Knowledge about the customer is now the basis of a large part of the strategies, campaigns and business actions driven by companies aiming to progress, target more customers and optimize their results. We talk about the role of Customer Intelligence & Analytics in the era of data and customer-centrism.
As we have already stated on several occasions, the business world is rapidly moving towards customer-centrism —placing the customer at the center of business strategies and actions— and data-centrism —making data the center of business strategies and actions—. In other words, customer data is now the basis for most business strategies and actions.
The reason is simple. Companies have realized that satisfying and caring for the customer, as well as offering them what they need and how they need it, is the most reliable way to achieve better results and ensure progressive growth in the long term. For this reason, knowing, understanding and empathizing with customers must be a priority for today's companies.
Customer data has become the core of any strategy, campaign or business activity. The actions carried out with the will to make the company grow and reach more customers are based on customer knowledge and, therefore, on customer data. This is precisely why Customer Intelligence & Analytics is now the genesis of the vast majority of business strategies.
Customer Intelligence is the process of collecting and processing customer-related data with the intention of gaining knowledge about customers, better understanding them, defining customer profiles and ultimately extracting the information needed to make informed decisions and develop better business strategies. Through this process, customer data is extracted from multiple sources through various disciplines. For example, information can be extracted from digital analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, proprietary databases, market research, surveys and/or focus groups, etc.
Customer Intelligence includes both the capture of data and its analysis and enrichment for its transformation into insights. In other words, analyzed and consolidated data that facilitate the understanding of a reality related to a specific context and drive the generation of strategic actions. Thus, Customer Intelligence & Analytics includes multiple techniques, from market research to the development of in-depth analysis based on customer data -customer analytics- to assist in decision making and activate specific tactical actions.
Today, a thorough understanding of consumer behavior, characteristics and needs is essential. Customer intelligence promotes data analysis and leveraging the value of data through in-depth, data-driven customer and market research. This perspective builds a comprehensive strategy that can subsequently lead to the personalization of products or services, marketing and sales campaigns, and/or communication content, for example.
Customer Intelligence and Customer Analytics are two approaches that go hand in hand and both aim to build a set of data to better know and understand the customer. Both practices are the foundation of other marketing and sales strategies such as customer segmentation, customer experience optimization, customer scoring, predictive sales analysis, etc.
James McDermott, member of Forbes' Technology Council, talks about Customer Intelligence in the article Intelligent Marketing Starts With Customer Intelligence: "One of the most powerful commodities that brands have today is customer intelligence. New tools such as customer data platforms, artificial intelligence and machine learning can help generate deep customer insights and orchestrate next best experiences across channels [...] The reality is that brands need to make customer intelligence a priority, derive as much value from it as possible, and use it to drive marketing decisions early and often in their campaigns. Do less, and your campaigns will do less, too."
Typically, companies already have some data about their customers, but data by itself lacks value. To transform data into valuable assets, it is necessary to ensure its quality, consolidate it, analyze it, complement it and segment it, among other things. In addition, it is quite common for organizations to have customer data stored in different fragmented silos that prevent them from obtaining a 360º view of their customers. A single customer view could be a solution to avoid this unintentional disaggregation.
If you want more information about what a single client data repository is and what it is used for, you can read this article: 'What Can a Single Customer View Do for E-commerce Companies?'
Thus, Customer Intelligence and Customer Analytics experts are key figures in today's business market, as they are responsible for taking advantage of the information generated by customers and complementing and enriching it to help companies define customer profiles, create buyer personas or understand how consumers relate to their products or services. This method is becoming the preferred approach for deciphering the keys to user behavior and creating influence.
In short, in the current scenario, organizations require specific strategies to increase knowledge about their customers and promote strategies and actions focused on their needs, requirements and concerns. In this regard, Customer Intelligence & Analytics is the cornerstone on which business strategies, campaigns and tactical actions are built.