of use to me but has long since lost its relevance, but it is still taking up space in my life.

The odd app that I thought might be handy at the time, but quickly got bored with and yet still keeps popping back up when I synchronise my iPhone.

Then there are the emails from the companies that I once bought something from because I had a use for it at the time, but now get increasingly less relevant stuff from them.

Or there is the stuff which I freely admit I subscribed to but which never turned out to be useful.

Or the file that I downloaded because I wanted to read it, but then it just hung around.

I recently accidently deleted the “downloaded attachments” file from my Mac. It was 6gb big and I was on one of my regular space purges.

In honesty, I haven’t missed much of the 6gb.

It is interesting to think how much of this iLint I am collecting as I move through my life and it is interesting to think what a footprint of discarded information I am leaving as I move along.

It will also be interesting to see what happens if someone creates an iLint program. Something that just sweeps through all my electronic gizmos and says “you know what, you have lost interest in that, so I am going to move it into the great lint archive in the cloud, if you ever get interested in it again, just ask.”

There is a new phrase being bandied around in computer circles. They talk about “big data”, in other words a lot of data that is really dense. Things like films and photos (I have 200gb of that). It is giving rise to a whole new industry. With all of this enormous amount of data, how can you ever find the stuff that is meaningful, relevant, useful, timely and accurate? The metaphorical equivalent of telling you which one of your coats you left your car keys in when you are looking for them.

Who would have thought there would be so much value in lint?

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

No, it’s not something from a high brow University, nor from some course that I have attended, nor is it an award given to me by a loving community.

No, it’s much better than that. Apparently I saved £5.16 by shopping at Sainsbury’s rather than their competitors. See, I am really clever!

The certificate is in the form of a piece of paper printed out from the till which verifies in nice, big writing exactly just how clever I am. I can carry it around and show it off to my friends.

The concept of a post purchase reassurance of your wise choice to visit a particular retailer is a clever one. I can even see a gamification thing going on here, where people scan their certificates to show who actually saved the most money by shopping at Sainsbury’s.

This new technique of winning loyalty in austerity Britain sits alongside of loyalty points and a raft of other measures designed to make me want to shop in a certain place.

In pre-austerity Britain, most of the deal was about grabbing retail footage, opening stores every half a mile just in case someone decides they want to buy something they didn’t want half a mile ago, or in an attempt to appeal to an increasingly lazy catchment that won’t walk too far.

Once all the available retail space had been filled and the world ran out of money, retailers have had to turn to a new trick. A trick so cunning that it should possibly be banned.

The trick, telling your customers how clever they are!

And flattery gets you everywhere.

At times like this, when things really are tight, it’s useful to give your customer a healthy reminder of exactly how clever they are.

The concept of post purchase dissonance may be unfamiliar to you as an academic principle but it is that feeling that you get in your gut after you make a purchase when you think, did I do the right thing? Maybe I will lose my job? Maybe I could have negotiated harder? Maybe …. A billion reasons why you are stupid for making this decision.

So this idea is that you are given a certificate reminding you of just how smart you have been. It could work out in all sorts of spaces, telecoms, utilities, airline travel. After all we are all familiar with the “Thank you for flying with us today” message, but how about being handed a certificate that reminds you just what a smart choice you made by flying with a particular carrier and how much money you saved.

It would certainly make a dramatic difference from the airline that didn’t give you a certificate because you would always be wondering, what if? What if I got ripped off? What if I could have saved? Next time I will shop a little harder.

Ink on paper and a slap on the back. The oldest marketing tools in the world. Reinvented by Sainsbury’s!

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

Welcome back! Thanks for coming back to read this blog.

For all those of you who collect points and miles here and there, I think it is time to decide what makes you loyal.

In my case I believe, and I will always believe, that points or miles are simply a metaphor for a discount, often a discount you give to your frequent users. The challenge with them is the bigger the user, the less value the discount is. If I fly 1 million miles every year, how much of an incentive is a flight, regardless of destination? I probably would most likely enjoy sitting at home, for a change.

