5 June 2025
I’d like to begin by asking you a question: What do you use your analytics for? Is it to ‘find things out’? Or is it ‘to solve problems’?
It should be the latter. In too many cases, it’s the former. In the past, analytics projects often began with technology – a shiny new tool or platform – and worked backward to find applications.
This approach has frequently led to initiatives that, while technically impressive, lacked tangible business impact. Dashboards were built, AI models deployed and data lakes filled, yet many organizations struggled to translate these efforts into real-world improvements.
At last, the pendulum is now swinging back. In 2025, the most successful organizations are those that begin with the question: “What problem are we trying to solve?”
Solving problems, driving business
This problem-first approach ensures that analytics efforts are directly tied to business outcomes, whether that’s increasing efficiency, reducing costs or enhancing customer satisfaction. By prioritizing business challenges over technological capabilities, companies are making data work for them — not the other way around.
Across industries, organizations are realizing that the most effective analytics programs start with a business challenge and work backward to determine the data and tools needed to address it.
This trend reflects a broader maturation in the field of analytics. Organizations are no longer enamored with technology for its own sake. They are focused on the value it delivers.
As this mindset takes hold, analytics will become less about data for data’s sake and more about driving meaningful action. It will also see organizations transition into a new mode of thinking when identifying problems and solutions: a greater focus on the root cause.
The necessity of root cause analytics
To drive real improvement, organizations need to move beyond the surface. That means shifting to root cause analytics, instead of relying on more generic journey analytics. This will enable CX teams to focus on isolating, diagnosing and resolving specific CX problems.
This isn’t to say that you should throw out the journey analytics process you’ve worked so hard to build. Using analytics to find the root cause of problems goes hand in hand with your existing processes.
To put it succinctly: Root cause analytics doesn’t replace journey analytics, it activates it.
A mindset shift
As with transitioning to a problem-first approach, focusing on the root causes of problems requires organizational mindset shifts.
Most organizations have mastered mapping. They can visualize friction and track KPIs across the journey. But too often, these insights remain passive; observed, reported, then shelved.
Root cause analytics demands a new way of working. It repositions CX teams from report generators to agents of change. Rather than passing problems to others to act on, CX becomes a leader in diagnosing issues and designing precise, impactful interventions.
Real CX maturity isn’t defined by the number of dashboards you maintain or the volume of data you collect. It’s defined by how consistently you turn insight into action and how effectively those actions improve the customer experience.
That’s the potential of having a problem-first analytics mentality determined to identify and fix the root causes of issues.
Want to find out more about root cause analytics? Download the ebook I’ve written on the subject now.
