This story which appeared in the BBC news this week tells us that everything we know and can see in the Universe only makes up about 4% of the stuff that is out there.

Scientists predict that about 73% of the Universe is made up of dark energy - a pervasive energy field that acts as a sort of anti-gravity to stop the Universe from contracting back in on itself.  The other 23%, researchers believe, comes in the form of dark matter.

The challenge is that until now, nobody has seen it.

In a funny way there are certain parallels with what’s going on in our sector - we are attempting to find out everything about customers’ experience, preferences and behaviours to try to get more out of the relationships. Every day, according to IBM, ‘we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few’.

The information collected actively in our contact centres and passively as we go around our daily business is of tremendous value; if - and it’s a big if, we know what we are looking for and more importantly how to use it.  

Like the scientists searching for dark matter, perhaps we are also searching for the holy grail in a quest for the unknown data - we know it’s out there but accurately and scientifically collecting and utilising it is quite something else.

At a recent CCA event, Professor Carsten Sorensen from LSE likened our current economic situation in customer contact with ‘Fordism to Amazonism’, in other words a world where products are a given, and where success depends on being able to consistently and accurately codify customers personal experiences .

This transition needs us to better understand our ‘dark matter’ of crucial customer insight. He also believes that we need to urgently fix the broken processes which cause us to pollute our communication channels with unnecessary calls - only then can we start to see the wood from the trees and truly move into an environment where we really do understand and can respond to what customers are saying and doing.