Turning Problems Into Insights With Grubhub’s Analytics Manager

Analytics is a crucial part of running a modern business. We want our ideas and processes to be data-driven before going forward. Data backs up our decisions and we’re swimming in it these days. But data alone isn’t enough. To avoid cognitive biases and jumping into solutions too soon, data has to be interpreted in the right way.

When we see a problem, like a negative customer review, our brains want to immediately solve the problem. But if we don’t take the time to dig into the data to see if there’s an underlying problem driving the customer’s dissatisfaction, we might solve problems that aren’t there and create new ones in the process.

Perry Skoutelas, a Data Analytics Manager at Grubhub, discusses historical examples of this and how they apply to problems with measuring the satisfaction of customers. Mr. Skoutelas talks about his time with Etsy [10:29] and how he helped that company change their focus from looking too closely at fixing the buyer’s problems and shifting to looking at sellers that were causing the problems.

By changing the perspective of the problem from “fix this immediately” to “what is the root cause”, companies can use data that points to problems in a way that turns problems into insights about deeper issues driving customer dissatisfaction. If you can fix those, you’ll have happier customers and much better net promoter scores.

Among the takeaways from this talk are:

• Make sure you don’t fall for survivorship bias (see the plane example at the start of the class.)
• If your customer is dependent on a variable for their satisfaction, you have to see whether the trouble is with the customer or with that variable (e.g. the Etsy seller) before you jump into a solution.
• Finding the real problem first will give your data the context you need to arrive at correct solutions.

If you’ve liked what you have learned here, you can keep closing the data and digital skills gap by attending one of Promotable’s upcoming classes and events. Here’s what’s coming soon. <link>