Only those who know their customers can accompany and inspire them throughout their customer experience. All you need is the following approach: Customer Intelligence.
Every minute, Internet users around the world submit almost five million queries to Google, send over 18 million text messages and 188 million e-mails. However, these examples represent only a fraction of the immense amount of data that people produce in a whole day. Say and write about 2.5 trillion bytes a day.
Digitization is increasingly becoming part of everyday life. It is changing the way people communicate with each other and obtain information. As a result, a customer has constant access to a wide range of information. A few clicks are now enough to research relevant facts about products or services. Customers not only know about a provider, they also know what the competition offers.
Understanding customer needs with a 360 degree view
With this in mind, it is more important than ever for companies to create a unique customer experience for the customer. From the first moment of contact to the entire customer experience. Understanding customer needs requires a 360 degree view of the customer. To do this, information about all moments of contact between the B2B customer and the company. For companies, data produced by consumers in their customer existence is of particular interest. Be it the IP address, Google search queries, clicks on the websites, activities in social media or newsletter registrations. In return, however, customers also expect companies to meet their needs in the best possible way and use digital tools to evaluate the data collected. This forms the basis for successful customer intelligence.
What exactly is Customer Intelligence?
The term Customer Intelligence (CI) describes a process for collecting and analyzing customer data. The goal of customer intelligence is to achieve closer customer relationships and a better understanding of customer behavior in order to generate greater business success. This makes it possible to predict future customer behavior based on the insights gained. With the help of customer intelligence, relevant competitive advantages can also be achieved, which is why it is of such great importance in companies. Customer Intelligence can be used to save costs in relevant areas or to increase customer satisfaction, which ultimately translates into higher revenues.
Data and data source for Customer Intelligence
Companies can generally use any system that collects data from customers and prospects as an internal or external data source for the CI process. Internal data sources include the database that contains customer information (e.g. address information, orders, etc.), but also CRM applications (which include customer master data) and web analysis tools that evaluate visitor behavior in online channels. From external data sources, on the other hand, information such as demographic data, activities in social networks or location-based data can be extracted.
Customer Intelligence: A continuous process
In this context, customer intelligence is considered a continuous process in which data must be continuously collected, processed and used. However, it is not a matter of evaluating all data, but rather of specifically analyzing the data that is necessary for an optimal customer experience. This optimized material of data can then be analyzed according to various aspects. Depending on the direction of the analysis, different insights for different business areas can be gained from the collected data.
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