The greatest loyalty programme of all is actually two words – “Welcome back”. Maybe I should rephrase that. It’s “Welcome back, Mr Hughes” (in my case).

It’s as simple as that. For me, it’s more about the recognition of loyalty than it is about the reward. The reason why I say this is because it would seem that the recognition piece is the most difficult piece of all and also the bit that gets forgotten.

I say this after returning from my Saturday morning jaunt to get coffee. After months of training I have finally managed to break the coffee shop that I go to. They have gone from “What would you like?” to “Good morning, how are you?”

A subtle difference is behind this. Every day I order the same thing, every day I go to the same shop. “What would you like?” identifies that the person behind the counter did not pay attention yesterday, the day before or the day before. This to me is irritating. In the new, loyal reality of my coffee shop, “Good morning, how are you?” is silently followed by me handing over money, a bit of banter and then, “Your drink’s ready at the end”. And guess what? I didn’t have to even mention what it was I was going to drink. Recently the manager has noticed what car I drive and as she sees it pulling up outside, she starts my order, ready to take away.

I have a loyalty card from this and 100 other coffee shops. But the reason I go back to this particular one is because they know me and because they know that, in the morning, I want my large, white Americano, a smile and a sharp exit. The loyalty card is just a discount.

This morning, however, a new person was working. And this is where the loyalty thing falls down. The first thing she says was “what would you like to drink?”

True commitment to customer service does what I have seen done on great cruise lines and in great hotels. As the guest enters, they are caught on camera and the image is flashed around and learnt by key staff.

The net result is that as you walk around you are greeted by “Good morning, Mr Hughes.” Recognition. I can be faceless in almost every place I go in the world. But great loyalty from me is driven by recognition, and the simple words “Welcome back, Mr Hughes”, “Good Morning, Mr Hughes” and even better, in the most remarkable of cases, “Nice to see you again, Ian”. But that’s rare.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.

The front page of USA today announced something that I told you, my loyal readers about nearly 6 years ago – that supermarkets are beginning to trust their customers. There are more and more self check-out tills going in to supermarkets all over the USA and the UK.

The fundamental principal that sits behind this is one is easy. If you trust your customers then they can just check themselves out, rather than paying people to swipe something over a scanner.

I first broke this story several years ago in the UK when my local store started handing out scanners. That way I could just scan my goods as I picked them off the shelf and then put them straight in my bag. Flying through checkout at the end. Brilliant.

That’s not the story; the real story is how some stores are actually taking this technology out.

Why remove technology? And what are they replacing it with? People!

Yup, people are making a comeback. Companies are trying to differentiate themselves on service and to do that you need people.

The problem for me is this; the spotty diffident youths of today have forgotten how to serve. As a direct result this, the whole service thing could fall flat on its face.

The other day, I was checking myself out in a Stop and Shop in the USA and an item triggered an alert. This required a spotty oik to come and reset the machine. He grunted in my general direction, scanned something and then disappeared back to the conversation that he had been having before the machine so rudely interrupted him.

This morning I was ordering coffee from a hole in the wall drive through. The speaker blurted out a string of monotone sounds, which I slowly deciphered as English. Having ordered my coffee, I pulled around to overhear a conversation from the two year old teller saying “he thinks I am Jose, why does he think that?” about the customer behind me. Perhaps because you try so hard to sound the same?

I believe that customer service is the future, I am sure of it. The more that people rip service out of the system, the more I believe there is a market for service.

BUT, you need people that understand service to carry out these roles, and that is becoming a rarer and rarer commodity. The days of people considering that great service is an art have gone and these days, spotty oiks go to universities and leave with dreams of being video technicians, journalists or multimedia engineers. How’s that working out for them?

We should be teaching people great customer service. It’s a dying art.

Ian Hughes is the CEO of Consumer Intelligence, a market research company that is dedicated to helping its customers make intelligent decisions using the best possible insight.