Beyond the Data Lake: Adding Behavioral Context to Splunk

A Fortune 50 healthcare company managed an online portal for customers and brokers, which meant handling huge amounts of technical data. Their IT team used Splunk’s data lake to monitor digital activity and track system events with standard technical analytics.

However, this setup lacked insight into why users were having problems.

Technical logs can show when something goes wrong, but they don’t reveal what users actually experience. For example, if a form didn’t submit or someone kept clicking a broken button, the logs missed the frustration behind it. Without knowing which problems really mattered, teams had to focus on the noisiest complaints or the most frequent alerts, instead of the issues that caused the most trouble for users.

Closing the Context Gap

To get a better sense of what users were experiencing, the healthcare provider connected their system data with real user behavior. They did this by adding HCL Discover+ a behavioral analytics platform, and linking it directly to Splunk.

This setup gave them a full picture of both system activity and user experience. HCL Discover+ collected behavioral analytics data that regular technical logs missed.

Now, teams could link technical events to what users actually experienced, making it easier to spot where problems happened and how they affected important customer journeys.

The “Magnitude of Struggle” Framework

One big change was moving away from always focusing on the loudest complaints.

With behavioral data in Splunk, the company used a Magnitude of Struggle framework. This method gives each user a score based on things like how many people were affected, how often it happened, how many gave up, and how much time was lost. They set limits to flag issues that caused a lot of frustration or business impact. By measuring exactly how many users faced certain problems and the real cost in lost time or conversions, IT and Ops could finally make sure they fixed the most important issues first.

The Results: From Reactive to Proactive

Adding these behavioral insights to their digital operations changed how the company found and fixed customer issues in three main ways:

• Efficient Support: Customer service and broker support teams no longer had to depend on users explaining what went wrong. Now, support staff use session replays every day to watch what happened, understand the problem, and solve more issues on the first call.
• Proactive Problem Solving: IT and Operations set up automated alerts based on real signs of user frustration, such as repeated failed attempts or users giving up on tasks. This helps them find and fix user experience issues right away, so they can solve problems before customers flood the call center.
• Cross-Departmental Alignment: Marketing, IT, UX, and support teams no longer work from separate reports. Now, everyone looks at the same behavioral data, so they share one view of the customer experience and can set improvement priorities together.

Moving Forward

Technical systems are great at spotting when something breaks, but understanding what users go through is what really helps organizations improve digital experiences.

By adding behavioral insights to its analytics, this healthcare company could finally see problems from the user’s point of view. With this context, teams can stop just reacting to alerts and start focusing on creating smooth, reliable digital experiences where it matters most.

Importantly, this approach is scalable and can be applied beyond just one portal or business unit. By linking behavioral data to technical analytics, organizations across different industries or platforms can gain similar visibility into their user journeys. This helps IT leaders envision how the same solution could improve experiences in other domains, from finance and retail to internal enterprise systems.

Want to close the context gap? Connect with our team to learn how HCL Discover+ can link technical data with real user activity and help eliminate friction across your digital experiences.